Contact: Lindsey Kozberg (202) 401-3026

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Thank you. It's good to be here with you today. I always feel at home in a roomful of teachers—both of my parents were teachers, and they gave me a great respect for teachers and for learning. As Bart Giamatti said, "Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process." Your students will succeed or fail in their lives based largely on the skills and knowledge you give them. This is your burden, and it is a glorious one.

I would like to thank Sandra Feldman for her interest in working with me and with the Department of Education. I have found Sandra to be someone who is very free in sharing her opinions, but is also willing to listen to other perspectives. That dialogue is vitally important as we go forward together to make the American education system better.

My colleagues and I wish to commend the AFT on your excellent reading programs, which retrain teachers in proven reading methods and help students all across America. You support, and I quote, "early, systematic, and explicit [instruction] in phonics," which is just what children need.

President Bush often reminds people that reading is the foundation of all learning, and his No Child Left Behind plan would spend $5 billion over five years to ensure that every child can read by the third grade. The President wants to put resources into proven methods of teaching reading so we can give children a solid foundation for learning throughout their school careers. But to your great credit you are one group that doesn't need to be told about the importance of reading, or of using real research to guide teaching strategies. You already live that philosophy.

As the country icon Barbara Mandrell would say, when it comes to the benefits of research and the importance of solid reading instruction, you were country when country wasn't cool. I thank you for that leadership, and I ask for your cooperation in sharing good reading programs with every elementary school in the country.

You and I also agree on the importance of testing. I was happy to read what Sandra said recently: "Make no mistake, testing is crucial-for determining if standards are being met, for measuring student progress and for identifying where students, and schools, need to improve."

And just like the President and me, she has supported "tests…aligned to standards and standards-based curriculum."

The members of AFT and I both understand that not every test is good, and not every use of test data is good. But when we come together to design and administer good tests, and put them to good uses, we can help our students to make good progress-a goal that has eluded too many for too long. I look forward to working with you to create that system.

As we know, testing is not to punish children, and it's not to undermine teachers. To the contrary, testing is the best tool educators have for understanding progress in our classrooms. It improves the instructional process.

But as with all things, there is opposition to testing, and that is not new. Some argue that weighing cattle does not make them fatter. Al Shanker had a good answer for that one. "Weighing the cattle," he said, "may not make them fatter, but the cattle are more likely to be well fed if the seller knows that the buyer is going to weigh them." Good tests provide valuable, objective information about what students know. That information allows teachers to identify and help children in danger of being left behind. The AFT has always paid attention to good performance measurement.

All of America should understand the importance of what we are seeing here today. The AFT, a teacher's union, and Rod Paige, a Republican Secretary of Education, have found much common ground. I am here today because I want us to build on that common ground. I want us to build better schools for our boys and girls. I want us to build a public school system that is good for the Nation. Doing that is good for us, too. We are part of the same system, and all of the parts of that system need to work together to succeed.

We have a significant opportunity to work together with the support of an American public that understands the importance of reform. They understand what we have done so far, and they know we still have far to go. We must not miss that opportunity.

AFT should be proud of its history. But you can be proud of your future, too. You have been a leader in reading instruction, in teacher training and compensation, and you can be a leader in many other ways as well. You have supported innovations like the compensation experiment in Cincinnati. The process has not been smooth. But your affiliates have moved ahead with experimentation and change. You must be congratulated and you must find more ways to push ahead.

When I was superintendent in Houston, I had the opportunity to work closely with AFT affiliate leaders. My relationship with Gayle Fallon began with disagreement, but over time we also found common ground. We built what we could on that common ground, and where we couldn't, we still built respect for each other and for our differences. Gayle was kind enough to come to my confirmation hearing in Washington back in January. As I looked back and saw her sitting there with a smile, I wondered if maybe she was there to make sure I left Houston once and for all, but I like to think she was there to offer her support.

My being in Washington D.C. today as Secretary of Education is a testament to the dedication of many excellent teachers in Houston, who helped the children of Houston to make such dramatic progress. But it is also due in no small part to Gayle's willingness to support our accountability system in Texas. When we were proposing to rank people and schools according to their performance, Gayle was one of the first teacher representatives to offer her support, and her support was an important part of our success.

While in Houston I also came to know Adam Urbanski and his work with the innovative Teacher Union Reform Network. I respect Adam and enjoy our professional relationship. I am delighted with the opportunities that Teacher Union Reform Network and other forward-thinking efforts like it among the leadership of AFT offer for our students.

