SECRETARY PAIGE: I want to thank Wil Bryant for his leadership and Leonard Dawson, for the good work they've done at the Department, and their help. I can guarantee that they're both tireless workers in explaining every way that we can work towards strengthening HBCUs.

Under the President's leadership, President Bush, this Department will explore every avenue to better align our common mission and to better serve HBCUs. That's a commitment that President Bush made to you during the campaign and that's one that he has asked me and Wil, and others in the Department, to make sure that it's carried out, and we're committed to that.

I come here today mindful of your mission, which is our mission, which is the national mission. You're on the front lines of an important, important battle. You're currently serving more than 300,000 students and your graduates number in the millions.

You are a powerful influence on how this nation serves its people. Many of your students wouldn't have received degrees had it not been for you. I am part of that group, because when I grew up in Mississippi, you couldn't go to colleges with the majority population.

Jackson State met a need, an important need, and so my colleagues who attended Jackson State and other universities like that across the nation are really grateful for this opportunity.

Many of the students come to HBCUs needing unusual help. They've been embattled, disregarded, experienced incompetence in their high schools, lots of love but few resources. You served a great purpose.

They came to you because of your historic legacy of commitment and inclusion.

They came to you because they knew you cared. They came to you because they knew that they would get the help they needed, there.

I know you know this but allow me to highlight it anyway. One out of three African American lawyers graduated from a HBCU.

Half of America's black engineers are there because of HBCUs.

Two-thirds of African American physicians, and eight out of ten black judges and teachers are there because of HBCUs.

You have a glorious past.

But time moves forward, and so the question now is the future. What about the future? Can we continue this glorious mission that we've served so well in the past? I'm sure together we can.

But there are challenges. Allow me to share a perspective. In this country, despite your heroic efforts, many students do not have a quality education. In this country, despite the fact that there are thousands and thousands of wonderful teachers and committed principals, and good schools, too many children are being left behind.

We have islands of excellence but we don't have a system of effective public schools.

I believe that the most devastating problem that America faces right now on the domestic front is the unacceptable, in my view un-American, achievement gap between the ethnic communities. This has to be filled.

[Applause.]

I believe this constitutes educational apartheid. Students who should be celebrating because they're going off to a glorious future, but others who are not going anywhere because they're at the bottom of that achievement gap.

I want to raise your consciousness about this. I want you to look carefully at this. I know you are aware of this on an intellectual level.

But collect the literature. Look at this achievement gap. Look at who's suffering as a result of it. Allow me to make this example.

Just recently, NAEP reported some data on six or seven big cities in America. Washington, D.C., in the Washington, D.C. public schools, there are Anglo students who led the nation in the 4th grade, in reading. It might have been math. Look at that and check that out.

African American students scored 60 points lower. 60 points lower! And when it got to 8th grade, there were not enough Anglo students to measure because they had left and gone into other environs to get a good education.

And this is not picking on D.C. This is a problem all over. I'm just using this to highlight how important this is.

I believe that we lack leadership here and I believe that leadership exists in the African American community, and especially in HBCUs, and I'm here to solicit your help in this. Help us with this. Look at it carefully, because we have two education systems, one for fortunate students, and for that one a high quality education is available.

There are some good schools and fine teachers and well-educated students. These are islands of excellence.

But for tens of thousands of students, if not more, the educational system is incomplete, unworkable and broken. Most of these students are poor and from minority communities, and they come to you for more help, which makes your job even more difficult.

They're denied a quality education because of circumstances, or because of geography, or because of class, or because of socioeconomic conditions, or even because of race. Their plight is hidden, unacknowledged, and ignored by too many people. This is a scandal, and this is another challenge that I think we can meet with your help.

Now, there are some who are not sensing this urgency. Again and again I hear these words that have the same meaning, the same message. Wait. Don't institute these reforms in the public school system now because we really should wait. All we've got to do is work on improving the schools, and years from now, everything will work out okay.

Some say give us more money, unsaid, that we'll use with the same ineffective programs we use other money with. Others say it's impossible to teach some children, and that what an unrealistic goal that you and the administration have come up with, talking about all of our children being educated.

Everybody knows all of our kids can't be educated. Well, of course my question to those kind of people would be which ones would you just leave out? And who's going to be the judge? I believe that every single child must have our best efforts.

We can't listen to these cynics anymore. We can't afford to wait one more year or one more day. We can't afford to waste precious taxpayer resources on inefficient programs.

You and I both understand the moral imperative of moving forward. No child is to be left behind.

