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Thank you Dr. [Tony] Evans for your kind introduction, you truly are a wonder-one of the inventors of the faith-based initiative- and it's great to be back in Texas with you today. I'd also like to say hello to your wife, Dr. Lois Evans, who's an outstanding leader and pastor and a tremendous role model for all of us. Together, you're a fantastic team, and I'm honored to have this opportunity to spend time with you.

President Bush tells a story about hearing one of Dr. Evans' sermons – you may have heard it too – about a man who had a crack in his wall. He saw the crack, so he called a plasterer to come and fix it. But a few days later, it reappeared, so he called another plasterer, and then another. Finally a wise man said to him, "if you want to fix the crack, you've got to fix the foundation."

Every day, that's what you're working to do: fix the foundation of young American lives. This ministry is like a "one stop shop" for community building – no matter who you are or where you're coming from, you can find help here at the Urban Alternative.

With Project Turnaround, you're touching the lives of 6,000 young people here in Dallas. And through the National Adopt-A-School Initiative, you've already helped more than 100 churches to create similar programs in their own communities. That's paying it forward.

Today, America's students need your compassion and energy more than ever. In the last century, we established equality under the law. In the next century, we must put equal opportunity into practice. We have a lot of important work ahead of us, and as you know, it starts with education. As the President says, education is the new civil right.

Fortunately, with the landmark No Child Left Behind law, our nation took a look in the mirror and committed to holding ourselves accountable for having every single child learning on grade level by 2014. As a parent, I don't think that's too much to ask, and I know you feel the same. I haven't yet met a parent who didn't want their child learning on grade level.

This legislation grew out of a bipartisan movement that started more than 20 years ago with southern governors like Jim Hunt of North Carolina, Zell Miller of Georgia, Richard Riley of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee—and of course, my personal favorite, George W. Bush of the great Lone Star state.

They looked at student achievement results and saw their schools needed improvement. They saw achievement gaps between white and minority students that threatened the welfare of their states and their citizens. They knew that students and parents deserved better. And they knew that with higher standards, schools could improve.

They were right. High standards and accountability blazed a trail of achievement. Many states led the way. So it was fitting that in 2001, President Bush and the Congress—including Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who is here with us today—set a similar course for students nationwide.

Thanks to No Child Left Behind, we're starting to see some great results, especially in the younger grades where we've focused our efforts.

Reading scores for 9-year-olds increased more in 5 years than in the previous three decades combined. That's not an accident.

And in the early grades, minority students are reaching all-time highs, and they're beginning to narrow the achievement gap by catching up to their peers.

But the truth is, it's still not enough. A recent report showed that by the end of the third grade, the average African-American student has only just mastered the basic reading skills that white students learned at the end of the first grade.

When we live in a world where 90 percent of our fastest-growing jobs require postsecondary education, just half of African American and Hispanic students graduate high school on time.

That's unacceptable, but it's not surprising if you know that the data shows our most experienced, most qualified teachers are most likely to be found in our wealthiest communities.

And the disparity isn't just limited to teachers… We know students who take rigorous courses in high school stand a far better chance of succeeding in college, but something's wrong when here in the metroplex, almost 900 students at suburban Plano Senior High School took advanced placement exams last year—which, of course, is great—while at inner-city Eastern Hills High School, just 80 took exams. Why? Well, to begin with, Plano offered twice as many courses.

There are great schools across our country that are proving that when we raise the bar, our students will rise to the challenge – like Townview Magnet Center right here in Dallas, which President Bush visited earlier this year. Unfortunately, nationally, 40 percent of high schools offer no AP courses. You can't learn what you're not taught – and advancing opportunity for our neediest students starts with giving them access to the challenging coursework they need and deserve.

People across our country are speaking out about the urgent need to better serve our students—especially minority students and those from low-income families. And they're absolutely right. The economic, civic, and social health of our democracy depends on closing the opportunity gap. We must provide each and every child in our country with the opportunity to achieve his or her potential.

Of course, the real work of educating our students doesn't happen in the superintendent's office or the Department of Education. It happens at home, with parents who play an active role in their children's education. And it happens in real classrooms with real teachers who believe that every child can and will learn – regardless of race, income, or zip code.

Across our nation, students are proving that our 2014 goal is achievable.

The Nation's Report Card shows that here in Texas, the percentage of fourth graders doing math on grade level rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2005 alone. That's almost 50,000 more students learning on grade level – thanks to a lot of hardworking teachers, and thanks to the strong leadership of superintendents like Dallas' Michael Hinojosa and DeSoto's Alton Frailey. You both deserve a lot of credit for making tremendous progress.

To continue moving forward, we must challenge our students and create a system that demands they step up to the plate – and to do so, we must challenge ourselves. How well our students are doing is not just an education issue; it's an economic issue, a civic issue, a social issue, a national security issue, and it's everybody's issue. All of us – from to parents to policymakers to parishioners – must play a part in improving our nation's schools.

We must make sure our children are safe when they go to school – and I'll be joining the President's task force to help prevent tragic incidents like the violence that occurred in Pennsylvania earlier this week.

We must do a better job making sure we have the best teachers in our neediest classrooms—especially since we know that roughly 15 percent of our high schools produce nearly half of our nation's dropouts.

We must start using time better and personnel more effectively. But that doesn't mean schools have to "narrow the curriculum" or "teach to the test" – or that we should treat education as a one-size-fits-all enterprise. It just means we must invest our resources more wisely in strategies that have been proven to help students learn, just like I see in lots of schools across our country.

With No Child Left Behind, we've begun the long process of improving our education system. We've set our goal of every student learning on grade level. We're providing historic resources to help schools achieve it. And we've armed parents with the information they need to be smart education consumers for their children.

At the same time, when schools fall short of standards, we have a responsibility to give parents and students lifelines to help them now – just like you're doing with Project Turnaround. That's why we're giving parents options like free tutoring and public school choice.

I'm encouraged to see more and more parents taking advantage of them. The number of kids in free tutoring programs increased fivefold in just the first two years of the law.

But we still have a long way to go. Nationally, just 15-20 percent of eligible students received these services last year.

Many parents never know they're available because they don't see the letter that comes home in their child's backpack or they can't attend the informational meeting at the school.

We must get the word out and get more students enrolled—and you can play a big part in that.

Thanks to President Bush, faith-based organizations like you are also eligible for federal funding that supports tutoring and after-school programs.

The U.S. government is never going to get into the business of worship – after all, the church-state divide is one of the great hallmarks of American democracy. But we certainly can and should support the outstanding work you do to improve your communities.

So, if you want to run a high quality, secular tutoring program, we're not going to ask you to change your identity and take the crosses down off your walls. We're just going to ask if you can get good results for children in need. To find out more, I encourage you to check out a workshop being offered this afternoon by my department's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

I also hope you'll work to let more families know about the options they're afforded by No Child Left Behind – from tutoring, to school choice, to data that will help them make more informed decisions for their children. After all, education begins at home. Parents are a child's first teacher, and often they're the best advocates for their children's success.

Before this law, we had almost no information on how students were doing and how well schools were serving them. But by collecting and sharing achievement data every year, we're now enabling the entire community to help improve our schools.

You all understand the stakes—and you know that education is the key to the American Dream. Long before we set our national imperative, you were working for a moral one.

You know that with the simple act of teaching a person to read or do math, you empower them to take control over their lives and to have a voice in their nation's democracy. And with the simple act of sharing information, you can empower a community to shape a brighter future for generations.

Thank you.

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