FOR RELEASE: March 13, 2005

Speaker sometimes deviates from text.

Thank you all for giving up your weekend to discuss the future of education. It’s a pleasure to speak with you. Back home, you do a terrific job in sometimes challenging circumstances, and I salute you.

In fact, it’s safe to say that you’re leading an educational rebirth in your cities. You have a great story to tell.

• According to your most recent Beating the Odds report, in just one year, fourth-graders in 61 urban school districts improved their reading proficiency by 4.9 percentage points and math proficiency by 6.8 points; eighth-graders showed gains as well.
• African-American students showed improvements in seven out of ten grades tested for reading and math; Hispanic-American students did nearly as well.
• In all, gains were seen in 72 percent of all grades tested in reading and 84 percent of all grades tested in math.

STAYING THE COURSE

The No Child Left Behind Act has changed the educational landscape in this country. Not only has it taken root, it's borne fruit. We must stay the course.

But you deserve credit for making the law work. You are demanding more and getting more -- refusing to accept old excuses for poor performance. And you should be rewarded.

I have been meeting with educators from around the country. You should expect good information and clear expectations from the Department.

You also expect greater resources – including a $603 million increase in the President's 2006 Budget for the heart of No Child Left Behind, Title I -- which represents a 52 percent increase since the law was passed.

In return for investments, we ask for progress. We're willing to work with you. If you have an innovative way of achieving the law's goals, let us see the data. The destination – a well-educated nation -- is more important than the journey.

I am confident this is the right course to take, because urban schools have stayed the course on No Child Left Behind.

In many ways, the law was a new solution to old problems. For years you had sounded the alarm on the widening achievement gap; the declining mastery of basic subjects; the demand for qualified teachers; and the urgent need to keep students in school and learning.

With No Child Left Behind, President Bush showed that he not only listened to your concerns – he made solving them one of our highest priorities.

SUPPORT FOR NCLB

Today a few voices are calling for us to weaken the law or roll it back. Some have called for "significant changes" to the law. Some proclaimed it "unconstitutional."

Given that, we greatly appreciate your understanding and support for the principles of No Child Left Behind. You understand, like most Americans, that it is not unconstitutional to ask states to prove they're providing a quality education to every child in exchange for taxpayer investments. It's not unconstitutional to treat low test scores and a wide achievement gap as the national problems they are.

STANDING FIRM ON PRINCIPLES

We want to work with you. At the same time there are some areas on which we cannot compromise. Two of them are annual assessment and disaggregation of data.

If we've learned anything in the last three years, it's that what gets measured gets done.

That's why we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars for assessments -- including $412 million in the President's 2006 budget.

Some want us to exempt whole groups of students, such as those with special needs or English Language Learners.

But this is the key to accountability. Such a move would take us back to the bad old days when some kids were misdiagnosed, placed on a track of low expectations, and handed a diploma they could not read. Everyone deserves a shot at the American dream -- and so every student deserves our attention.

In the words of former Norfolk Schools Superintendent John Simpson, "all means all"!

I would remind you that the No Child Left Behind Act does not cause poor performance. It reveals it. It also reveals when performance is exceeded. It is designed not to punish, but to correct. And we must all work together -- states, school districts and the federal government -- to ensure its integrity and that of the data behind it.

MEETING YOUR CHALLENGES

No Child Left Behind is as much an attitude as an act of law. The focus now is on quality, not just access; on outcomes, not just inputs.

We recognize that nearly two-thirds of your students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. More than one in six are English Language Learners.

We do not believe these are inevitable barriers to a bright future. Nevertheless, they are challenges. Let me tell you how we will help you meet them.

TEACHER QUALITY

First, teacher quality.

Every classroom must have a highly qualified teacher by the end of the 2005-06 school year. The lack of highly qualified teachers is an acute problem in urban school districts.

In California's highest-poverty elementary schools, for example, more than 20 percent of teachers lack full certification. In the wealthiest districts, just two percent do.

The President has invested nearly $3 billion a year in Improving Teacher Quality State Grants. They can be used for professional development, recruiting and retraining, merit pay, mentoring and other activities.

To learn what works, our Department has held numerous research-to-practice summits across the country, and we've launched our "What Works Clearinghouse" so teachers can access data at any time.

Finally, our popular Reading First grants are helping train more than 90,000 teachers and teach 1.5 million students in scientifically proven instructional methods. President Bush's new FY 2006 budget would provide another $1.1 billion, bringing the total in or on its way to schools to more than $5 billion since passage of No Child Left Behind.

