Contact: Lindsey Kozberg(202) 401-3026

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I also want to thank the teachers, administrators, and all those here who have devoted their careers to education, as I have. Henry Adams once said: "A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence ends."

When I was growing up in Mississippi, my parents were both educators. They inspired me and many other children with a love of learning. I also had many great teachers who seemed like part of my family. Recently I had a chance to return to my hometown of Monticello and see many of my siblings' teachers and thank them for all they have done for my family. And I want to thank you for all of the families you have helped.

Washington can design policy about education and we can make laws that clear the way for better schools. But teachers, principals and all those who work in our schools are the ones who must actually get the job done. You are the ones who affect eternity. And you will never know where your influence ends.

Many people will be surprised that a Republican secretary of education should appear before the National Education Association, a teachers union. Fear not, I come to praise you, not to bury you.

Our differences are obvious, but so are our similarities. I am heartened by your words about New Unionism: "New Unionism is about taking responsibility for the quality of education—and using our advocacy tools to make things better for our children, our students…And it is about collaboration—working with businesses, parents, school boards, school administrators, and the community—to advance teacher quality and student achievement." Your words tell me that the National Education Association wants to be part of the solution. We share the same goal of wanting to improve public schools. I congratulate Bob Chase on New Unionism, and I want to tell all of you, it's good to be on the same team. You and I are in similar situations. Many Americans are suspicious of any effort by the government in Washington to help make things better. And many Americans believe teachers' unions care more about teachers' earnings than children learning. With New Unionism here, and new compassionate activism in Washington, I think we're finally on the same side. You want to take responsibility for the quality of education in America's schools. So do I.

We're working in Washington to improve student performance, but nothing can be done without you. Your focus on student performance, your willingness to take risks and be creative, your collaboration with parents and communities, your commitment to taking responsibility for results, these are the things that will improve our children's lives and fortunes.

Students are not going to remember the names of the congressmen who worked on the legislation for education reform, nor will they remember who was Secretary of Education when it happened. When they look back on their education, the people they will remember are the teachers who cared about them. And America, too, will remember.

Our nation is blessed with many good schools and many great teachers. But we all know that not every school is a good one. We all know that too many children are being left behind.

In American schools today, nearly 70% of urban and rural fourth graders cannot read at even a basic level. It has been almost a decade since reading scores have shown any improvement. We have a persistent and inexcusable achievement gap between minority and disadvantaged students and their peers. For example, on the NAEP fourth grade reading test in 1992, African American scores were only 86% of white scores. Eight years later, nothing has changed. That's not good enough for the children we care about.

This is our reality, and it demands the attention of Democrats and Republicans in government, business men and women, local leaders, and people at all levels of the school system. It has been ignored for too long.

The achievement gap shows that our school system is not only failing too many children, it too often is failing precisely the children who need our help the most. These are the children for whom Congress originally carved out a role for the federal government in education with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. These are the children to whom the federal government owes a special responsibility today.

Partly because of these unsolved problems, public schools face increasingly tough competition from private schools, parochial schools, charter schools, home schools, and even Internet schools. Public schools are no longer the only show in town. This is a challenge that all of us must confront.

Over the last few years, charter schools have become a fixture in many cities, and in the national conversation about education. When I was superintendent in Houston, I welcomed charter schools, because I knew that the competition they provided would spur all of our schools to improve. But this shift forces both teachers like you and administrators like me to make dramatic changes, whether we like it or not.

When students leave for charter schools, superintendents lose money, and unions lose members. The last year I was superintendent in Houston, 6,000 children left traditional schools in order to attend charter schools, and they took 25 million dollars with them—money that would have gone to the district. And keep in mind, this was a district that was dramatically improving student performance.

Since I've been in Washington, D.C., I've had the opportunity to learn more about the burgeoning charter system there. In Washington, charter schools have only been around for 5 years, but they already serve 10 percent of D.C.'s -students. There are 33 charters throughout the city, with 5 new ones slated to open up this fall. The Center for Education Reform found that nearly two-thirds of charter schools nationwide have waiting lists nearly half the size of the school's enrollment. The same is true in Washington. I continue to support efforts to increase the number of charter schools around the country.

Like you, I love public schools. Like you, I've devoted my career to them. But the competition is here to stay, and it is growing. If we don't bring real reform to public schools, more families will leave the system in droves. It will be too late.

Here's what I mean by real reform:

• Being clear about what we want our kids to learn;
• Providing schools with appropriate resources;
• Using fair tests to determine if students are learning;
• Holding schools accountable for seeing that students learn; and
• Appropriate consequences when students don't learn.

It is tempting to pretend that public schools are exempt from the law of supply and demand. This pretension will destroy the system. Burying our heads in the sand and pretending that private schools, charter schools, home schools, and the Internet are not significant would just harm the public schools we serve. The competition is there, and by embracing it, we can make our schools better. Embracing competition means not fearing it, but finding opportunities to use it to create the change to our system that has eluded us for so long. Our goal is not to help public schools survive, it is to help public schools prevail.

Instead of ignoring the competitive pressures, we must provide an active response that involves teachers. We must respond by improving our teaching methods. We must respond by raising our standards. We must respond by producing results, and by holding every part of the system accountable for those results. That is the bottom line.

