Bob Schaffer: “My point being is that in a Nation where we have unacceptable national test scores in comparison to our peer nations as…”

“My point being is that in a Nation where we have unacceptable national test scores in comparison to our peer nations as industrial countries, in a country where we know we have problems in education in America, Americans would expect and should expect the leader of the U.S. Department of Education to acknowledge that we have a problem, we have got to get serious about it, and we have got to get focused on fixing it. The way that we usually do that back in your State and the State I grew up in Ohio, and the State I live in now, Colorado, and in virtually all other States in the union is we start focusing on the basics, getting the money to children and start focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic. We can add to that a little bit, science and history and so on and so forth. But over at the Department of Education, as of today, our new goal is to redefine, to reinvent the three Rs to be relationships, resilience, and readiness. I am not making this up, Mr. Speaker.”