Now many have said that no society's ever accomplished that. So? This is the United States of America and we can accomplish this. We can't wait a generation or two to see if things get better. Do you remember Dr. Benjamin Mays? Do you remember that poem that he used to say all the time? We have but a minute, there are only 60 seconds in it--how does the rest of that go?

Then seek it, then choose it, but it's up to me to use it, I'll be held accountable--something like that. That's the idea.

[Laughter.]

[Applause.]

And that's a sense of urgency that we all feel, and that's why your mission is so important. That's why we need you so much. Because we know about your capabilities. We know how tough you are in a crunch. We know that you've achieved success against the odds and this is just another challenge, and we need your help on it.

And that is why the President was so passionate about the No Child Left Behind Act, and that is why he feels that it's such an important domestic issue.

We're doing great things for some students but that's not what we need to achieve, and that's the reason for the No Child Left Behind Act, and that's why we required the test scores to be disaggregated.

You know, we've been celebrating averages. And then these averages, these high scores, can hide the low scores and we can go off with the wrong idea.

Subgroups can be hidden and ignored, and not paid attention to. So the No Child Left Behind Act requires this data to be disaggregated so we can see how each subgroup is performing, and the reason that we need to see how they're performing is so that we can provide the assistance they need, not so we could punish. We need to identify areas that need improvement so that we can improve those areas. We have to know this. And that's why it's important.

This is a tough law, the No Child Left Behind Act. But it's a good one. It focuses attention on those forgotten children but it benefits all children.

Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, I'm proud to report that all across the country communities are empowered now with information to take action. This fall, parents in economically disadvantaged school districts will get information about the performance of their children and about the schools, and they can use that information to make decisions.

Schools and teachers will be able to get detailed information about the performance of each individual student, and what part of instructional system that this student needs improvement on.

Parents and students attending high-need schools receive a letter telling them about options, so that they can exercise these options if they choose.

The No Child Left Behind Act provides teachers with the freedom to excel in their areas of expertise. It protects them from having to teach subjects that they're not trained to teach.

It's an important law, and we know that this is going to be a challenge, and so we're providing a lot of assistance to make sure that everybody is provided the assistance that they need in order to make the law work better.

We've launched the Teachers' Assistance Corps where we'll assist states in meeting this goal. We're sending people to each individual state, people who are expert teachers and administrators, and people who've had experience. We're going to send them to sit down with the legislators and the people in the regulatory agencies, to provide the assistance that they need, to make sure that they can appropriately implement this law.

We are making a substantial commitment to this.

President Bush has proposed the highest level of funding for education in our nation's history.

For this law includes $4.5 billion for teacher training, for professional development, because the heart of the teaching and learning process is in the interaction between the teacher and the student.

Everything else can take place but if this doesn't work right, nothing works right.

We need more minority teachers, and that's why last year I talked about this and this opportunity and asked you for help in this area. We need them more desperately now than we did last year.

A recent report indicates that only 10 percent of our nation's 3 million teachers are from minority communities and only 6 percent are African American. And by the way, we've got another problem too. Only 21 percent are male. Great lady teachers but we do need some men there.

This is unacceptable, and you can help us. Because HBCUs are the primary source of African American teachers we need your help so desperately. Students need good teachers, period.

They also need teachers with similar life experiences, who understand their needs and who will not leave them behind.

It's vital in this country that we produce more African American teachers, Latino teachers, Native American teachers, Asian American teachers.

We need many more, and the teachers you produce are a lifeline for your institution and for our public school system.

As we seek to close the achievement gap that plagues us in this nation so much, we believe that the tenets of No Child Left Behind offers the opportunity to get that job done.

We know that too many teachers graduate from institutions feeling unprepared for that teaching assignment, and so I have another request of you as I had one for you last year, and that is, look at your teacher education programs. From the office of the president, take a special look at your teacher education program.

Now I know you've got a lot of things to do and the university is complex, and there are multiple challenges, but the one thing that I want you to be an expert in is what is taking place in your teacher education program. Take a look at that.

And the one thing that we hope is happening there is that they'll have effective systems of teaching students to read. You can't read to learn until you first learn to read. This is a fundamental, and if you get this right, many other things will fall in place.

Take a special look at your teacher education program and in that look pay special attention to the teaching of reading and to make sure that that's right.

President Bush is investing $5 billion in his Reading First Program because he feels reading is so important. And listen to the name of the program. Reading First.

And we want to start students off early with effective reading instruction. Reading First teaches preparation network, which is something that I want to talk a little bit about right now.

