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Orlando, Fla. — U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings today addressed the National Education Data Summit at the Hotel Royal Plaza in Orlando, Fla. Following are her prepared remarks:

Secretary Spellings: Good morning. Thank you Governor Bush for that warm introduction. I've worked with Governor Bush on many occasions. And his tireless commitment to education reminds me of my days back in Texas with another Governor Bush—George W. Bush. Good education policy must run in the family.

It's also great to see the chairman of the Florida State Board of Education, Phil Handy, here today. He was recently appointed to the board of the Institute of Education Sciences, and Phil, I want to thank you for your service.

Holding the National Education Data Summit here in Florida is a perfect fit. Florida has long been a leader in using data to instill accountability in our schools and raise achievement for our students. With the data system they've built, Florida can follow a student's progress from Kindergarten to Graduation.

Under Governor Bush's leadership, students in Florida are thriving and not surprisingly, they have the data to prove it.

Today 53% of Florida students are reading above grade level, up from 46% in 2001. That's 161,000 kids—enough to fill the Citrus Bowl—twice.

In addition, Florida's graduation rate has risen from 60% to 72%—tremendous progress. And for those of us number crunchers, it's important to remember what that 12% gain represents—kids—who instead of dropping out and seeing their options narrow—now face a future of opportunity and hope.

I'd also like to thank Dane Linn and the National Governor's Association for partnering with us at the Department of Education and the state of Florida to host this summit. Dane, thanks for all you do.

Around the country, states have recognized the importance of enhancing the use of data in the education arena, and the NGA has been instrumental in aiding those states and their Governors in those efforts.

As part of the recently launched Data Quality Campaign, the NGA is an important partner as all of us tackle the important work of improving the collection, quality and use of data in education policy.

As we work to improve school performance and ensure a quality education for every child in this country, it is absolutely critical that we have sound information guiding our decision-making at the local, state, and national level.

When we have this information, we can see what strategies work in the classroom and spend our dollars accordingly. States can invest to target problems more effectively. And we can give teachers, who are getting the job done, the credit they deserve.

I know I'm preaching to the choir a bit here, but it's hard to believe that we are just now starting to see real momentum on getting these systems in place. It is long overdue.

In other fields, we expect standards and evaluations to diagnose and correct problems.

You wouldn't go to the doctor with asthma and just have the doctor make up whatever he thinks is best to treat it. No, we have protocols, we have standards, we have data, we have information, we've studied which treatments work, which don't and we put it all to good use for the health of the patient.

It's amazing to think that the basic kind of data systems we're talking about are used even in the smallest business.

Governor Bush has a saying "If you don't measure, you don't care," which is similar to something I like to say—"In God We Trust, all others bring data."

Our job is to ensure that the information is available for educators and policymakers to make sound management decisions. In our schools, those decisions affect far more than stock options or the bottom line—they affect our children and their futures and our country's future.

In today's world, it seems we never lack for information. How many of us have spent hours online trying to save 50 dollars on a plane ticket or scoping out restaurant reviews for Saturday night? As a parent, I want all the information I can get on my kid's schools, their coursework, and their grades.

That's why this conference—and what we're doing together on data—is so important. It's an empowering tool—it arms parents and teachers with the information they need to ensure their kids and their students get the education they deserve.

It's also important because—let's face it—there are a lot of myths and misconceptions out there. I know you've heard them—a lot of folks hear the words "assessment" and "data"—and they think—"teaching to the test," "narrowing the curriculum," "increasing the dropout rate." But we know those things are just not true.

The only way we are going to debunk those myths is with the data and information to support sound methods and prove that indeed what gets measured gets done!

We're already seeing the truth of that with the early returns on No Child Left Behind. Across the country, academic achievement has risen significantly in the early grades, with math scores at all-time highs, including among African American and Hispanic students.

In the last two years, the number of fourth-graders who learned their fundamental math skills increased by 235,000—enough to fill 500 elementary schools. Over the last five years, more reading progress was made among 9-year-olds than in the previous 28 years combined.

And, it's important to note we're not stopping with math and reading; we'll have science assessments in place by 2007, and I'm thrilled that the President has called for them to be a part of the accountability system. Around the country, many states, like my home state of Texas, are going even further adding assessments for Social Studies and other courses.

And that's because they've seen what we know to be true—data is good and useful! Just ask Principal Will Bradley at Woodland Middle School in Fulton County, Georgia. Woodland is a lower income school where in 2002, only 43 percent of seventh-graders could do math on grade level.

Principal Bradley knew his students could do better. He and his teachers used assessment data to see which students needed extra help and which teaching methods worked best. It's become a familiar sight to see Principal Bradley walking up and down the school's hallways with notebooks full of data. And the hard work is paying off. Over 75 percent of seventh graders met state standards in reading and math last year, and Woodland Middle School made Adequate Yearly Progress for the first time ever. As Principal Bradley will tell you, more information in the hands of teachers and parents helps improve the quality of education for all children.

And though we've made a lot of the overdue, necessary reforms—we've set the standards, instituted testing, made sound data a central tenet of our policy efforts—now comes the hard part. On the road to real reform, using that data will mean making some hard decisions—but to ensure that all children are at grade level by 2014, those are the things we must do.

For the next two days, you've got a unique opportunity to learn from each other—to share best practices, discuss what works, what doesn't and move forward on getting comprehensive data systems for each state.

From Georgia to Iowa to Kentucky—these and other states here are leading the way and have some great news and models to share. At the Department of Education, we want to help and be a true partner in this endeavor.

