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U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today addressed the fourth annual "Celebrate Our Rising Stars Summit" sponsored by the Department’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA). Following are her prepared remarks:

Thank you, Kathleen Leos. I'm honored to be here with you and so many others who believe, as I do, that every child can succeed.

I just came from a terrific meeting with parents and educators like you, from all across our country. I met a woman named Luzelena Puertas. She became a parent liaison for Fairfax County (Va.) schools after helping her own children adjust to speaking English in the classroom. Today, she's part of a network serving families who speak Spanish, Arabic, and several other languages. She helps children get extra help, and she encourages parents to attend weekly meetings with translators. She told me, "The earlier we start, the better students do. We want them to be reading and speaking fluently as soon as possible." So do all of us!

Every day, you're improving students' lives, and you're brightening their futures—and ours. As our nation grows more diverse, we're depending on you more and more to ensure future generations have the knowledge and skills to succeed.

As you know, English language learners are of every race, background, and zip code. About 70 percent are native Spanish speakers. Some are born in America, and some are foreign born. But all of their families have one thing in common: education is their number-one priority.

In fact, it's a priority for all of us. English language learners (ELLs) are the fastest-growing student population in America. Today, one out of every nine students is learning English as a second language. That's about 5.4 million children—almost the population of Arizona, or Maryland, or Tennessee.

Their numbers will more than double in the next 20 years. By 2025, English language learners will make up one out of every four students in our classrooms.

Our educational system is in a race to keep up with the students. If we continue running at the same pace we're going now, we won't get the job done. So we've got to pick up the pace. I can't think of anything more important for the future of our nation than the work you're doing every day.

For our country to remain economically, civically, and democratically viable, we must ensure every single child receives a quality education. That's why President Bush and the Congress led our nation in an historic commitment to give every child a quality education.

With No Child Left Behind, we said we would close the achievement gap by 2014 across the board. And for the first time in history, we're shining a bright light on the annual progress of students learning English.

With states measuring our children's progress each year in reading and math, and by focusing on each student and on each group of students, we can discover where they need help before it's too late.

We now have proof that high standards and accountability are paying off. Our national report card shows that scores are rising, and English language learners are achieving record highs.

This progress is a tribute to you and your students. The hard work of educating our children happens in real classrooms like yours.

Last year, the New York City school system invited researchers from the Johns Hopkins University to help the system's first-grade teachers learn research-based reading instruction for Spanish-speaking children. The first-grade teachers were so excited about the program that they suggested it expand to include kindergarten teachers. From there, it grew to include second-grade and eventually all reading and Spanish teachers from kindergarten through the fifth grade.

No wonder reading scores for New York's Hispanic fourth graders are among the highest in America's cities! In fact, minority students in New York are surpassing the national average in fourth-grade reading and math!

These results were released today as part of the Nation's Report Card for some of our urban school districts. New York and nine other districts volunteered to partake in a trial study to measure their results against all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Thanks to their willingness to take an honest look at the data, we have good news to share.

Urban minority students are catching up to their peers. African-American and Hispanic students in most of these districts performed as well or better than others from those minority groups nationwide—in every subject and every grade.

These districts are having successes in particular ways. Some are doing better in reading than math. Some are doing better with minorities, or with students in the early grades. Overall, this data shows that urban districts are helping students achieve: including New York, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Charlotte, Austin, Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta, and the District of Columbia. And as we've seen before, the best results are in places that have been implementing high standards and accountability the longest.

This data dispels the myth that city schools can't make the grade. Thanks to progress like theirs, national reading scores for ELL fourth graders increased by 20 points in the last five years. That's more than 3 times the average progress of their peers. And both fourth- and eighth-graders achieved higher math scores than in any previous year.

But we still have a long way to go. One million students are dropping out of our high schools every year. Many are leaving because they don't have English fluency.

Hispanic students—the children who make up 70 percent of your classrooms—are almost four times more likely to drop out than white students. And overall, half of all minority students don't finish high school on time.

Would we tolerate one out of every two heart surgeries failing? Would we tolerate one out of every two planes that took off tardy going down? Then why is it OK to tolerate one out of two non-English-speaking kids dropping out?

Leaving these students behind is not only morally unacceptable, what the president calls "the soft bigotry of low expectations." It is also economically untenable. Studies show the staggering cost of high school dropouts.

Compared to high school graduates, each of these students will earn $260,000 less over their lifetimes and pay about $60,000 less in taxes. With each new group of 18-year-olds who never complete high school, America forgoes $192 billion in lost wages, lost taxes, and lost productivity.

When you lose a million students every year... that's a tremendous impact on our economy. And it represents the American Dream... denied.

Clearly, how well our students are doing is not just an education issue. It's also an economic issue, a civic issue, a social issue, and a national security issue. And it's everybody's issue.

Our country cannot afford to let these children fall behind in other subjects while they focus on learning English. Language and rigorous content must go hand-in-hand.

To help students succeed, teachers need practical tools that are proven to work. Fortunately, thanks to decades of research, we know more than ever before about how children learn... why some of them have more trouble in school than others... and what we can do to make sure all children are learning at grade level. And every day, researchers are coming up with even more effective strategies.

For example, we've learned a lot about the skills young children need in order to read. They must understand that print moves from left to right. They must understand that words are made up of tiny little sounds and that written letters represent spoken sounds. They must be able to de-code words quickly and easily enough to see what sentences mean. And build a collection of words they know. Finally, they must connect all these things together so that the words on the page actually mean something to them.

You know better than anybody that reading is more than a pastime. In today's world, it's a survival skill. President Bush says that reading is the new civil right. And he's right. A child who can read is a child who can learn. And a child who can learn is a child who can succeed in school and in life.

That's why we must implement strategies that are proven to work. For years, we've known that phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension are the keys to teaching native English speakers to read. And thanks to recent research, we now know these strategies work as effectively for most non-native speakers.

We also know that the way these concepts are taught can make or break a child's future. In fact, instruction is one of the most important variables in the equation for student success. Teachers must be explicit. They must implement high-quality curriculum, and adjust that curriculum to meet each child's needs.

The elephant in the dining room is that we haven't fully "cracked the code" for English language learners. We must develop a comprehensive, research-based strategy to prepare these children for the future. And we'd better do it fast.

The Education Department is helping to lead system wide reform that focuses on meaningful programs that are proven to work. And how do we know what's meaningful and what works? We measure. As we say in Texas, "What gets measured gets done."

Annual measurement is one of what I call the "bright line" principles of No Child Left Behind. Once we know the contours of a problem and who is affected, we can work on the solution. Which is exactly what we're doing.

Last week, a judge in Michigan ruled that this law is a partnership—not a federal mandate. In fact... just as many of us have said all along... it's a contract to do well by children. It says if you take federal resources, you must meet expectations for student achievement. Because student success should always be the number-one topic of discussion.

We are honored and trusted with the responsibility of ensuring our next generation is equipped to participate in the American Dream. I know all of you are here because you feel the same way. While others may argue about mandates, waivers, and other distractions, we must—and we will—recognize and cherish our opportunity to improve the life of every single child, including the growing millions of those who are learning English as a second language.

I recently had a young teacher tell me, "All that 'waivers, rules, and policy' stuff—that's for you in Washington. All I know is that the kids in my classroom had better reach grade level this year."

I could not have said it better myself. Helping every single child reach grade level is our most urgent priority.

This is our mandate, and it's also the right thing to do. Our children and our country deserve no less.

Thank you.

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