So let me announce, at this moment, because reading is so important to us, I'm announcing today a $4.5 million grant to the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, NCATE, to launch the Reading First teacher preparation network in the HBCUs and Hispanic-serving institutions.

This is why, where our help is greatly needed. This initiative will be a partnership between the United States Department of Education, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, the Center for Reading and Language Arts Higher Education Collaborative, and minority-serving institutions across the nation.

[Applause.]

Thank you.

This institute will allow reading professors from 25 institutions to participate in the best training available on scientifically-based principles of teaching reading, so they can make sure that their students are getting the quality education that they need, and the quality instruction in reading that they need.

This initiative will be led by Boyce Williams. Boyce, would you stand.

[Applause.]

Who will also work with institutions to build the organizational capacity. Now the teacher education program and the reading instruction cannot exist as an island. It cannot exist apart from the rest of the institution.

So what we're talking about, the lifeline for these programs are, is connected to the rest of the institution.

So they need to enjoy the support of the rest of the institution.

I also want to thank Art Wise for his contribution for leadership. Art, would you stand.

[Applause.]

I have full confidence that we have the right support group here and this is something that can pay off quickly and we look forward to your leadership and we look forward to our nation's HBCUs and Hispanic-serving institutions producing high-quality reading teachers.

Dominate the market on high quality reading teachers.

When the world seeks high quality reading teachers, let them come to HBCUs and Hispanic-serving institutions, where you know how to do the job right.

[Applause.]

Now a little bit about the President's advisory board.

A president at one of the HBCUs mentioned to me last night, that as we move forward toward the reauthorization of the higher education act, that we want to make sure we've got a pipeline, so that we can get the information and concerns from HBCUs, and to make sure that they have an opportunity to participate in this reauthorization process, and the vehicle for that is the President's advisory board on HBCUs, that Wil just spoke about quite a bit.

We know that this organization is going to find ways to collect information from all across the HBCU community, so that we can have this information as we make our decisions about the reauthorization.

As I understand it now, the reauthorization is probably going to take place in '04, and we are now very fluid in our approach. It's time to--there's plenty of time to get the information in and have this information considered.

I'll be assisting the implementation of this order, the order for the board, the advisory board on historically black colleges and universities with all of our Department, and I know you know now that Dr. Lou Sullivan has been designated by the President as the chairman of this board, and we are so pleased to have Lou take this assignment because we know that he is really involved in so many things.

And I want to thank him for agreeing to chair this board. He has the experience and a commitment that the board needs, and to make the board a powerful voice. I'm very pleased that he's taken this task, because his tested wisdom and authority is important to this mission.

He's always been a powerful advocate for HBCUs, whether as Secretary of Health and Human Services or as the president of Morehouse College of Medicine, or from his position on major corporate boards.

Today I'd like to announce that Dr. Sullivan will be meeting with the head of every federal agency, to talk to each federal agency head about how it can cooperate and support HBCUs.

[Applause.]

SECRETARY PAIGE: I've already sent letters to each agency head, requesting a meeting on behalf of the board, with Dr. Sullivan, and I'm pleased to note that Lou has already started. He has 11 meetings scheduled on his calendar right now. So he's "hitting the ground running."

So, again, thank you, Lou, and best of luck to you and let us know if there's any other way that we can be of any assistance.

Let me wrap this up by once again simply thanking you, and I'll make one more point, and that point is, or has to do with, the HBCU capital finance program.

We know that endowment building is also a major priority for you and while it's possible for you to use some of your Title III funds, Title III grant funds for endowment purposes, we know that that's really not satisfactory as far as a long-term solution is concerned in meeting your needs.

In addition to the reauthorization, we're committed to working with HBCUs to assist in the resolution of your concerns about management of scarce financial resources, an area that I know that you're concerned about.

So we're going to be talking to Wil and the board about ways that we can provide some assistance and be of help, because one of the ways that HBCUs have been vulnerable to attacks from those who don't support our mission, is through this idea of managing scarce financial resources, and we want to make sure that we close that gap.

Once again, Dr. Benjamin Mays, and thank you for remembering that poem, reminds his students that it's always the right time to do things right. And he's right. We have a chance to make even greater strides in the weeks and years ahead with respect to the viability of HBCUs.

I know that students from historically black colleges and universities will be at the forefront of the world as it goes forward into the new century and we know those who are graduates of HBCUs will be taking their leadership positions. We just need more of them, and we need more of them quickly, and we need the great support of your great universities.

God bless you and God bless America.

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