Paul Ryan: “I have an education advisory board which consists of parents, teachers, school board members, administrators…”

“I have an education advisory board which consists of parents, teachers, school board members, administrators, superintendents from all around southern Wisconsin; and I am always asking them for ideas, asking them what kinds of reforms do they think Washington needs to make their job better, to help them improve the quality of education in southern Wisconsin. Does my colleague know what they always say? Get off of our backs. The fact that Washington only sends 6 cents of the education dollar that is spent on education in all of our school districts, but promulgates over 50 percent of the regulations is astounding. Six cents on the dollar come from Washington; 94 cents on average are coming from local property taxes and local and State money. Yet over half of the unfunded mandates are imposed from Washington on our local school districts. What astounds me is that just in my area of Wisconsin that I come from, we have school districts that have very interesting and unique problems. Racine, Wisconsin, has school district problems that are so unique to those in Beloit, Wisconsin, or those in Janesville, Wisconsin, but let alone the problems that may exist in Harlem or in Los Angeles or in New Mexico. In this kind of country, in a vast and differing Nation, to subject our school districts to one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter solutions where we give them a little bit of the money, but all of the mandates. It is strangling our schools and strangling innovation.”