[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 19937]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



              RETURN EDUCATION DECISIONS TO LOCAL CONTROL

  (Mr. TIAHRT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr TIAHRT. Madam Speaker, the Federal Government has spent a lot of 
money on education. Yet the United States continues to rank near the 
bottom of industrialized nations in student test scores. This simply is 
unacceptable.
  The United States is the most prosperous Nation in the world. There 
is no reason why our schools cannot be second to none. However, just 
loading up the Federal bureaucracy with more money is not the solution. 
Yet this is the very approach the Big Government party of Clinton and 
Gore and the other liberals are attempting, and it has failed time and 
time again over the past 40 years.
  So what is the solution? We Republicans want to return the dollars 
and the decisions back to the parents and teachers who know our 
children's names and their educational needs. Parents and teachers 
should set education policy, not some Washington bureaucracy or someone 
sitting in a fourth story of a government office building right here in 
Washington, D.C.
  The only way to turn the test score embarrassment around is local 
control of local schools. But if the liberals keep following their 
presidential nominee down the path to the roadblock, America's future 
in education has no hope. For the sake of our Nation's children, let us 
join together and return control back to our schools and our local 
governments and our parents and teachers.

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