Steven Gunderson: “it is important, because of all the publicity that has been involved in this issue, that every Member understand exactly…”

“it is important, because of all the publicity that has been involved in this issue, that every Member understand exactly what we are doing. If you want to solve the problem or the perception that there is a problem regarding the ability of home schools, private schools, religious schools, et cetera, to provide for their own certification criteria of their teachers and not have that controlled by the Federal Government or, in many cases, the State governments, you must vote yes on the Ford amendment. This is the amendment that solves that problem by doing two things. First, it deletes the whole section on teacher certification. There was, frankly, a bit of a philosophical debate in the committee about whether there should or should not be a Federal role for teacher certification. Obviously the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] and myself and others never believed there should be, but in credit to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ford], recognizing the controversy over this whole section, he said, ``Let us just delete the whole section and be done with it.'' Second, Mr. Ford adds a provision that says, ``Nothing contained in this act shall be construed to affect home schools.''”