[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 37 (Tuesday, March 9, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1027-H1028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       REPUBLICANS WANT LOCAL, NOT FEDERAL, CONTROL OF EDUCATION

  (Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1

[[Page H1028]]

minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, Republicans continue to work on what we 
call the BEST agenda: B for balancing the budget and paying down the 
debt, E for excellence in education, S for saving social security and 
Medicare, and T for lowering taxes on the middle class working families 
in America.
  Let me talk a little bit about E for education. When I was in 11th 
grade back at Clark Central High School in Athens, Georgia, I had a 
wonderful teacher, Mrs. Musik. Now Mrs. Musik was tough. You could not 
split an infinitive, you could not dangle a participle in her class. 
She expected you to learn grammar. She expected you to read Emerson and 
Thoreau.
  But she was the master. When she went in there, she did not have to 
answer to the Board of Education in Atlanta or the folks in Washington, 
the bureaucrats who want to run the classroom today. She was in charge.
  That is what we want in the Republican Party, local control of 
education: letting the teacher run the classroom, not the Washington 
bureaucrats.

                          ____________________