Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am pleased to appear before you to discuss the President's fiscal year 2006 budget request for Vocational and Adult Education and the Department's work to promote high school reform.

This is an exciting time for all of us who care deeply about creating better opportunities for our high school students. High school reform is front-page news. Parents, policy-makers, business leaders, and students themselves are recognizing that too many of our young people do not receive the rigorous, world-class high school education that they need to succeed in the 21st century. Additionally, there is a growing sense of urgency and determination by people at all levels of government to implement some fundamental reforms that will result in significantly better outcomes.

FISCAL YEAR 2006 BUDGET

The President's 2006 budget proposal includes $1.5 billion for a new High School Initiative and an additional $323 million for other activities that will strengthen secondary school education but requests no funding for Vocational Education or for the Smaller Learning Communities Programs. Despite decades of Federal investment, the Vocational Education program has produced little evidence of improved academic outcomes for students. On the most recent NAEP assessments, less than 10 percent of vocational students scored at or above proficiency in mathematics (2000) and only 29 percent scored at or above proficiency in reading (1998). The most recent National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) found no evidence that high school vocational courses contribute to academic achievement or postsecondary enrollment, and the "Program Assessment Rating Tool" (PART) review rated the program as ineffective. Also, the NAVE found that high school students, on average, earn more credits in vocational education (4.2) than in math (3.5) or science (3.2). But the most telling data come from employers—according to a February 2005 Achieve, Inc. survey employers estimate that 39 percent of high school graduates, who have no further education, are not prepared for their current job and that 45 percent are unprepared for advancement.

Given the severe budget constraints that the Federal Government now faces, we propose eliminating support for programs that have shown little evidence of effectiveness and instead providing a dedicated source of funding to address the challenge of improving high school education for all students. This proposed initiative will give educators greater flexibility to design and implement programs that best meet the needs of all students, including career and technical education students. States and school districts would be able to use funds for vocational education, tech-prep programs, and other purposes, depending on State and local needs and priorities. Very significantly, the heart of the High School Initiative, is the $1.24 billion High School Intervention program which would include much stronger accountability provisions than the current Vocational Education and Smaller Learning Communities programs it would replace. The Department, through the Institute of Education Sciences, would use a portion of the money to test and validate specific interventions, thereby enlarging the national knowledge base on what works in raising high school achievement for all students.

THE CONTEXT FOR HIGH SCHOOL REFORM

Too many of our high schools continue to be driven by the early industrial idea that a minority of students will continue on to postsecondary education and that the majority do not need a rigorous academic education. That model may have made sense decades ago when there were plentiful and well-paying jobs in our economy for individuals who had only a basic education, but it is untenable in the 21st century. All of our youth, regardless of their post-graduation plans, need a rigorous academic foundation. As the American Diploma Project documented in its research, "[s]uccessful preparation for both postsecondary education and employment requires learning the same rigorous English and mathematics content and skills. No longer do students planning to go to work after high school need a different and less rigorous curriculum than those planning to go to college."

CREATING A FOUNDATION FOR REFORM

High school reform is not a new issue for this Administration. For the past several years, we have been working hard in partnership with national organizations like the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and others to draw attention to the imperative for high school reform and to support State and local efforts to promote change.

We began our work in 2002 with a national symposium at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that brought together education, business, and civic leaders to discuss how we could help our high schools master the challenge of No Child Left Behind and equip every student with a high level of proficiency in the core academics. It became clear from our discussions that, for high schools in particular, the goals of No Child Left Behind and the idea that all young people could achieve at high levels were truly radical.

In 2003, the Department launched the Preparing America's Future: High School Initiative to focus national attention on the need to transform our high schools and to engage national, State and local leaders in working with us to identify and implement solutions. In October 2003, we brought together the chief State school officers from 46 States and territories and more than 600 educators, school administrators, researchers, policy-makers, foundation executives, and others for a National High School Leadership Summit in Washington that challenged participants to examine the strengths and shortcomings of America's high schools and what we need to do to improve them.

