The quote has been removed: "Sorry there is no quote of the today."
The quote has now been replaced with a quote from Abraham Lincoln.
Daren Briscoe, the acting press secretary for the Department of Education says in a statement:
"The Kids' Zone website hosted by the National Center of Education Statistics earlier today featured a poorly chosen quote, intended to highlight the importance of teaching and learning, in the 'Quote of the Day' feature. This feature, which automatically generates one education-related quote per day from a database of quotes last updated in 2007, has been temporarily suspended pending a review of the database's contents."
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley weighs in:
"The Department of Education should explain how a quote from Mao Zedong got on its Kids' Zone webpage as the promotional quote of the day. On the orders of Lenin, Stalin, and subsequent Soviet leaders, approximately 20 million people were killed, and an estimated 65 million people were killed by the Chinese Communist government, mostly under Mao Zedong. That makes him the most murderous dictator of the 20th century. As our society rightly does with Hitler, murderous tyrants like Stalin and Mao should be considered pariahs, their victims should be remembered, and their crimes should be taught to future generations so they never happen again."