The Great City Schools are raising achievement in many ways, for many students. Thanks to your willingness to take an honest look at your school systems, we now have proof that minority students are catching up to their peers. If we raise our expectations, our students will rise to the challenge. As leaders, it's our job to look down the road and make sure our kids are prepared for tomorrow's jobs today.

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Washington, D.C. — U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today addressed the Council of the Great City Schools Annual Legislative and Policy Conference. She praised urban schools for raising achievement and discussed the importance of math, science and rigorous coursework in preparing American students to be globally competitive. Following are her prepared remarks:

Thank you Arlene Ackerman for introducing me. I know you've served in public education for 36 years, which makes you a great example of the hardworking people that become school administrators because you care—and certainly not because it's a glamorous job.

I'm also happy to see Mike Casserly. You've been a friend to me over the years, and more importantly, you and the entire Council of Great City Schools have been great friends to our nation's schoolchildren. I especially want to thank you for working with the Department of Education on a pilot program to make free tutoring more available for hundreds of thousands of students who qualify for it under No Child Left Behind.

You and I both know that there's nothing more important than increasing opportunity for the next generation. Last week I was honored to join First Lady Laura Bush in announcing a $14 million Striving Readers grant for Newark, New Jersey. This grant will help arm more than 200 teachers with strategies to help more than 12,000 struggling students improve their reading skills. And my friend Senator Ted Kennedy recently joined me in awarding a similar grant to Springfield and Chicopee Public Schools in Massachusetts, which will benefit 7,000 students.

In total, the Department of Education will distribute 8 such grants this spring, benefiting more than 50,000 middle and high school students in Great City Schools.

By helping struggling readers, we not only open the door to other critical areas of study, we dramatically improve their chances of succeeding in college, in the workforce, and in life. And a recent study by the National Governors Association found that strong reading skills result in lifelong learning and increased civic engagement.

And you know what? Even though these grants benefit so many students—and by extension, communities like yours across our nation—what I'm most looking forward to is the day we no longer need them.

That's the goal we set with No Child Left Behind. As a parent, I don't think that's too much to ask, and I'm sure you agree. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of students, parents, educators, and administrators like you, we're well on our way to every child learning on grade level by 2014.

Your own 2006 Beating the Odds study, which will be officially released tomorrow, confirms what we saw with the latest Nation's Report Card for urban schools. The Great City Schools are raising achievement in many ways, for many students.

Your fourth-grade students have posted a 14-point gain in math and an 11-point gain in reading since 2002.

That progress is a tribute to schools like C.L. Gideons Elementary, one of the poorest schools in Atlanta, where fourth graders posted a 23-point gain in reading... and a 34-point gain in math since 2003. And Dayton's Bluff Elementary in a tough neighborhood in St. Paul Minnesota, which went from being the worst school in the city to one of the best over the last 5 years.

Just like you, these schools serve children who have been often been left behind. And just like you, they're proving that all students can succeed, regardless of their race, background, or ZIP code.

How did they do it? Dayton's Bluff Principal Von Sheppard told his staff "There are no excuses. Excuses are dream-killers. When you make an excuse for poor academic performance on the part of a child by saying he is poor, or doesn't have good family support, you are essentially saying that he will not be able to achieve."

I would also like to thank those of you from New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Charlotte, Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta... and of course, my fellow Texans from Houston and Austin... for volunteering for the NAEP Urban District Assessment.

Thanks to your willingness to take an honest look at your school systems, we now have proof that minority students are catching up to their peers. In addition, African-American and Hispanic children in many of your districts performed as well or better than others from those minority groups nationwide—in reading and in math. And I'm looking forward to seeing your science results later this year.

No Child Left Behind is making a real difference, especially in the early grades. In the last 2 years, the number of fourth-graders in our country who learned their fundamental math skills increased by 235,000 kids, enough to fill 500 elementary schools.

According to the NAEP results released last summer, over the last 5 years, more reading progress was made among 9-year-olds than in the previous three decades combined.

But as you know, the same old standards no longer add up to success. Thirty years ago, a majority of manufacturing workers did not have high school diplomas. Today, not only do most of them have high school diplomas, almost one-third have studied at the college level. Our children aren't growing up in the same world we grew up in.

