Workforce Chair: Commission’s Bold Approach is Necessary to Reshape Education, Workforce Policy

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Following today’s release of the new Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce’s report, “Tough Choices or Tough Times,” which recommends an educational restructuring from early childhood through higher education, U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) today applauded the work of the Commission and pledged a careful examination of the panel’s recommendations.

McKeon issued the following statement after the release of the Commission’s report: 

“As our students and our workforce face the new realities of an increasingly competitive global economy, bold and innovative ideas from outside the Beltway are essential to those of us who craft education and workforce policies for the 21st Century. 

“Some of the boldest and most innovative ideas we’ve seen are included in the Commission’s report, and I’m especially proud that many reforms championed for years by congressional Republicans – from greater school choice to increased flexibility in educational programs to pension portability reforms – are included in today’s report.  I also am pleased that the Commission agrees that pouring more and more resources into federal programs alone can’t solve our nation’s educational problems.  Rather, reforms behind those resources are what will make a difference.   I look forward to a careful review of these recommendations as we head into the 110th Congress.

“If we did not embrace bold and innovative – or even ‘radical’ – ideas in the past, so many of our educational and workforce successes may never have come to pass.  Rather than committing to the ambitious goals of No Child Left Behind, we’d have settled for the status quo that failed our children for decades.  Rather than building innovative school choice programs in local communities, we’d have settled for an educational system void of competition – and parents stuck with no options.  And rather than insisting on fundamental – and long overdue – welfare reform, we’d have watched millions more slip from a temporary safety net into a permanent way of life.  Simply put, bold and innovative ideas are exactly what we need to reshape our educational and workforce systems for the new century.

“In the coming months, I’ll be eager to join incoming Chairman Miller, as well as state and local school officials, in a thoughtful examination of these recommendations as we work in a fiscally-responsible way to strengthen No Child Left Behind, expand college access, and refine our job training system.”

McKeon will serve as the Education & the Workforce Committee’s Ranking Republican Member in the 110th Congress.

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