“Where you find the most drug testing is usually in communities where there’s the least drug use. The decision to test is more about politics and less about helping kids.”
—Graham Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s drug litigation project, criticizing the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing districts to test all students not just athletes and suspected abusers for drug use.
“We want to be certain that no student goes through our high schools unknown. If we don’t know them, how can we teach them well?”
—James DiPrete, chairman of the Rhode Island Board of Regents, explaining why the state has requested that all of its schools implement strategies, such as creating “schools within schools,” by 2005 to become “more personalized learning environments.”
“If money indicates priorities, the president believes No Child Left Behind is one-sixty-seventh as important as cutting taxes.”
—Policy analyst Ross Wiener, comparing the 2004 education budget with Bush’s proposed tax cut of $674 billion over 10 years.
“If you put [us] in a dark room with music we like, we’re going to freak. We’re not going to waltz.”
—Palo Alto High School junior Nili Ben-Meir, on the futility of his school’s new policy banning bumping and grinding at dances.