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U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Michel Zajur, president of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, today hosted an education policy roundtable with Rep. Bobby Scott, educators and business leaders at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond. Secretary Spellings highlighted Virginia's contributions to the accountability effort and noted its progress toward No Child Left Behind goals.

"Virginia helped pioneer the accountability movement in education by adopting standards and measurements in the mid-1990s," Secretary Spellings said. "Today, Virginia ranks third in the nation in the number of students passing Advanced Placement exams, and Virginia's eighth graders are outperforming the national average in math."

Secretary Spellings said Virginia can be proud of the progress it has made, but that challenges remained ahead. "While Virginia's minority students are catching up to their peers, white students are still significantly more likely to graduate from high school on time than African American and Hispanic students," Secretary Spellings said.

At the roundtable, Secretary Spellings also discussed a new tool recently released by the U.S. Department of Education, Mapping Virginia's Educational Progress 2008, which provides a comparative look at the state's key No Child Left Behind indicators.

To view Mapping Virginia's Educational Progress 2008, please visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/results/progress/va.html.

For the national "Mapping Educational Progress 2008," visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/results/progress/index.html.

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