Thank you Morgan for introducing me. I also want to thank all of you for coming today. You're building a brand-new enterprise from scratch, and you deserve a lot of credit for giving families more support and more control over their children's education.

I thought I'd share just one of the many stories I've heard about the great work all of you are doing.

In Indianapolis, Jodi Jessie had noticed her children were struggling. So when she heard that they could be tutored four days a week in their own elementary school, she was thrilled. Today, the tutoring program not only helps them do better in school, it's even changed their attitudes about learning. "Being in the neighborhood we're in," she says, "there are a lot of kids who go home to nothing... When they've got a teacher who's going to stay with them and pay attention to them—that means a lot."

She's absolutely right—and she's not alone. I'm sure each of you could reel off a list of families who feel exactly the same way. Thanks to you, more than 500,000 students are getting the extra help they need, free of charge, right in their own neighborhoods.

I'm proud to say that today, my department is releasing a new report that proves your hard work is paying off. Independent researchers studied free tutoring programs in nine large urban districts, and they found that these services were helping students improve in reading and math. In fact, in many cases, the longer students participated, the better they did in school.

Of course, we still have a long way to go. Nationwide, only about 1 in 5 eligible students is receiving these services. While that's nowhere near good enough, it's still hundreds of thousands of students getting the extra help they need—extra help that until just a few years ago wasn't available.

This is a brand new enterprise, and it's going to take time and energy and patience to get it right. But we're seeing promising signs. The number of tutoring providers tripled in the last three years alone. That's three times as many helping hands to spend time with struggling students. And frankly, we need all hands on deck.

All of us know that more than 50 years after Brown versus the Board of Education, our system still has vast inequalities. Just across the river, right in our nation's capital, we spend more money per child than almost any large district in the nation. Yet students in D.C. perform far worse than most of their peers nationwide.

I'm not just picking on the District of Columbia. In New York City alone, there are more than 90 high schools where graduation is a 50/50 shot. Where most freshmen cannot read or do math at an eighth grade-level. Where one in five teachers lacks certification.

And in Los Angeles, one out of every three students doesn't graduate high school. And only half of public schools met annual progress goals last year.

Everybody talks about the achievement gap between poor minority students and their affluent white peers. The truth is, it's more than a gap—it's a canyon. The wider we let it grow, the more it threatens the long-term health of our nation.

That's why with No Child Left Behind, we set a deadline to have every child learning on grade level—and we set a deadline of 2014. Some don't think it's possible, but I've yet to meet a parent who volunteered their child to be the one left behind.

We all know that highlighting weak spots is uncomfortable. Much more uncomfortable is sitting down for a job interview after graduation and being told you don't have the right skills to compete.

Every time I hear people talk about the so-called "sanctions" imposed on failing schools, I wonder, since when does free tutoring qualify as punishment? I know those being helped don't see it that way. And neither do most Americans.

Just last week, a poll by the Educational Testing Service showed that the more people know about No Child Left Behind, the more they like it. Once they understand that the law is about identifying struggling students... and getting them the help they need... the majority of people support it. They know that being honest about how we can do better is not about punishment; it's about improvement.

In the last 5 years, we've learned a lot about what works in our schools and what doesn't. And we're starting to face tough decisions about how to fix schools that are falling short of standards.

We at the Education Department are committed to improving struggling schools. That's why our budget for the coming year includes 500 million dollars in school improvement grants, and almost 200 million to help attract our most effective teachers to work in our neediest schools.

But at the same time, students need lifelines now. If a school falls short of standards for several years running, families need options—so we're providing 300 million dollars in scholarships for students to receive free intensive tutoring, or transfer to better-performing schools.

Wealthy parents already have the power to choose the school that's best for their child. Why shouldn't low-income parents have that same power?

Families want choices. And we all benefit from them. By supporting a range of options for parents and injecting a little competition into the system, we support innovations that help all of us do better, especially students.

As I travel around the country, nothing makes me happier than visiting a school that's helping students improve—whether it's a traditional school, a public charter school, or a private school.

For example, I recently visited Hillsborough County, Florida. It's the nation's eighth largest school district, and roughly the same size as the state of Rhode Island. Of 192,000 students, 140,000 participate in some form of school choice—from magnet schools to charter schools to technical schools to tutoring.

As Superintendent MaryEllen Elia says, "the reality is, every child isn't the same. Parents want different things for their children. Giving them choice helps parents and students plug in more effectively to their schools."

I firmly agree. But don't take my word for it—ask Elizabeth Santos of Tampa, who says that thanks to after-school tutoring, her sons George and Timothy are getting straight A's and B's.

Or ask Tomeca Demps of St. Petersburg, who says that thanks to these services, her son Tayvahn is "not afraid of... big words anymore."

My department is working to help more students access these options more easily... and to help you do a better job of implementing them. For example:

• We'll be engaging Congress to make tutoring available to students as soon as we know their school needs improvement.

• We're also working to provide more funding for free tutoring to students who need more help—such as those in rural areas, English language learners, and those with disabilities.

• In addition, we'll give districts more discretion in using federal dollars to inform parents of their options and to run the program.

Finally, we will continue to offer practical tools and guidance. After traveling from L.A. to Little Rock talking to parents, teachers, and providers, we've compiled a lot of advice—which is included in the draft handbook you'll receive today. I encourage all of you to look at it closely and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.

After all, it's up to us to make these new choices work. And right in this room, there are some great examples of how to do it.

Principal Margaret Espinoza Nelson is here from Noble Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles County, California, which I visited last December. 87 percent of her students are from low-income families, and 8 out of 10 are learning English as a second language.

Margaret grew up in the neighborhood, and she knows it can be a hard place to raise a family. She holds parent meetings every Wednesday night, and every Saturday she brings in kids who need extra help.

Every chance she gets, she tells students and families to go to free tutoring—so much that she says she feels like "the sales person that keeps knocking on your door, or the bill collector who won't take no for an answer."

It's not easy, but it works. Between 2002 and 2006, the number of students doing math on grade level more than doubled. And the number of Noble Avenue students reading on grade level nearly tripled!

If that doesn't prove that a little extra help goes a long way, I don't know what does.

I'm sure everyone in this room would love nothing more than to see their students making similar gains—I certainly would, as a policymaker, and certainly as a parent. Together, we can and will make that a reality.

Thank you.

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