Rob Andrews: “I begin by offering my thanks and appreciation to the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the gentleman from…”

“I begin by offering my thanks and appreciation to the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), our ranking member, for their very gifted leadership; for the diligence of my Republican and Democratic colleagues on this conference; for the professionalism of the staff on both sides that did such an outstanding and hard-working job; and especially to Matt Walker of my own staff. Mr. Speaker, this is an achievement that presents us with both a golden opportunity and a great responsibility. To understand that golden opportunity, we need to understand what life has been like for one of the children who have had the misfortune of attending one of the dark and often violent places called schools where not much learning has gone on in recent years in America. When that child fails year after year, or when that child is failed by her school or his school year after year, they just move on to third grade or fourth grade or fifth grade, and then fifth grade becomes junior high school, and then too often junior high school leads to the streets or to a drug rehab center or to a dead end job, or to a morgue. These schools have failed these children year after year, and this bill I believe can make a great difference because this bill says that America's taxpayers will no longer sit back and permit that failure to occur. If a school continues to fail its children year after year, something is going to happen.…”