David Obey: “With all due respect to the colloquy that just occurred, this funding cannot be used to provide gifted and talented…”

“With all due respect to the colloquy that just occurred, this funding cannot be used to provide gifted and talented funding. The purpose of title I under which this program is funded is to promote the raising of standards in schools and the raising of performance by improving the performance of disadvantaged children. There is a separate program for gifted and talented. We cannot use an exchange between two Members to rewrite what, in fact, is the basic authorization, irrespective of their efforts to do so. I would also point out with respect to Comer schools, people can have whatever ideological reaction they want to it. The key element in Comer schools is family involvement, parental involvement, and often not just with your own child but deep involvement in the operation of the school itself and collaborative decisionmaking so that you do not have an additional round of finger pointing every time a problem develops at school, to emphasize forcing people to work together to make collective decisions which everybody takes their fair share of responsibility for.”