Adam distilled the new relationship emerging between teacher unions and education agencies and the many things we now have in common. Most significantly, we share a commitment to public schools. We both know we can't afford for those schools to fail. As Adam once told me, "When the cow dies, no one gets milk." I responded by paraphrasing Barbara Jordan, "We may have come here on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now." And Adam responded that if the boat leaks, it doesn't matter what end you are sitting in.

And we are in the same boat. Teachers and administrators and Washington politicians alike.

Everyone knows that the boat is leaking. Although there are excellent schools around the country, these schools are islands of excellence in a sea of "otherwise not doing too well." And the children who are not going to school on these islands of excellence are being left behind. When we have a Nation of excellent public schools, that is when no child will be left behind.

The boat is leaking despite the hard work of teachers like you who help students to overcome real learning barriers and make significant progress. You know as well as I do that when almost 70% of our children in big cities and rural areas alike cannot read at even a basic level, it's time to stop ignoring the leaks and start fixing them together. The data paint a powerful picture. Reading performance is stagnant. Science performance is worse than it was thirty years ago. Not only do we still have an achievement gap between races and economic groups, but this gap is not shrinking, and it may even be widening. You and I know we cannot be satisfied with this state of affairs.

Over the past thirty-five years, the federal government has spent almost 125 billion dollars on elementary and secondary education, but we have got to put it to better use. What has been missing from our education system is not money, it's results. Our system needs more money, but it also needs reform.

This is about to change. Under the President's leadership, Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress united behind his No Child Left Behind Plan. In May, the House approved a version of the plan by a vote of 384 to 45. The Senate followed, approving its bill with a vote of 91 to 8. President Bush wanted a bipartisan bill. One that is neither a Republican proposition nor a Democrat proposition, but an American one. One that is neither a management proposition nor a teacher proposition, but American one.

Next the bills will go to a conference, where the House and the Senate will reconcile their differences into a final bill. I hope Congress will complete this process quickly, so we can begin to change the way our schools do business now. I also want to recognize the hard work and dedication of the leadership of the Congress, and in particular to thank Chairman Boehner and Chairman Kennedy for their efforts on behalf of No Child Left Behind.

This year, with No Child Left Behind, we're getting out of the excuses business—teachers, principals, all of us.

Instead, we are setting a course for accountability in all of our schools. Not just for the wealthy schools, the suburban schools, the white schools, the schools with involved parents, the schools with enthusiastic teachers, the schools with host of extracurricular programs, the schools with fancy sports complexes, the schools with computers and Internet connections, or the schools where we would want our kids to go, but all of our schools.

We are bringing responsibility to all schools and we are reaching out to all children.

A good accountability system needs high standards for our students. To borrow another metaphor from Al Shanker, "If you were helping athletes improve their jumping and you got 95 percent of those in your charge to jump over 6 feet, what would you do next? You would raise the bar." Al was right. When we don't ask much of our students, how can we be surprised when they don't deliver much?

You as teachers know the power of standards.

Too often, the schools whose children most need high standards are the same schools that have the lowest standards. Too often, the children who most need to know that they can achieve great things get a very different message from their schools. I understand why teachers have sympathy for children born into bleak circumstances and who face many barriers to learning. But making excuses for poverty, race, or language breeds low expectations, and low expectations breed low achievement. The only way to raise achievement is to raise standards and assist every child in meeting them.

We must raise standards and we must mean it. All children can learn and all teachers can teach.

I congratulate you again on the teacher training and the compensation reforms that you have launched and encourage you to do more to realize the potential of our students and our teachers.

We stand on the brink of a fundamental change in the culture of our public education system. I'm excited to be a part of it, and I'm excited you are a part of it. It's a good time to be in the education business.

While Washington is laying the legislative groundwork, teachers, principals, administrators, and state education leaders are the ones who will actually bring the President's reforms to life in our schools and our students. No one will remember the legislators or even the Secretary of Education who brought them the reform bill. They will remember the teacher who held their hand and who bent down and whispered words of encouragement in their ear and told them that they could do it.

So I ask you not to look solely to Washington. The AFT and its members can take the lead now in bringing reform to our classrooms. These reforms will take shape in your classrooms and in your schools, and they will affect your lives and the lives of your students.

Change is afoot, and if we don't want to lose students and members to competition, we really have no choice but to respond. Let's form a partnership to patch up the leaks in our boat. Let's feed the cow, so we'll all get milk. Let's make public schools a first choice, not a last resort.

Let's work together to bring responsibility and progress to all of our schools and ensure that no child is left behind.

Thank you.

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