When President Bush took office in January, he made education his top priority. He committed his administration to a bold proposition—that every child can learn—and he laid out a plan for reform based on that proposition: No Child Left Behind. His plan has four pillars: accountability, local control and flexibility, expanded parental choice, and doing what works.

Under the President's leadership, No Child Left Behind earned the support of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. In May, the House overwhelmingly approved a version of the plan by a vote of 384 to 45. The Senate followed, approving its bill a couple of weeks ago with a vote of 91 to 8.

The result of rigorous debate and compromise on both sides of the aisle, these bills, which contain all four pillars of the President's plan, reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and authorize the federal government to demand success instead of funding failure.

But their work is by no means finished. Next, the bills will go to a conference, where the House and the Senate will reconcile their differences and create a final bill. I hope that Congress completes this process quickly, so that we can begin creating better schools for our students as soon as possible. We can do a lot of things in Washington, but we can't make summer vacation last forever. The seasons will change, the leaves will turn, and kids will go back to school in the fall.

Will principals and superintendents be moving forward with reform, or will confusion reign? Will their teachers have a clear idea of the changes in store for the system, or will those changes exist only on a set of marked-up drafts in a basement room in the Capitol? These decisions are in their hands. As the conference committee refines the bill, I also hope that they will stick close to the pillars they adopted as the framework. The details should follow the outline. This means using the conference process to focus sharply on linking reform and resources, and on creating flexibility and cutting red tape.

I just mentioned that even though federal education spending is at a record high, our children's reading and math scores are not. For thirty-five years, we've tried to address our failing schools the easy way. We've just given them more money, without focusing on results. This is why, as we appropriate more money for our school system, we must not abandon the principles of reform that will make that money effective.

I'm not arguing that schools don't need more money. I was a superintendent of a large urban school district, and I know that reform won't happen without resources. And President Bush realizes this too. His budget gives the Education Department the largest percentage increase of any domestic Department. But, looking at the past thirty-five years, who could argue that more money is sufficient on its own to produce better schools? Just as reform needs money, money needs real reform. The federal government has committed to giving all children access to a quality education, and taxpayers have entrusted us money for that purpose.

Some of the amendments added during the Senate debates attempted to hit on long-term funding solutions for programs, such as special education, that are not part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the legislation that guides most of our federal elementary and secondary education programs. Special education programs flow from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), an act that itself needs systematic reform. Congress enacted systematic reform of the ESEA this year, and it should do the same with IDEA next year. Our special education system has a big problem with the over-enrollment of minority students, and reports have shown that IDEA, as it stands now, leaves too much room for this problem.

Putting kids into special education simply because they can't read not only prevents them from reaching their full potential, it also robs children with real learning and physical disabilities of the federal dollars intended for them. There are serious problems with how we deliver special education services to our students—problems that will not be remedied by amendments that simply throw more money at special ed. The President has proposed a billion dollar increase in IDEA funding. IDEA needs to be reformed so that this money can be applied effectively to those for whom it is intended. We want IDEA to address the particular challenges of the students and teachers in special ed with reform that goes beyond money.

When Congress's reauthorization of ESEA is complete, it will be the most sweeping education reform since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was first passed in 1965, and it will require cooperation at all levels of the education system to put into action. I look forward to working with you, your schools, and your districts to prepare to implement its reform measures.

If we want to implement ESEA successfully, if we want to see real changes in our schools, our students, and the system at large, the process cannot be unilateral. It requires the effort and the input of educators and leaders at all levels of the system. You are more qualified than I am to make decisions about the needs of your students, so we will develop regulations and guidance with input from all levels of the system, preserving the local control and flexibility that have always been central to our country's public school system.

The purpose of this legislation is not to force you to march in lockstep to a national drummer. But we must be committed to carrying out real reform together. A commitment to better schools for our students should be the number one priority for all of us.

The NEA contributes to the process of school reform from two different angles: you are both teachers and union members. Not only will you be implementing school reform in your classrooms, but you can also use labor-management collaboration to improve student achievement. As your statement says, "New Unionism is about taking responsibility for the quality of education." In order for reform efforts to be successful, they must focus on the needs of children, not the system. When labor fights management, students may flounder or even leave the system. But when teachers and administrators work together to form a cohesive organization focused on student performance, you can win students back, and win back public confidence in public education.

Our children will return to school in the fall whether or not Congress has completed the education bill. Teachers and school officials are already making plans for the year to come, and you deserve as much time as we can give them to begin the work of reform in each of their own schools. President Bush and Congress have started the process—but there is more to do.

As I said, I hope the conference committee will use this summer as an opportunity to strengthen the bill by linking resource allocations to the reforms in the bill and keeping a careful eye on the regulatory burdens that have limited the effectiveness of federal legislation in the past. As they embark on their summer school assignment, it will be up to us—the education system—to work with them to improve our schools.

We must also work with each other. I said before that you and I have differences and similarities. We must create a dialogue that respects both of them. We should debate our differences openly and in good faith. We should leverage our similarities into a partnership that ensures no child is left behind.

When he accepted his party's nomination for president, James Garfield took the opportunity to speak about public education. He said, "Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be maintained." All of us here tonight have been charged with the important duty of creating and maintaining excellent popular education, and upon our shoulders rest not only learning, but freedom and justice, too.

Thank you for your commitment to ensuring that freedom rings, justice flows down like waters, and no child is left behind.

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