“The rich record of experience in national, state, and local policy must be rediscovered and mined. Successes and failures will be unearthed, forgotten good ideas rescued from oblivion, new ideas created from the material of past practices. America lacks a political memory, and a nation which cannot remember its past may well be doomed to repeat the worst parts of it.”

— Bill Cannon, former Director of Policy Research for the Bureau of the Budget (now OMB).

“As someone who has spent all of her not inconsiderable working life in the field of public policy research and computing, I am as aware as anyone can be of the need for a national information network. No one knows better than I that such a thing does not exist.”

— Christine de Fontenay, former Director of Research Programming, The Brookings Institution.

“The reason major problems are so resistant to political solutions is that the public is not informed, disinterested, and turned off.”

— James T. Lynn, former CEO of Aetna Life and Casualty, remarks at the Economic Club of Washington.

“[Former] Governor Kean of New Jersey said that there isn’t a problem in education that hasn’t been solved somewhere in this country. He could as well have been talking about health or social services.”

— Lisbeth Schorr, author of Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage.

“We know that there are projects out there that have worked. What we do not know is how to find them and to replicate them.”

— Frances Drake, Executive Director, Neighborhood Youth Achievement Program.

“The truth is that foundations and organizations don’t work closely enough. We may share a common vision, but rarely do we collaborate to make it come to pass.”

— Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Annual Report.

“There is a basic assumption on which we and so many other foundations operate - namely, if a pilot program or demonstration project achieves some degree of success, it will be picked up by others. Where does this process break down? Why aren’t they banging down our doors?”

— The Foundation Center.

“The very ignorance that confounds society is a call to action for universities. It underscores the other vital social purpose that we possess: to contribute the knowledge that will help society discover how to overcome its pressing problems.”

— Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University, in his final commencement address.

“Comparisons show that the rest of the developed world does a better job educating students of all economic backgrounds. In the most recent international data, [even when] comparing students in the top 5 percent in terms of achievement, the United States ranks 23rd out of 29 [countries].”

— New York Times, September 6, 2005.