U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today delivered remarks to the National Charter Schools Program Showcase at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Spellings will launch the celebration of Charter Schools Week and discuss the importance of charter schools as one of the public school choice options under No Child Left Behind. Following are her prepared remarks:

Thank you, Chris Doherty, for that kind introduction. I want to thank Chris and Dean Kern for their leadership at the U.S. Department of Education's charter schools office and for organizing today's charter showcase.

I'm proud to be here to kick off National Charter Schools Week. I've visited charter schools all across the country. And I've seen how they are doing whatever it takes to leave no child behind in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods. These schools take the most at-risk students, and they refuse to give up on them. They work as long and as hard as it takes to get the job done.

I recently visited Robert Treat Academy charter school in Newark, New Jersey. Like lots of charter school students, students at Robert Treat often go to school six days a week. And on their day off, the principal says they do community service. No wonder 100 percent of the school's fourth graders are reading at grade level.

The waiting list to get in to Robert Treat is hundreds of names long. I met a father who said the school had changed his older son's life. And he was praying his younger son would have that same chance.

The demand for charter schools is growing every day. When President Bush took office in 2001, there were only about 2,000 charter schools nationwide. Today, there are more than 3,600 serving over a million students. And here in Washington, DC, 26 percent of all public school students now attend a charter school. That's the highest rate in the nation.

These schools are empowering parents with new options in public education. As we say back in Texas, "If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you ever got." In my experience, if you just put more money in the same old system for the same old things, it usually means you'll just get the same old results. And that's not good enough anymore.

When we passed No Child Left Behind, we as a nation made a commitment to do something that's never been done before. We set a historic goal to ensure every child in this country - regardless of race, income, or zip code - can read and do math at grade level. And we gave ourselves a deadline to do it by 2014 because parents have waited long enough.

We know it's possible. States like Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina, and Oklahoma are already on track to meet our goal for elementary school reading. But we still have a lot of work to do. And if we are going to meet this challenge, we must stop rationing opportunity by limiting the number of charter schools we allow. I've heard stories about parents cramming into church basements to draw numbers to see which students will make it off the waiting list. You shouldn't need to win the lottery to send your child to a high-performing school.

As a mom, I don't think it's too much to ask that my children leave the third grade reading and doing math at the third grade level. And I'm pretty sure almost all parents feel this way regardless of where they live or how much money they make. And when schools fall short of these standards, we must empower parents with choices in public education.

Parents want these options. And we all benefit from them. Charter schools improve education for everyone in the system, especially students. They're laboratories for new educational strategies that will help us raise achievement in all our public schools.

Charter schools are blazing a trail for other schools to follow. But meanwhile, they're often not receiving their fair share of education funding. According to a recent study, charter schools receive 27 percent less funding per student than traditional public schools do. And the disparity is even greater in large urban districts. That's wrong. Charter schools are public schools and deserve to be funded to the level of public schools.

At the federal level, President Bush and I are committed to doing everything we can to support existing charter schools and help build new ones. The demand for these schools is far outpacing the supply. We're providing $250 million a year for charter schools to help address this problem. But without good policies at the state and local level, we won't be able to meet the demand for new high-quality charter schools. When it comes to policymaking, the golden rule is: "Those with the gold make the rules." And in education, the primary investors are at the state and local level. That's why the real action in the charter movement is taking place in your states and your communities.

It's happening in New York City where Chancellor Joel Klein is fighting to lift an arbitrary cap on the number of charter schools. It's happening in Indianapolis where Mayor Bart Peterson has taken matters into his own hands as the only mayor in the country with the authority to grant new charters. And it's happening in Louisiana where state board of education Vice President Leslie Jacobs is working to rebuild the New Orleans school system with charter schools. I want to thank Chancellor Klein, Mayor Peterson and Vice President Jacobs for being here today.

Of the 25 public schools that have reopened in New Orleans, 18 of them have been charters. These schools are offering parents new high-quality choices and giving them hope for the future.

One of the first things we at the U.S. Department of Education did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was to send Louisiana nearly $21 million to help the state open new charter schools and reopen and expand existing ones. Charter schools offered a fast and effective way to bring public education back online in New Orleans. That's because charters can cut through bureaucracy and red tape to hire their own teachers, set their own schedules, innovate new teaching strategies, and do what's best for kids.

And they're even more accountable for results than traditional public schools because when charters fall short of standards, they close. And if charters don't please their customers - meaning parents and students - they'll lose their business because parents have a choice.

No Child Left Behind has armed the parents of nearly 50 million public school students with the information to be smart educational consumers and real advocates for their children. For the first time ever, we're collecting data every year on how well students are doing and how well schools are serving them, and we're sharing this information with parents to help them make good, sound decisions for their children. As a mom, I know that's what I want. And I know parents all around the country want the same.

This is especially important when public schools fall short of their responsibilities. No parent should ever feel like their child is trapped in a failing school. That's why the law empowers parents with new options such as transferring their children to a higher-performing public or charter school or enrolling them in free tutoring.

I'm encouraged to see more and more parents taking advantage of these options. But we're still nowhere near satisfied with the overall participation rate. And I know you're not either. For example, of the four million students in the country eligible for school choice, only 38,000 students - less than one percent - actually transferred to a higher-performing public or charter school.

All of us - from the federal government to the states to districts to schools - must do a better job of reaching out to inform parents about their options. Too many parents never hear about them because they don't see the letter that comes home in their child's backpack or they can't attend the informational meeting at the school.

In other districts, public school choice is almost non-existent because no schools are meeting state standards and waiting lists for charter schools are out the door. We must put policies in place to help expand the number of charter schools in these communities. This is urgent work. These schools can be lifelines for parents with no other options.

We also must look for new ways to empower parents in these communities. We've seen the power of choice right here in Washington, DC, where the first-ever federally funded opportunity scholarship program has given low-income families the chance to send their children to the private or parochial school of their choice. Almost 1,700 disadvantaged students have received scholarships of up to $7,500.

The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is only in its second year, but the early results are encouraging. President Bush and I want to help spread this experiment to other cities as another alternative to help students trapped in schools that fall short of standards year after year. We're proposing a new $100 million Opportunity Scholarship Fund to help thousands of low-income students in these schools attend the private school of their choice or receive intensive one-on-one tutoring after school or during the summer.

I'm proud to work for a president who believes in choice. He has done more to put choice on the books for parents than any other president in history. If we are going to meet our goal of having every child at grade level by 2014, we must empower parents to demand more from our schools.

Last year, I visited the KIPP Academy Charter School in the South Bronx. The school takes students from the poorest neighborhoods in New York, but students there work longer and harder. And as a result, it's been the highest performing public middle school in the South Bronx for eight years in a row. 80 percent of KIPP graduates end up going on to college. The attitude is: "No shortcuts, no excuses."

Charters schools like KIPP are dispelling the myth that some students can't learn. They're a shining example for schools across the country. And they're proving we can realize our historic goal of ensuring every child can read and do math at grade level by 2014. It just takes hard work. No shortcuts and no excuses. We must do whatever it takes. Our children deserve nothing less.

Thank you, and now I'd be happy to answer your questions.

###

Top

Back to May 2006