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Columbia, S.C. — U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings addressed students, teachers and other officials as part of the Columbia College Lessons in Leadership Speaker Series last night at the BellSouth Auditorium in Columbia, S.C. Following are her prepared remarks:

Thank you, Dr. Whitson. It's great to be with you and my friend Inez Tenenbaum, South Carolina's superintendent of schools. Thanks to the faculty and students of Columbia College for the warm welcome you've extended. I'm pleased my friends and fellow Texans Walton and Jeff Selig are also here tonight.

I know Columbia trains women leaders who participate in all aspects of life. That's a fantastic goal, and it's very much in line with my own.

Our primary federal education policy, known as No Child Left Behind, is all about making sure our country can benefit from the talents and skills of all our students.

It says we will provide a quality education for every child. And it says that in a country like America, it's unacceptable to have an achievement gap in which students are denied that education because of their race, background, or ZIP Code.

With this law, we committed to closing that gap within a decade. We said we'd make sure every student is learning on grade level by 2014. That's what taxpayers want and expect. As a parent, I don't think it's too much to ask for my child to have third grade reading and math skills by the end of third grade. And I'm pretty sure most all parents feel this way.

America's global competitiveness begins with making sure everybody has the skills and knowledge and the opportunity to contribute. Last summer Columbia College co-published a report on women in the workforce. It said that increasing women's participation by just 10 percent would add $1.4 billion dollars to your state's economy.

That's a lot of money—money which means better hospitals, better schools, and a higher quality of life—not just for us but for future generations.

As your study shows, advancing opportunity is not just an education issue. It's an economic issue, a social issue, and a national security issue. It's everybody's issue, and it's never been more important.

As President Bush has said, "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people." American ingenuity has put a man on the moon, a rover on Mars, and computers in our businesses, our homes and even our pockets. We launched the World Wide Web, mapped the human genome and developed life-extending drugs and treatment for AIDS.

Today, American technology from semiconductors to cell phones is connecting people around the world like never before. As a result, what you know means far more than where you live.

While we're sleeping every night, accountants in India are doing our taxes. Radiologists in Australia are reading our X-rays. And technicians in China are building our computers—for U.S. companies.

You know how important this is—after all, the theme of this event is Staying Competitive in Education. The rest of the world is catching up. If we want to stay competitive, we can't keep running at the same old pace.

And we can't afford to continue rationing opportunity. We must close the achievement gap for good and make opportunity available to every child.

For example, take a look at our high school graduation rates. Today, 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs require education beyond high school. But about five out of 10 African American and Hispanic students fail to finish high school on time. Nationally, three out of 10 students fail to graduate on time. And in South Carolina, four out of 10 don't graduate on time.

Would we tolerate three out of every 10 planes going down? Would we tolerate three out of every 10 heart surgeries failing? Then why is it okay for three out of 10 children to drop out of high school?

Everywhere I go, every governor, business leader, parent and laid-off textile worker I meet tells me the same thing: We've got a problem with our high schools. And they're right.

For the future of our country, we must improve our high schools. And we must make challenging coursework more available so that a high school diploma is a record of achievement, not a certificate of attendance.

The College Board tells us there were half a million students who were ready for AP calculus last year but didn't take it, or didn't have the opportunity to take it.

There's something's wrong when in my school district in Virginia, Langley High School offers 21 AP courses while inner-city Ballou High School in the District of Columbia offers only four.

That's unacceptable. We can't afford to wait until students are 17 to address these problems. The competition begins in elementary school. The good news is our youngest students are rising to the challenge.

Thanks to No Child Left Behind, which calls for testing every child in grades 3 through 8, reading scores for nine-year-olds increased more over the last five years than in the previous three decades combined. Think about that.

In South Carolina, the number of fourth graders with fundamental math scores has increased by more than 20 percent over the last five years. That's more than 10,000 students—enough to fill more than 20 elementary schools!

Inez Tenenbaum deserves a lot of credit for this success, and you will leave big shoes to fill when you retire. We may come from different sides of the aisle, but she and I have a lot in common. We both believe that students will rise to our expectations. And we both believe that for our country to remain economically, civically and socially viable, we must leave no child behind.