For our part, we'll build up our own data system—EdFacts—and we'll work with states to streamline our data collection process and make the system more user-friendly. In addition, we recently announced 52.8 million dollars in grants to 14 state education departments—eight of whom are represented here today—to aid the design and implementation of statewide data systems.

We're committed to assisting in any way we can because we believe better information systems mean better policy and better schools.

Ensuring the quality of education for every child has never been more critical. You can't pick up a newspaper or magazine these days without reading about global competitiveness.

The spread of freedom is spurring technological innovation and global competition at a pace never before seen. Billions of new competitors are challenging America's economic leadership—and if we are going to keep up—we're going to have to run faster.

As President Bush said the other night in his State of the Union, "Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people—and we're going to keep that edge."

As the President made clear, meeting this challenge rests in large part on our ability to strengthen education in this country and make sure our students graduate from high school with the skills they need to be competitive in the workplace or higher education.

In an era when postsecondary education is more important than ever, it's imperative that we have strong linkages between K-12 and higher education. To do this, we must enhance our education system and increase academic rigor across the board—especially in science and math.

In this changing world, knowledge of math and science is critical. Of all the recommendations contained in the National Academies' recent report called Rising Above the Gathering Storm, the highest priority is to vastly improve K-12 math and science education.

Whether filling "blue collar" or "white collar" positions, employers today seek workers with "pocket protector" skills. Employers need practical problem-solvers fluent in today's technology with strong math and science skills.

According to the Department of Labor, 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs require postsecondary education, and yet, almost half of our 17-year-olds do not have the basic understanding of math needed to qualify for a production associate's job at a modern auto plant.

High school test scores in math have barely budged since the early 1970's and less than half of high school graduates in 2005 were ready for college-level math and science coursework according to ACT.

In addition, U.S. students are regularly outperformed in international tests by other students from other developed countries, particularly in math and science.

For a room full of people who put a lot of stock in data—these statistics should sound alarm bells.

Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, rigorous instruction, high standards and accountability are helping raise achievement in the early grades, but we must complete the task.

We must strengthen math and science education, and we must work to bring high standards and accountability to our high schools to ensure that a diploma becomes a ticket to success for all graduates, whether they enter the workforce or go on to higher education.

President Bush is leading the charge with his recently announced American Competitiveness Initiative—a partnership that brings together leaders from government, the private sector and the education community to help prepare our students for the 21st century.

The American Competitiveness Initiative will devote $380 million to bolster math and science education. In addition, overall the Department will see a 51 percent increase in spending on programs that are focused on these critical fields.

The initiative will place a greater emphasis on math instruction from the earliest grade levels. It will ensure that high schools offer more rigorous coursework, including Advanced Placement programs in math, science and critical-need foreign languages.

It will inform teachers of the most effective, research-based approaches to teaching math and science, and it will encourage professionals in those fields to become teachers themselves.

In addition, it will give us the ability to coordinate administration wide spending on math and science. Currently, we spend about 2.8 billion dollars in 13 federal agencies, which fund 207 different math and science education programs, but there is no real rhyme or reason to how these programs work together. It's a thousand flowers blooming and maybe some weeds.

We must take stock of what these programs are accomplishing, use the principles of NCLB, and make sure we're investing wisely and well.

A cornerstone of the new American Competitiveness Initiative is the expansion of the Advanced Placement Incentive Program with a special emphasis on math, science, and critical languages (such as Arabic and Chinese).

Florida, along with Virginia, New York, California, and Maryland, is one of only five states where more than 30 percent of high school graduates took an AP course compared to an overall national average of 23 percent. Florida leads the nation in the number of African American and Hispanic students who participate in AP.

The Advanced Placement program has been proven to make a difference in student performance. Students who take two or more Advanced Placement classes in high school are twice as likely to graduate from college in four years compared to students who don't take any AP courses.

Yet, nearly 40 percent of our nation's high schools don't offer any AP courses, and many of those schools serve low-income and minority students. That's totally unacceptable. There's something's wrong when in the Washington, DC area, for example, suburban Langley High School where I live in Virginia offers 21 advanced placement courses—which, of course, is great—while inner-city Ballou High School offers only four!

We must encourage our kids to take more challenging courses, and we must ensure these opportunities are available for every child who wants to take advantage of them. Under the President's program, we will increase the number of students taking AP tests from 380,000 today to 1.5 million by 2012.

The AP Incentive program is just one part of our larger commitment to increasing the education opportunities of our students today so that they can embrace the opportunities of tomorrow.

We all know the world is changing... moving faster, growing flatter... but the key to success and to the American dream is still the same—education.

A week from tomorrow, nations from all over the world will come together in international competition—and while the stakes of winning a medal at the winter Olympics may not be as high as the stakes of remaining the world's innovation and economic leader—the path to both are surprisingly similar.

Just as our athletes refine and adapt their training to keep up with the competition, so must we with education. And just as our athletes start working at their sport from an early age, so must our students. The competition starts in kindergarten.

The good news is we know what to do—we must give them the skills to succeed. With the American Competitiveness Initiative, we will make America's education system more cutting edge than I-pods and plasma screen TVs. We will rely on sound data and information every step of the way to inform our efforts and keep us moving forward.

As the President said on Tuesday night, "If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world." As a mom, I know it's not always easy to get kids to plan ahead. But as policymakers, educators, and parents, it's our job to look down the road. America has always been the most enterprising, creative, and innovative society in the world, and together, we will make sure we always are.

Thank you.

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