January 8, 2007

On the fifth anniversary of the most groundbreaking school legislation in recent memory—No Child Left Behind—we’ve come here to finish its work.

 
I’m proud to be here for the launch of the Standards to Provide Educational Achievement for Kids Act, the SPEAK Act, a bill that would start the job of holding every child in America to the same high standards. But even more, I’m proud to be here with the men and women whose work has made today possible. We wouldn’t be here with this strong bill if it weren’t for the New America Foundation and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. I also want to thank today’s panelists—Governor Engler, Governor Wise, Mike Casserly of Great City Schools and Mike Petrilli—for their extensive work in this area.

 
Finally, I’m proud that SPEAK has garnered endorsements from businesses, schools, universities, and the National Education Association. It’s because of all of you that we’re here with a bill that has won bipartisan, bicameral support.

 
On an afternoon when we’ve come together for change, it might surprise you that I’d like to start with some wonderful news for parents and educators about the status quo. But in nearly every state in the nation, in nearly every subject, the vast majority of our children are excelling. Just ask the states themselves. Read down the columns of the test results they use to measure the skills of our sons and daughters, and you’ll find statistics to warm your heart: 92 percent of fourth-graders proficient in mathematics; or 88 percent of eighth-graders proficient in reading; pass rates in the 80s and 90s across the board—an unquestionable success.

 
And now that I’ve brightened your day a little, I hope you parents in the audience will do me one favor in return. Please—no questions. Don’t get close to those numbers, don’t touch them, don’t even sneeze at them! Don’t ask what 50 different states mean by “proficient.” Don’t ask how they decide or who exactly gets to figure it out. Don’t ask if proficiency in New Mexico is related at all to proficiency in New Hampshire. And most of all, when you come across those numbers by which it is so tempting to paint a picture of excellence—don’t inquire too closely.

Because if you did, you’d find out you were being mislead—that that picture of excellence was an illusion. If parents asked me how much confidence they can take home from their sons’ and daughters’ test scores, I would in all honesty have to answer—“Not very much.”

 
I’d have to tell them about a state where 90 percent of students passed the local math test—but where six out of ten failed the “gold standard” test from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I’d have to tell them about students in another state who passed the state-designed test at a rate of 85 percent—and then turned around and failed the NAEP test at a rate almost as high.

 
And if parents held all 50 sets of standards up to that kind of scrutiny, they would find the same kind of doubt and uncertainty in nearly every state. They’d find it severely difficult to measure the success of their children’s education. And they would find that the problem starts, in large part, because we have so many standards to begin with.

 
Five years ago, when President Bush brought No Child Left Behind before Congress, it passed with bipartisan acclaim. It mandated testing in every state and brought greater accountability for all students to schools across the nation. It was a huge step forward.

 
But it was also a first step. It demanded proficiency but didn’t tell us what proficiency meant. It settled on an approach of “50 states, 50 standards, 50 tests.” And it left each of those 50 tests dangerously open to meddling, when political and educational leaders all too often found that the quickest way to raise scores wasn’t better teaching—but easier tests or lower pass scores. Of course, there are notable exceptions, states that have made the right choice instead of the easy one, states that have maintained or are working towards rigorous systems. But if you want an explanation for those misleading figures I spoke of earlier, it starts with No Child Left Behind and its unfinished work.

 
That’s the work we’ve come here to complete—to standardize our standards. I wish I could say, “If we don’t work toward unified standards, somebody else will”—but unfortunately for us, everybody else already has. Across the board, countries with national standards are outpacing us.

 
“I’m telling you,” said one global marketing expert, “[Asian countries] are making rapid progress, whereas we’re making miniscule progress. And I don’t think the average American understands the impact of this for our future, because they’re going to have the bulk of the intellectual and creative talent in the world, and that has devastating consequences for us.”