To provide focused technical assistance to States in developing strategies to help high schools meet the goals of No Child Left Behind, we sponsored seven regional summits during the first part of 2004 for teams of State-level policy-makers. We encouraged States to assemble teams that were diverse, including, for example, not only State educational agency officials, but also representatives of the Governor's office, State legislators, State officials responsible for postsecondary education, school superintendents, and high school principals. As they worked on their plans, teams were able to consult with nationally recognized experts in high school reform, as well as representatives of the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Governors Association, the Gates Foundation, and most of the Department's principal offices. Following the regional summits, the Department has collaborated with the Council of Chief State School Officers to hold monthly conference calls with State team leaders so that they could continue to share ideas and learn from each other. Further, we offered technical assistance to the teams to help defer costs for logistical expenses related to planning and launching their high school initiatives.

Later in 2004, we joined with the Council of the Great City Schools to sponsor an Urban High School Summit, which gathered teams from 34 large urban districts to map out high school improvement strategies. To strengthen leadership by high school principals, the Department funded a proposal from the National Association of Secondary School Principals to provide "train-the-trainer"professional development for coordinators in 17 States in using and applying the lessons from the association's reform handbook, "Breaking Ranks II." We also established partnerships with the National Football League, the Kiwanis, and the Department of Labor to help us communicate the necessity of high school reform and the importance of rigorous academic course taking. Finally, in December 2004, we convened a second National High School Leadership Summit to bring together all of the State teams with whom we have been working and nearly 1,000 other teachers, school superintendents, principals, business leaders, postsecondary educators, association leaders, and others to assess our progress and share promising policy options, programs, and strategies.

EXPANDING THE KNOWLEDGE BASE

The Department also has sought to support State and local efforts to improve high schools by creating a richer and broader base of knowledge in several important areas, including, particularly, adolescent literacy and dual enrollment programming.

Improving adolescent literacy is one of the major challenges facing high schools today. According to one estimate, at least one-third of entering ninth graders are at least two years behind grade level in their reading skills (Balfanz, et al., 2002). While there is a strong body of scientifically based research to guide us in teaching young children to read, there is little or no comparable research to guide the instruction of adolescents. To help begin to fill this knowledge gap, the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) created the Adolescent Literacy Research Network to support six, 5-year experimental research projects that are examining cognitive, perceptual, behavioral, and other mechanisms that influence the development of reading and writing abilities during adolescence, as well as the extent to which various interventions may improve the literacy skills of adolescents. The Office of Vocational and Adult Education also has partnered with the Institute for Education Sciences to support a scientifically based evaluation of two promising supplemental reading programs that are designed to help students who enter high school with reading skills that are two to four years below grade level catch up quickly and acquire grade-level reading skills. Much more must be done in this area, however. The President's fiscal year 2006 request for $200 million for the Striving Readers program, which is administered by the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, will bring Federal efforts to support research on adolescent literacy to scale.

Providing high school students the opportunity to take college courses during high school is a promising strategy for increasing the rigor of high school education and improving student preparation for postsecondary education. The Office of Vocational and Adult Education's Accelerating Student Success initiative is investigating the prevalence of these programs, how they are structured and financed, and options for expanding the participation of middle- and low-achieving students in these programs. Last year, we published an analysis that summarized State-level policies on dual enrollment and highlighted key issues policy-makers should consider as they seek to support and expand these programs. The National Center for Education Statistics is conducting two national surveys, one of postsecondary institutions and the other of high schools that will provide us with important data on the prevalence of these programs and their characteristics. Later this year, the Department will release a publication that will review how these programs can be structured to support the postsecondary transition needs of middle- and low-achieving students. Recognizing the great promise of these programs, the President has requested $125 million in fiscal year 2006 for a new program to promote the expansion of dual enrollment programs and improve their quality. The Community College Access grants program, which will be administered by the Office of Postsecondary Education, would create incentives for community colleges to provide dual-enrollment programs and provide funding for scholarships to students who enroll in and complete dual-enrollment programs and then continue on to complete postsecondary education. The program also would provide incentives for States to work together to encourage transfer of academic credit across State lines among institutions.

CONCLUSION

Through our work over the last several years, the Department has laid a good foundation to support State and local efforts to transform America's high schools. Stronger Federal leadership, however, is urgently needed to ensure that these efforts gain critical mass and start producing real results for young people.

The President's 2006 budget request includes a comprehensive proposal that builds on the stronger accountability of No Child Left Behind to improve the quality of secondary education and ensure that every student not only graduates from high school, but graduates prepared to enter college or the workforce with the skills to succeed. We believe that it is imperative for this initiative to commence in fiscal year 2006.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared remarks. I would be happy to respond to any questions you may have.