More Resources Fact sheets, summaries, and Secretary's remarks

I'm pleased that Dr. Connie Calloway, Detroit's new superintendent, could join us today. She's been shaking up the system lately. I'm sure families are glad you are—they're relying on you to make tough choices that benefit students—even if they sometimes make some folks uncomfortable.

Connie, you have a difficult job. But you have strong support from parents and the business community. They understand better than anybody that schools are in urgent need of reform.

A couple of weeks ago, the Detroit Free Press ran a powerful commentary from a high school junior. In it, he painted a dismal picture of problems plaguing Detroit public schools. As he said, "These students are just as smart as anyone else. Why is it that they have never had the chance to discover it for themselves?" He was absolutely right.

A recent report showed 75 percent of students in this district fail to graduate from high school on time—when we should be sending more students to college! By some estimates, 2 out of every 3 girls in Detroit public schools will fail to graduate on time. When it comes to boys, 3 out of 4 will not graduate on time. So I'm glad to hear that instead of waiting to take action, Connie and others will be hosting a summit to develop actions to address the dropout crisis later this week.

We cannot afford to waste so much talent and potential. Our country can't afford it, and our nation can't afford it.

Over their lifetimes, dropouts from the class of 2007 alone will cost our nation more than 300 billion dollars in lost wages, lost tax revenue, and lost productivity. Increasing graduation rates by just 5 percent... for male students alone.... would save us nearly 8 billion dollars each year in crime-related costs.

Twenty five years ago, in the landmark report known as A Nation at Risk... some of America's finest minds warned of the consequences of inaction. They wrote, "if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it happens, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves."

Yet even today, a quarter of a century later..., many of the actions that A Nation at Risk recommended in 1983 continue to be largely ignored. Raising standards, making coursework more rigorous, and using classroom time more effectively. These proposals were not unreasonable then, and they're not unreasonable now.

In the mid 1950s, the 1.8 million people living in Detroit had the highest median income of any city in the nation. Today, your population is less than half of what it was, and your median income lags behind 65 other urban areas.

I'm not just picking on Detroit. The United States will be a minority majority country by the middle of this century—like this city already is. Meanwhile, nationwide, half of our African American and Hispanic students fail to graduate from high school on time. What does that mean for the future of our country... especially when you know that 90 percent of our fastest growing jobs require education beyond high school?

Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we are finally taking an honest look at our schools... and realizing just how far we have to go.

Today, more than 50 years after Brown v. the Board of Education... 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King... and 25 years after A Nation at Risk... do we finally have the willpower to achieve equal opportunity in education? Do we have the courage to aim higher, and prepare every student for today's global economy?

I believe we do. Everywhere I go, I meet parents who are demanding change... and hardworking educators who are wholeheartedly committed to achieving it. They need and deserve all the leverage we can give.

That's why today, I'm proposing new policy tools that will give families lifelines—and empower educators to create dramatic improvement. Many are actions that have gained broad support through conversations on how to strengthen No Child Left Behind. While I will continue working with legislators to renew this law, I also realize that students and families and teachers and schools need help now.

So, at the President's request, I'm moving forward to empower educators to take actions that families have been waiting for. The Detroit News has called for "bulldozers" to tear down barriers to reform. Today, I'm delivering policy bulldozers that will do just that.

First, let's put out what I call the "raging fire" in our lowest-performing schools. No Child Left Behind has identified about 2,300 out of nearly 100,000 schools nationwide that have missed annual targets for 5 or more years running.

These schools have had at least 5 full years to equip students with bare-minimum, grade level skills. As parents, do we want to wait 5 or more years for our children to read on grade level? I know that's not what I want for my daughter—so why would it be acceptable for anybody else's child?

Improving our lowest performing schools is not an impossible task. Thanks to hardworking educators, 1 out of every 5 schools in restructuring is already making real progress. Now our challenge is to support students and teachers in carrying this progress forward.

It's common sense that improvement plans must go beyond previous efforts that haven't yielded results. For example, replacing the principal may be necessary, but it's not enough to constitute dramatic restructuring.

At the same time, as we triage low-performing schools, we must also offer lifelines for families.

NCLB already provides these options in two forms: free tutoring, and the ability to transfer students to better-performing schools. These options are intended to help answer one of parents' most vexing questions: If I've given my public school every chance to meet my child's needs, but it hasn't... what can I do? What are my options for my child?

One of the primary recommendations of A Nation at Risk was simply that students spend more time learning. Tutoring is one of the best ways we can help them do that. Research has shown that effective tutoring programs can reduce the achievement gap by 10 to 15 percent.

The problem is, these options will not make a difference if parents don't know they're available.

So, I'm proposing to strengthen policies to make sure parents are notified in a clear and timely way. In addition, today's proposals will require states to inform the public about what tutoring providers are available... how these providers are approved and monitored... and most importantly, how effective they are in helping students learn.

Information is a powerful catalyst for change. The more information we have, the better able we are to demand improvement—and to get it.

So, today's actions will require states to justify the way they determine how many students of different races and income levels are included in accountability systems.

It sounds wonky, but in fact it's very meaningful. It's about what we as policymakers are accountable for, and to whom. It's about making students count.

Building on the work of the National Governors Association, today's actions will require states to establish a uniform graduation rate that shows how many incoming freshman in a given high school earn a diploma within four years—and how many drop out. In addition, we plan to make this data public so that people nationwide can compare how students of every race and background are performing.

I realize that some states may need some time to put in place systems to make this happen. And so today's actions will allow them to use an interim calculation on a transitional basis. However, every high school in every state will be required to report new graduation rates for accountability purposes no later than 2013.

There's broad consensus that we can't solve a problem until we diagnose what's wrong. In that vein, today's actions will require that states publish results from the Nation's Report Card alongside results from their own annual tests. If one shows better results, parents are entitled to know why.

Taking an honest look at problems in our schools can be a painful process. Here in Detroit, some people have been, quote, "shocked and appalled" by plans to reform struggling schools.

Given the dire state of our schools, we should be shocked and appalled. When asked about her school, one 16-year-old student said, quote, "God knows it deserves a makeover, it smells like dead rats in the hallways."

We can do better, and in many cases we already are. At Chrysler Elementary School here in Detroit, almost every student is reading and doing math at or above grade level. At the Detroit School of the Arts, most students not only earn high school diplomas, they earn millions in college scholarships. And at Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn, nearly 100 percent of seniors go on to higher education.

That's the kind of future that all of us want for our children—here in Detroit and nationwide. Together, we can achieve it.

Thank you. I would be happy to answer your questions.

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