John McCain
Town Hall
Peterborough, NH
TRANSCRIPT:
QUESTIONER: Senator I would like to, first of all, say it's a great pleasure to have you here. [...] Former Congressman Charlie Bass worked very hard to try to get full funding for special education. Another unfunded federal mandate. And no child left behind, our least favorite educational program, at the federal level. Could you assure us that you will work for full funding of special education and get rid of no child left behind?
MCCAIN: I can assure you, I'm quite proud of the fact my wife Cindy was a teacher of special education. And in interest of preserving my marriage, I would like to tell you that I will fully fund special education. But more importantly as you know, it is a federal mandate. It's a federal responsibility. And I will try, I will do everything I can to make sure we fulfill that responsibility. Very briefly on no child left behind, I'm not for the repeal of no child left behind, I think we got to fix no child left behind. If anyone wants to fully repeal it, then you want to go back to where we were before we passed it. That was clearly unsatisfactory. We need to make the changes, we need to sit down republican and democrat together, and fix it and make it so that we can improve education in America. And choice and competition, in my view, have to be a fundamental part of that. People have to have a choice, and people and schools have to compete. We want to give rewards to good teachers and we want to find bad teachers another line of work. And I believe that charter schools work. I know charter schools work because they work in my state of Arizona. And they provide competition. I believe if someone wants to home school their children, fine go ahead and do it. The problem, we need choice and competition, and I will see if we can do that. Does no child left behind need to be fixed? Absolutely, but I got to look you in the eye and tell you I don't want to scrap it, I want to fix it.
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