In the last century, America led a communications revolution that connected people like never before. We have also helped spread democracy and capitalism to countries around the world.

These changes bring benefits to our citizens and countless others worldwide. But they also present new challenges. You can't pick up a newspaper or magazine these days without reading about global competitiveness, especially in math and science.

Employers today need workers with "pocket protector" skills—creative problem-solvers with strong math and science backgrounds. Math is becoming essential in fields ranging from advertising to consulting to media to policymaking.

To keep up in this fast-changing economic landscape, our education system must pick up the pace. As you know, every year about a million students drop out of high school. Nearly 5 out of 10 African American and Hispanic 9th graders don't graduate from high school on time.... which would explain why the average graduation rate for large cities is only 58 percent!

We wouldn't tolerate 5 out of 10 planes going down. We wouldn't tolerate 5 out of 10 heart surgeries failing. And we shouldn't tolerate 5 out of 10 city students dropping out of high school!

Meanwhile, 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs require some education beyond high school!

Wherever I go, I hear from governors, business people, educators, and parents that our students aren't prepared. There's a wide and growing consensus on this issue. Organizations from the National Academies to the Business Roundtable to the National Governors Association are giving us the same message. We must make sure a high school diploma is a record of achievement, not just a certificate of attendance.

We know that rigorous coursework is one of the best ways to solve the dropout problem. Just taking one or 2 Advanced Placement courses increases a student's chance of graduating from college in 4 years.

Unfortunately, many students, especially in lower-income communities, still don't have the opportunity to take these classes. Forty percent of high schools across the country offer no AP classes. The College Board tells us that, based on PSAT scores, there are nearly a half million students who were ready for AP calculus last year, but didn't take it.

We know that white students are far more likely than African Americans or Hispanics to take advanced courses in math and science. Sounds like "the soft bigotry of expectations" to me. With the way we ration these courses, you would think we don't want students to take them.

I know that many of you are working to end course rationing, and I'd like to commend Nashville, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Greensboro, New York, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Charleston, and Palm Beach. The College Board recently recognized the outstanding AP programs in several of your schools.

And those of you from Miami deserve special congratulations. Not only were 7 of your high schools honored by the College Board, you've also ensured that every high school in your district offers at least 8 AP courses.

We can't wait until students are 17 years old to address course rationing, the dropout problem, or the need for math, science, and rigor. The competition starts in elementary school. So, let's talk about our legislative priorities for the coming year and beyond.

With No Child Left Behind, we laid a strong foundation of student achievement. We also made a strong statement that student achievement was a top national priority.

Since my days at the Texas Association of School Boards, I've known resources are always an issue. I continue to fight for more resources for schools—just as I always have. And I'm proud to serve a President who is providing historic resources for our nation's education system.

Since 2001, the U.S. Department of Education has received the largest percentage budget increase of any domestic, non-security-related agency. National elementary and secondary school funding has increased by $125 billion, or about 25 percent, over the last 5 years. Title I funding has risen 45 percent. Special education grants have risen 69 percent. And overall funding for No Child Left Behind has risen by 40 percent.

The next step is to make sure all our children have the skills to succeed in our ever-more-competitive world.

• The President's new American Competitiveness Initiative would devote $380 million to extending high standards and accountability from kindergarten through high school.
• It would create a National Math Panel to collect the best research on teaching math—just as we have done for reading.
• Through a program called Math Now, it would help elementary and middle school students prepare for rigorous high school math.
• And by recruiting new teachers and training others to teach AP courses, it would practically quadruple the number of students taking AP tests... from 380,000 today... to 1.5 million by 2012.

Those are my legislative priorities, and I encourage you to make them yours.

Math teaches critical thinking skills. Science teaches how to explore our world. Together, they teach students to become innovators who will fight AIDS, cure cancer, end hunger, develop new renewable sources of energy, and improve the lives of people around the world.

If we raise our expectations, our students will rise to the challenge. As the President said in the State of the Union, "If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world."

As leaders, it's our job to look down the road and make sure our kids are prepared for tomorrow's jobs today. America has always been the most innovative society in the world, and together, we will make sure we always are.

Thank you. I would be happy to answer your questions.

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