 
The truth is that we no longer live in the economy of old. It’s getting harder and harder to lift or dig or assemble your way to success the way you once could. Today, you’ve got to think your way to success—and so, when public education doesn’t work, when we fail to compete as one nation, our entire country will get left behind.

 
Children here in Washington are no longer just entering the job market with children in Dallas and Chicago. They’re entering with children in Shanghai and Mumbai and Taipei who are receiving the kind of education today that you could once only get in America. And I am sorry to report to my fellow parents that, from kindergarten through high school, our students are losing ground to students overseas.

In one international assessment of the reading and math skills of 15 year olds, the United States ranks 24th among 29 industrial and developing nations. In a study of fourth graders, we rank 20th out of 25 nations.

 
That may be fine for a while—a decade, maybe two. But at some point, if we do nothing to address this decline, America is going to reach a tipping point. Lower scores and lower expectations are going to translate to an America that is less competitive on the world stage. And if it happens, we’re going to wonder why we didn’t do anything about it while we still had time.

 
But right now, we do. We need to advance math and science education by training more highly-qualified teachers and giving students all the support we can towards four-year math and science degrees. We’ve already established support for initiatives like these through introduction of the Protecting America’s Competitive Edge (PACE) Act last year. Beyond PACE, we need to ask more not only of our schools, but of our students, no matter where they live.

 
Core American standards would set high goals for all students, allow for meaningful comparisons of achievement across states, and help ensure that all of our students are qualified to enter college. That’s the goal of the SPEAK Act: standards that are rigorous, flexible, and comparable to the best in the world.

 
We recognize that education in America has always been a local duty, and we respect that—which is why the SPEAK Act will promote standards on a voluntary, incentive basis.

 
The work will begin with the National Assessment Governing Board, which will consult with education experts and the public at large—working together to set K-12 standards we can be proud of. American standards won’t succeed unless they’re flexible, so they’ll be open to review and update and they’ll be appropriate for students at all developmental levels.

 
Currently, the SPEAK Act focuses on standards for math and science, which have been extensively studied and can attract bipartisan support. But in my opinion, that’s just a start: I’d be open to adding language arts standards as well.

 
Once the standards are set, we’ll need to get the states to adopt them. Simply dictating to the states would be a blunt instrument; instead, the SPEAK Act will work on the incentive principle. The legislation will create an American Standards Incentive Fund to make adoption worth states’ while. As soon as the states put the standards in place and adjust their teacher certification and proficiency levels to match, the Department of Education will reward them with a huge infusion of funds to bolster their K-12 data systems.

 
And once a “critical mass” of states has signed on, I imagine that the rest will follow, as they find their standards increasingly out of sync.

 
When we’ve put standards in place, parents will hear that their children are excelling—and have reason to believe it. Parents want the best for their children, and they deserve to understand what the best means.

 
With core standards, America can begin the work of regaining its competitive edge in the global economy. And in the life of every student, equality will be made a little more real, as the skills and knowledge we expect of them are no longer made contingent on the accident of birth or residence.

 
High standards—American standards—have the potential to accomplish all of that. Their power can be enormous—as John Cole, the president of the Texas Federation of Teachers, once illustrated with a little story.

 
Apparently he had read that his favorite running back, Emmitt Smith, was asking for a $13 million contract from the Dallas Cowboys. So Cole immediately wrote a letter: “Dear Dallas Cowboys: I would gladly serve as your running back for just one hundredth of Emmitt Smith’s salary. Please let me know.”

 
Amazingly, he never heard back; and he asked himself why the Cowboys would pay $13 million for a running back when they could have had someone play the same position for just $100,000. “The answer,” he decided, “has to do with keeping score. If you don’t keep score, quality really doesn’t matter.” Unfortunately for John Cole, football teams keep score.

 
And unfortunately for our students, American education doesn’t—not in any consistent, comparable, competitive way. With your hard work, that’s going to change very soon.

Start keeping score—start holding America’s children to the same high standards—and we might be amazed at the excellence that follows, for our economy, for our security, for our parents, and for our children.