[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4061]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




DEMOCRATS OBJECT TO IMPROVING EDUCATION WITHOUT MORE FEDERAL REGULATION

  (Mr. TANCREDO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I am incredulous at some of the comments 
of my friends from the other side, from the Democratic side, who 
continue to talk about education as being improved or the possibility 
of it being improved with just more regulation, the fear that if we 
gave freedom to the educators who we 0know, the people who teach our 
children, to the principals of the schools in which our children go to 
school; if we gave them more freedom, somehow or other our children 
would suffer as a result of it. I am amazed at that kind of an 
argument.
  For years as a teacher, Mr. Speaker, I taught children, and I sat in 
classrooms and in faculty lounges with other teachers who continually 
talked about the fact that they needed and demanded more freedom, that 
they were impeded in their ability to teach because of the regulations 
we place on them, both the State and Federal level.
  So here we come, finally forward with a plan to give those teachers 
and those principals the freedom to actually teach children in the ways 
that they know work, and all of a sudden the Democrats in this body 
rise up, unanimously almost, to object to that.
  This is very peculiar indeed, Mr. Speaker, very peculiar.

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