The House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, delivered remarks about education reform this week to the Brookings Institution:
For many families, living in poverty spans generations. Parents and grandparents struggled to realize the American dream. School choice is the surest way to break this vicious cycle of poverty and we must act fast before it is too late for too many.
The fact is the government's approach to fixing our schools has been too slow, too sporadic, and too ineffective. And while we wait, we are losing generations of kids.
For far too long the federal government's approach to fixing our education system has been based on two principles: spend more money and give more control to Washington. Since the mid 1960's the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to improve schools in low-income areas with little to no effect.
Americans have a right to ask: why do our student test rates lag behind most of the industrialized world?
Why, in our largest cities, do only half of public high school students graduate on time?...