Thank you, Chairman Regula and Rep. Obey. This is my first time before your subcommittee as Secretary, but I know you will treat me as gently as every other Administration official who visits!

I'd like to first introduce my budget team, Budget Director Tom Skelly and Associate Deputy Secretary for Budget Todd Jones.

It is an honor to join such distinguished friends of education, including a Chairman who has been a public school teacher, principal, and school board member. I look forward to working with each of you to help our schools become better and our educators more effective.

I am here to testify on behalf of President Bush's FY 2006 discretionary Budget request for the Department of Education. The President's Budget accomplishes several important goals. The first is fiscal discipline.

In his February 2nd State of the Union Address, the President underscored the need to restrain spending in order to sustain our economic growth and prosperity. It is important that total discretionary and non-security spending be held to levels proposed in the FY 2006 Budget.

Its savings and reforms will help us achieve the President's goal of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009. We urge Congress to support them.

The President's Budget contains more than 150 reductions, reforms, and terminations in non-defense discretionary programs. Of those, a third are under the Department of Education.

We are committed to working with the Congress to achieve these savings. Given the fiscal realities, we must target our resources wisely, toward flexibility and results.

Second, the Budget would expand the promise of the No Child Left Behind Act to our nation's high schools. No Child Left Behind rests on the common-sense principles of accountability for results, data-based decision-making, high expectations for all, and empowering change.

These principles have proven good for our elementary and middle schools—and they are needed today in our high schools.

Let me share with you a few facts:

• Our 15-year-olds perform below average internationally in mathematics literacy and problem-solving. [2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)]

• Nationally, out of every 100 entering 9th graders, just 68 graduate from high school in four years. [Achieve, Inc.; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education]

• Just 18 out of 100 enter college and graduate on time. [Achieve, Inc.; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education]

• Overall, two-thirds of students leave high school unprepared for college. [Manhattan Institute, Class of 2002]

Recently, the bipartisan National Governors Association reported, "High schools are failing to prepare too many of our students for work and higher education."

And Bill Gates said, "Training the workforce of tomorrow with today's high schools is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe."

Even the New York Times and Washington Post editorial pages have weighed in. The Times wrote, "American students are falling further and further behind their peers in Asia and Europe." It called for a "far more rigorous" curriculum "across the board." And the Post called on states not to "block testing and standards," but to "find ways to raise them."

All this is set against a backdrop in which 80 percent of the fastest-growing jobs will require some post-secondary education.

Call it what you will—a challenge, a problem, or a crisis. But it is imperative that we give our high school students the tools to succeed in the 21st Century economy.

The President's $1.24 billion High School Intervention program would help students get the individual attention and academic skills they need. These reforms would be designed and directed not by the federal government, but by states and school districts themselves.

The Budget would also provide $250 million to measure high school students' achievement annually and hold schools accountable for their performance. As we have learned from No Child Left Behind, what gets measured gets done.

We've made a serious effort at improving basic literacy in the early grades. We've provided more than $2.8 billion in Reading First grants to states and school districts, to train more than 90,000 teachers and teach 1.5 million students in proven learning methods.

Today, reading scores are up in states all across the country, with urban school districts leading the way. Another $1.1 billion is on its way, and the 2006 Budget provides $1.1 billion more to bring the total for Reading First to more than $5 billion.

Some high school students struggle with reading and math as well. They would benefit under our Striving Readers program—$200 million, a $175 million increase over 2005—and our new Secondary Education Mathematics Initiative—$120 million.

Because good teachers are the key to success, a $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund would reward educators who make outstanding academic progress. It would also attract more good teachers to serve in challenging schools.

As you've heard, there is a near-unanimous call for more rigorous high school curricula. The President's Budget would invest $45 million, an increase of $42.5 million, to encourage students to take more challenging coursework.

This includes a boost for the public/private State Scholars Program, which strives for a college-ready curriculum in every high school, and new Enhanced Pell Grants for students completing such rigorous programs.

The Budget also provides a 73 percent increase to expand the availability of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs in high-poverty schools.

Third, the President's Budget continues the solid progress begun under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Congress overwhelmingly passed this bipartisan law just over three years ago. Today, across the country, test scores are rising, schools are improving, and the achievement gap is beginning to close for our youngest learners. We must stay the course.

The Budget would increase Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies—the engines of No Child Left Behind—by $603 million. This is five percent more than in 2005 and is a 52 percent increase since the law was signed.

The Budget also provides a $508 million increase for the Special Education Grants to States program—75 percent higher than five years ago.

Finally, the President's Budget makes college affordability a high priority. It would provide $19 billion over 10 years in mandatory funds for Pell Grants, resulting from student loan program reforms. This will retire the funding shortfall, and help more than five million recipients attend college next year alone.

The maximum individual Pell Grant would be increased by $100 for each of the next five years. And grants would be made available year-round, so students can learn on their own timetable.

To encourage more students—especially poor and minority students—to enter the critical fields of math and science, our Budget also includes a new Presidential Math-Science Scholars Program. It would award up to $5,000 each to low-income college students pursuing degrees in these demanding and in-demand fields.

Finally, the Budget establishes a new $125 million Community College Access Grants Fund to support dual-enrollment credit transfers for high school students taking college-level courses.

With this Budget's passage, student financial assistance will have risen from $48 billion to $78 billion during this Administration.

In conclusion, let me say that I appreciate and respect the priorities you make and promises you keep as the people's representatives. What I have just outlined are the President's education priorities. The common thread in all of them is aligning needs with results.

We will not agree on everything. It will not always be easy to find common budgetary ground given our nation's fiscal realities and wartime footing. But I am here to listen to your priorities. The President has made tough choices. We know you will, too. And we want to work with you to make the very best choices for America's students.

Thank you.

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