U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today delivered remarks at the Reading First State Directors Conference at the Washington Hilton in the District of Columbia. In her remarks, Secretary Spellings highlighted dramatic gains that students and schools have made with the help of the Reading First program, which translates decades of scientific research into practical tools for teachers. She also reiterated her call to the Congress to restore Reading First funding to $1 billion, as requested in the President's fiscal year 2009 budget. Following are her prepared remarks:

It's a pleasure to be here with people who are helping to transform our national conversation in education. Thanks to you, instead of asking whether all children can learn, we're beginning to talk about how to make sure all children are learning--and how much.

Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we now have a clear, accurate picture of how students and schools are performing. We can see what's working well, and where we need to improve.

As I travel around the country, one of the most consistent questions I hear is, how can we do better? What's working in other places that I can bring to bear in my classrooms, to help my students improve?

One of the best answers we have to this question is the Reading First program.

Recently, a teacher in Alabama told me, "Before Reading First, we would not have considered giving our students the level of work that we are putting before them now." But now, her school, Anna Booth Elementary, is "a place where children are not defined by their first language status, migrant status, or socioeconomic status...a place where not even hurricanes provide excuses."

And she's right. Nearly 30 percent of Booth's students are Vietnamese, Cambodian, or Laotian. Nearly 30 percent have limited English skills. And 90 percent are from low-income families.

After Hurricane Katrina, more than 70 percent were homeless. And I'm proud to say that today, nearly 80 percent of first, second and third graders are reading on grade level.

Nationwide, this is the kind of school that Reading First helps to build. Thanks to Reading First:

• In San Francisco, the number of third graders at Harte Elementary School who are reading on grade level more than tripled over the last three years.

• In Providence, Feinstein Elementary was one of the first schools to receive a Reading First grant. And since 2005, its students have made the greatest gains in the district. As one student said, "most of us were at the bottom, and now we're almost achieving a perfect score."

• In Virginia, schools in Norfolk and in Newport News saw third grade reading comprehension improve by 20 percent over the last 3 years.

• And Maryland, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana have seen statewide reading gains of 10 or more percent.

I know that you could point to stories like these in every one of your states. You've seen the benefits of Reading First. And you know as well as anybody that the 60 percent cut to its funding is devastating schools nationwide.

Just last week, I urged appropriators to support the President's request to restore Reading First funding to $1 billion.

We must make sure that students and teachers can continue to benefit from this program. Because it works!

Reading First builds on more than 20 years of research at the National Institutes of Health. If ever a program was rooted in science and fact, this is it. Thanks to Reading First, teachers nationwide have evidence-based insights into how children learn to read, and what we can do to help all of them learn to read well.

This is not just an educational issue. If you can't read, you can't understand the label on a bottle of medicine. You can't fill out a job application. And you can't keep up with health care for your family.

Nothing is more heartbreaking than a child who thinks he's a failure because he doesn't know how to read. These are the students who act out to get attention--in all the wrong ways. These are the sophomores who walk off of our high school campuses--and never come back.

Just last week, we learned that for the first time, more than 1 out of every 100 Americans is incarcerated--including one out of every nine African American males between the ages of 20 and 34.

Reducing these numbers starts early. It starts with giving our young people the knowledge and skills to succeed in school and in the workforce. I don't need to tell you that reading opens the door to history, science, literature, geography and much more. Reading opens the door to opportunity.

So instead of cutting funding for programs that are proven to work, let's make them more available!

I hope you will join me in getting the word out about the importance of Reading First. And I hope you won't stop there.

Next week, I will announce the release of a National Math Panel Report similar to report that served as a foundation for Reading First. Written by independent experts with a combined six centuries of experience in the field, it will collect proven insights to help strengthen math instruction.

For those of us who have never felt like being a math whiz came naturally, the report contains hopeful news. It also has news for anyone who thinks they're done with Algebra once they're done with high school. So stay tuned.

Now that the Math Panel has provided this resource for teachers, the next challenge will be to make sure they can access it. So I encourage you to join me in supporting the President's budget request of $95 million for the Math Now program, which will help translate the Math Panel's insights into practical tools for teachers.

Different children have different needs. But our country's success depends on equipping all of them with higher-level knowledge and skills--something we've never really done before.

To reach this goal, we must arm teachers with the best practices to get the job done. We would never ask a doctor to learn surgery on the operating table. And teachers deserve the same proven tools. Together, we can make sure they have them.

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