Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton: on Education


Hillary Clinton: AR Reform plan pushed mandatory teacher testing

Bill asked me to chair an Education Standards Committee to recommend reforms. Nobody, including me, thought it was a good idea. Bill was convinced he was right to appoint me, & I relented.

This was a risky move. Improving the schools would require an increase in taxes--never popular. The 15-member committee recommended that students take standardized tests, including one before they could graduate from 8th grade. But the cornerstone of the proposed reform plan was mandatory teacher testing. Though this enraged the teachers union, civil rights groups & others who were vital to the Democratic Party in Arkansas, we felt there was no way around the issue. How could we expect children to perform at national levels when their teachers fell short? Gettin the legislature to approve and fund the reform package turned into a knock-down-drag-out fight among interest groups. I pled our case for improving schools before a joint session of the Arkansas legislature, and the reform plan was implemented in 1984.

Source: Living History, by Hillary Clinton, p. 93-94 Nov 1, 2003

William Rehnquist: 1970s: Supported "separate but equal"; opposed desegregation

Rehnquist, early in his career as a Supreme Court clerk, wrote a memo which had strongly favored upholding the Court's key pro-segregation decision of 1896, a case called Plessy v. Ferguson, which enunciated the doctrine of "separate but equal." He endorsed a Texas law permitting white-only primary elections. "It is about time the Court faced the fact that the white people in the south don't like colored people," he wrote in 1952. And in 1964 Rehnquist led efforts to challenge the qualifications of black voters at the polls in Arizona. In 1970, he proposed a constitutional amendment to limit and disrupt implementation of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case of 1954. Since being named to the Court by Nixon in 1971, he consistently tried to turn back the Court's progress on race--and by extension the country's. His was the only vote favoring federal tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University, which banned interracial dating and had an expulsion policy on that basis.
Source: Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, p.396 Nov 1, 2003

  • The above quotations are from Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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2016 Presidential contenders on Education:
  Republicans:
Gov.Jeb Bush(FL)
Dr.Ben Carson(MD)
Gov.Chris Christie(NJ)
Sen.Ted Cruz(TX)
Carly Fiorina(CA)
Gov.Jim Gilmore(VA)
Sen.Lindsey Graham(SC)
Gov.Mike Huckabee(AR)
Gov.Bobby Jindal(LA)
Gov.John Kasich(OH)
Gov.Sarah Palin(AK)
Gov.George Pataki(NY)
Sen.Rand Paul(KY)
Gov.Rick Perry(TX)
Sen.Rob Portman(OH)
Sen.Marco Rubio(FL)
Sen.Rick Santorum(PA)
Donald Trump(NY)
Gov.Scott Walker(WI) 		Democrats:
Gov.Lincoln Chafee(RI)
Secy.Hillary Clinton(NY)
V.P.Joe Biden(DE)
Gov.Martin O`Malley(MD)
Sen.Bernie Sanders(VT)
Sen.Elizabeth Warren(MA)
Sen.Jim Webb(VA)

2016 Third Party Candidates:
Gov.Gary Johnson(L-NM)
Roseanne Barr(PF-HI)
Robert Steele(L-NY)
Dr.Jill Stein(G,MA)
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Page last updated: Feb 14, 2019