Education reform has been a bipartisan effort for a long time—especially in the South. Inez joins a long line of Democratic and Republican policymakers who knew we had to do better. And we have.

I won't steal her thunder by going into too much detail about South Carolina's education system. Let me just say that you're doing some of the best work in our country with respect to teacher quality. You've made greater improvements than almost anybody in recent years. And when it comes to setting standards, you always aim high.

And yesterday, I sent Inez a letter that said that South Carolina is the first state to have its annual assessment system approved by my department. That's a big deal. Assessment is the lynchpin of No Child Left Behind. For the first time in America's history, we're collecting data to see how our students are doing, where they need to improve, and when we need to say congratulations for a job well done.

As President Bush likes to say, you can't solve a problem until you diagnose it. When you're sick, your doctor runs tests, looks at the results, and prescribes treatment that works.

Now I know there are a lot of myths out there. Some people hear the word "assessment" and think "teaching to the test" or "narrowing the curriculum."

Tests can—and should—fit right into your curriculum—if they are aligned with the subject matter you're teaching.

A high-quality test becomes a high-quality tool, a consistent and reliable way to measure student progress and improve the educational enterprise.

Testing shows parents what their children are learning. It shows teachers where to focus time and resources to help struggling kids before they fall behind. It shows administrators and policymakers what's working, and what they need to adjust. And it holds our schools accountable for the achievement of every student.

As we say in Texas, what gets measured gets done.

Because we've measured progress, we know where America's students are falling behind.

High school test scores in math have barely budged in 30 years. Our 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 developed nations in math literacy and problem solving. And almost half of our 17-year-olds don't have the math skills to work as a production associate at a modern auto plant.

That's why the president and I are supporting high school reform that focuses on reading, math and science to help students succeed whether they enter college or the workforce.

With No Child Left Behind, we laid the groundwork. Now we must build on it. Whether filling "white collar" or "blue collar" positions, employers today want workers with "pocket protector" skills—creative problem solvers with strong math and science backgrounds. So we'd better bring pocket protectors back into style!

I can't say it better than the recent Business Week cover story: "Math Will Rock Your World." As technology levels the global playing field, American workers need higher-level math and science skills. Math teaches problem solving. Science teaches how to investigate our world. Today, these are essential skills in every field.

The president and I are working to strengthen math, science, and critical language instruction for K-12 students. The president's American Competitiveness Initiative will encourage 30,000 professionals in math and science fields to share their knowledge in classrooms. It will train 70,000 more teachers to teach Advanced Placement courses. And it will practically quadruple the number of students taking AP tests from 380,000 today to 1.5 million by 2012.

Imagine a high school teacher who is a NASA scientist. Now imagine enough new teachers to equal one-third of the population of this city. Imagine that more than one in 10 high school graduates have already earned some college credit.

As President Bush said in the State of the Union, "We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity." And we will.

There are certain things you can't teach in a classroom that our country already has—qualities like creativity, diversity, entrepreneurship and our wide-open society and economy.

Today, we have so many customers and so many competitors because we helped bring capitalism and democracy to the world. But we shouldn't fear competition. Time and time again, from the Wild West to outer space, America's can-do attitude has broken new ground. Ours is a nation of pioneers, and we want to make sure we are leading the charge on the frontiers of the future—whether curing cancer or traveling to Mars.

American children will rise to a challenge. But we must give them the ability to compete.

That's the plan. Now we've got to make it happen. Columbia College is a great place to get things rolling.

When this school was founded in 1854, minorities and women could not yet vote. A year earlier, a speaker at a Phi Beta Kappa convention had said, "[T]he best diploma for a woman is a large family and a happy husband."

Nothing against large families or happy husbands, but like true American innovators, your founders imagined something new. And then they made it happen. Thanks to people like them and like us, today, American women enjoy opportunities our grandmothers could only dream of.

I hope you will follow their example and "pay it forward." Because at the end of the day, innovation depends on each of us. So, I encourage you to find your way to make a difference, and act on it.

Maybe you want to serve in government, which is a great way to serve others and improve lives. Or maybe you want to be a teacher, and help thousands of students become the inventors, teachers, and leaders of tomorrow. Whatever you choose, by making an investment in your community and in those around you, you can, and will, have a direct impact on keeping our nation competitive, innovative and strong.

Thank you.

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