Here are the prepared remarks of U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, for a July 30 speech at the National Press Club on the future of the No Child Left Behind Act:

Good morning to all of you, and thank you for coming.

Over 40 years ago, President John F. Kennedy had a vision of sending a man to the moon and bringing him home again.

That vision fueled a massive investment by this nation in all levels of education--an investment that drove nearly four decades of discovery, innovation, and economic growth, allowing America to have the world's strongest economy and lead the community of nations for generations.

Sadly, this investment fell off over the years.

With the report A Nation at Risk, America woke up and saw an education system that no longer served all its children and was failing our future.

America had an education system that was operating under a policy of acceptable losses. Where only about half of all minority children could read proficiently. Where black and Hispanic 17-year-olds were being taught math to the same level as white 13-year-olds. Where 40,000 teachers in California were without the credentials necessary to teach in the schools.

Nearly four decades after President Kennedy's decision, America realized that its education system was threatening the country's world leadership.

Six years ago, we decided to do something bold about it.

We made a decision as a nation to raise our expectations of what America's schools and schoolchildren could achieve. We made a decision to insist upon high standards.

We said that it was not good enough for a majority of the children in a school district to be learning and performing at grade level if their success was allowed to mask the fact that many other children were falling behind.

We asked the states to set higher standards for their schools and students, because we believed that every single child--if given access to a highly qualified teacher and a good curriculum in a decent school--could achieve educational success.

We made performance at our schools transparent, and we made schools accountable for their performance.

Today, five-and-a-half years after its enactment, the No Child Left Behind Act has brought some positive changes.

A recent Center on Education Policy study of all 50 states found gains in students' reading and math proficiency and the narrowing of the achievement gap among groups of students since the implementation of No Child Left Behind.

There are more qualified teachers in the classroom today, because we made it a priority.

The law is shining a bright light on the achievement gaps among different groups of students in the U.S. and among the states. Now--for the first time--we know exactly which students, and which groups of students, are not learning and performing at grade level. This information makes it impossible for us to ignore those students who are not succeeding.