Burgess Owens: “in the President's address last night he reaffirmed the fact that education is one of his top priorities. It appears…”

“in the President's address last night he reaffirmed the fact that education is one of his top priorities. It appears from the speech that the President made that the only priority which ranks above education is the tax cut that is being proposed. I salute the President for his selection and for his devotion and dedication to education as the number one priority. I think it is very important that he has taken note of the fact that this has been the priority of the American people for the last 4 years or 5 years. Education has ranked as either the number one priority or somewhere in the top two or three priorities for the last 5 years. So the President is acknowledging the fact that in a democracy, the directions really come from the bottom. He is not alone. The previous President chose to call himself the Education President, President Clinton. At one point he said he wanted to be the Education President. And he and the younger Mr. Bush are not the only ones. Father Bush, I think, first coined the phrase Education President. The father of the present President said he wanted to be the Education President. Before that, Ronald Reagan launched the movement to reform education in America with a report called A Nation At Risk, A Nation At Risk. We are now in our fourth President who has chosen to make education a number one priority. We should be making some tremendous progress in terms of the improvement of education in our Nation.”