Another challenge you face is holding onto good teachers. That's why the President's budget includes a new $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund.

It would reward educators who show outstanding academic progress with their students. It would also encourage highly qualified teachers to work in our neediest urban schools. We need to make sure our best teachers work in the most challenging areas.

HIGH SCHOOL REFORM

Our next priority is high school reform. Our high school students have yet to write their chapter of this success story. Nationally, out of every 100 entering 9th graders, just 68 graduate within four years. Just 18 enter college and graduate on time. Overall, two-thirds of students leave high school unprepared for college.

One reason is low expectations. Studies show that wealthy students are more than twice as likely as poor students to be placed on a "college track" in high school. The response of Howard University student Rhasheema Sweeting is too typical: "There was the definitely-going-to-college group, the probably-won't-go-to-college group and the group of troublemakers whom they rush through the system without helping." [Wash. Post, 3-6]

Yes, we've done a great job at "selling the dream." A study from my Department's National Center for Education Statistics last week found that 72 percent of 10th-graders planned to get at least a bachelor's degree.

But many later feel betrayed, stuck in remedial college classes or forced to transfer. They face an uncertain future in which 80 percent of the fastest-growing jobs will require some post-secondary education.

HIGH SCHOOL INITIATIVE

We must act now. The centerpiece of our Education Budget is a $1.5 billion High School Initiative.

Part of it would help you measure high school students' achievement in at least two more grades. But the lion's share is for intervention, to help students get the individual attention and academic skills they need.

Districts could spend the funds on a variety of state- and locally designed programs, from vocational education to dropout prevention to college preparation, in exchange for greater accountability.

In addition, students struggling with the basics would get help from our $200 million Striving Readers program – that's a $175 million increase over 2005 -- and a new Secondary Education Mathematics Initiative -- another $120 million.

To encourage more challenging coursework, the Budget invests $45 million. This includes a boost for the public/private State Scholars Program, now available in just 15 states, and Enhanced Pell Grants for students completing these rigorous courses.

Finally, the Budget increases Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs by 73 percent to make them available in high-poverty schools. That's close to $2 billion total dedicated to improved high school education.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Parental involvement is also critical. It's tough to effect real change when the same lonely five or ten parents attend your parent-teacher conferences.

The No Child Left Behind Act was designed with this in mind. It involves families by giving them better information and more options. The law also requires that a portion of Title I funds be spent to encourage parental involvement.

And, as the President has noted, under his High School Initiative teachers and parents could design personalized academic plans that follow individual students from grade to grade.

This brings me to supplemental services – tutoring, afterschool homework help and the like. Some of you have real concerns about this. We want to work with you. But we also want to remind you that SES is not a zero-sum game.

Building strong relationships with outside providers will not hurt your schools, it will help them. Hard-to-reach children will start believing in themselves again.

And you may find yourself leveraging new services from faith-based and community groups and the business community.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for instance, donated $51 million to create "schools-within-schools" in New York City. They're designed to offer more personalized instruction and counseling -- and to be cost-effective as fewer students drop out.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Finally, let me talk about English Language Learners -- an issue of extreme importance to urban districts.

Under President Bush, funding for Title III to support English language acquisition and academic achievement has nearly doubled.

We've held three National summits on the subject and funded NIH-sponsored research to determine how Spanish-speaking children learn English and learn to read.

And for the first time ever, the President funded the professional development of teachers working with English language learners.

The President's FY 2006 budget continues this support, with $675 million for English Language Acquisition state grants, which includes an additional $44 million in newly available funds.

CONCLUSION

In short, we support what you're doing -- not just with words, but with resources – a commitment matched to real needs. That's the President's philosophy in a nutshell: align resources with results. And that's the philosophy of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Allow me to quote Brooklyn teacher Ruth Adams. She had this to say about No Child Left Behind: "I don't want to criticize it, because I feel that it is like a seed that has just been planted, and I would rather see how it blooms."

We don't expect immunity from criticism. But we do ask for your support – your innovations – and your results in making the law work.

Urban school districts have a great many stories to tell -- from Chicago's partnership with the DeVry Institute to teach computer skills, to Indianapolis's career housing academies, to Charlotte-Mecklenburg's intensive academic program for ninth-graders called Transition 9.

Let's share them with the nation. Let's work together to fulfill the promise and potential of No Child Left Behind, and watch our students bloom. Thank you.

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