Wichita Falls newspaper, Times Record News, Saturday, September 13, 1997, page 5B, article headlined Education Choice written by Cal Thomas.

Coverdell proposal would give middle-class, poor families a chance to go to private schools, ie the school of their choice.

Sen. Paul Coverdell, Republican from Georgia had a proposal in the budget agreement to allow school choice. President Big Government Clinton so much didn't want to be seen as line-item vetoing that item that he threatened to veto the entire measure unless the school choice was removed so he wouldn't have to delete it himself.

The Clintons and Gores send their children to private schools. They are rich and can afford it. They don't want poor and middle class children to have the same choice and the same opportunity to learn. They want the masses of America to be trained in government controled schools with mandates that come from central control.

Senator Coverdell points out these tragic consequences of the American public school fiasco:

1. Forty percent of all 10 year old children in America can't meet basic reading standards.
   
2. American eighth graders recently placed 28th in the world in math and science skills.
   
3. Close to one-third of college freshmen require remedial instruction.
   
4. Despite this poor performance, the NEA National Education Association, wants to maintain the nation's largest monopoly.
5. The federal government spends $97 billion a year on 760 education programs spread through 40 government agencies. This central control system of education is failiing miserably, morally and practically.
6. Senator Coverdell says if just two thousand dollars a year went into a child's A-Plus account starting at birth there would be $14,000 to choose his first grade year, $36,000 by junior high, $46,000 by high school, and $71,000 by college at 7.5%.
7. Clinton says he cares for children. If so, let the $97 billion/year be spent on children through a free enterprise competitive system instead of through the locked union control of NEA and the government buracracy.
8. Open the system up to competition. Let private schools compete for those dollars spent on education. How many of you know the individual can spend his money a lot more efficiently than the government? Let free enterprise work for education!
9. The NEA opposes anything that would brak its intellectual, political and moral stranglehold on America's children. It knows that free enterprise competition in education would cost the NEA their unified power and many union jobs.
10. If Clinton cares for children, then the only reason he won't pass the free enterprise education proposal is to keep the NEA happy and to keep federal control over the education of children.