John Boehner - 8th District of Ohio

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Apr 25, 2008

Washington - Congressman John Boehner (R-West Chester) today commented on the 25th anniversary of “A Nation at Risk,” a report from the National Commission on Excellence in Education on the crisis of low educational performance in our nation’s schools.  The report, credited as the genesis of the education reform movement, was provided to U.S. Secretary of Education T.H. Bell on April 26, 1983.  Boehner issued the following statement:

“Twenty-five years ago, ‘A Nation at Risk’ underscored for the American people a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in our nation’s public schools with this stark warning: ‘If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.’  Today, we look back on a quarter century of uneven progress in response to that groundbreaking report, and contemplate some lessons learned.

“We’ve learned that giving parents more options and more information when it comes to the education of their children can bring about real change in struggling schools.  The successful school choice program in the District of Columbia is giving low-income children new hope that they can receive the same high-quality education as their more affluent peers.  It proves that in the hands of caring parents, information and options can make a positive difference in students’ lives.

“We’ve learned good teachers are a precious resource, and they deserve better rewards for their efforts.  We should encourage states to provide extra pay to teachers who produce extraordinary results in the classroom.

“We’ve learned money alone will not overcome our educational challenges; if it could, we would have solved the problems in our schools decades – and hundreds of billions of dollars – ago.  If we’re going to spend billions annually on education at the federal level, we need to link it to high standards and parental choice, and give states and local communities the flexibility needed to take it from there.

"Perhaps most troublingly, we’ve learned there is a powerful army of education lobbyists in the United States that rejects all of these lessons and will continue to spend millions of dollars every year to preserve government policies that protect the status quo at our nation’s expense.

“I have often said that a child’s outcome in the lucky lottery of life should never determine the quality of education he or she receives, or stand in the way of his or her pursuit of the American Dream.  That message is at the core of ‘A Nation at Risk,’ and it is as important now as it was in 1983.  Our challenge going forward is to continue learning from the reforms that are making a difference in the lives of our nation’s schoolchildren so a quarter century from now, we can look back and say we never lost sight of the report’s urgent call.”