Education
Kennedy became notorious in the 1970s for his support of desegregation busing. He was one of that members of Congress, government, and judges and journalists who supported busing but sent their own children to private schools.
Kennedy was a leading member of the bipartisan team that wrote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. According to both Kennedy and President Bush, the Act was a compromise. Kennedy then worked on its passage through a Republican-controlled Congress, despite opposition from members of both parties.
Kennedy opposed federal attempts to cut student financial aid, such as Reagan's 1986 planned limitations on Guaranteed Student Loans to students whose families earned over $32,500 a year, and a planned $4,000 cap on all federal aid and benefits that a student could receive in one year. Following the Republican takeover of Congress in November 1994, there was a renewed effort on the part of key Republican leaders to balance the federal budget by cutting financial aid. The new cuts, which Kennedy also opposed, involved reducing the interest the federal government would pay on student loans, and on Clinton’s direct lending program. Kennedy supported the College Affordability and Access Act of 2007 which provides $20 billion in new federal financial aid investments for low- and middle-income students and their families.
Read more about this topic: Political Positions Of Ted Kennedy
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The education of females has been exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty. ... though well to decorate the blossom, it is far better to prepare for the harvest.”
—Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870)
“We have not been fair with the Negro and his education. He has not had adequate or ample education to permit him to qualify for many jobs that are open to him.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)