Political Quotes

“Ours is still at a point where it is too early probably for us to statistically be able to answer that. We believe that is what the numbers are indicating. But let me tell you an even more compelling fact: I spend a lot of time going around to schools. I do not think one can just read about what students are thinking in a magazine or in a document or have some lobbyist tell you and that be the fact. I think the way you find out is to go in the schools and talk to the students. There is not a school in my district that I am not in every year, once a year at least, talking to those students. When you do, and you sit down and you look at them and you talk to them, they are the ones that tell you this program works. They are looking for standards. They are looking to us. We have been there. They do put more credibility in us sometimes than we give them credit for. When we tell them you can do well in college if you just try, a lot of them do that. When we tell them that abstinence works, it does work and they see the proof in the pudding. But if we tell them nothing, then they have no standards, no goals to reach. So I suggest it is working not just because of statistics I see on paper, but looking into eyes of students I get to talk to, and they tell me it is working.”