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Following are the prepared remarks by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige at the launch of the School Information Partnership Website. The site, www.SchoolMatters.com, displays timely, relevant and comparable school, district and state data required to be publicly reported by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The secretary discussed the unprecedented public-private partnership that will provide parents with the information and analytical resources needed to make the best possible decisions about their child's education.

"Today we witness another milestone in educational reform. Two years ago, the President proposed and Congress passed No Child Left Behind. This country pledged to make our educational system more inclusive, successful, and just. We pledged to make education more accountable and transparent, to put qualified teachers in every classroom, and to test students to see if they are learning. We pledged to give parents and students greater choices. And we are keeping those promises.

Last September, the President announced an unprecedented partnership to further transform American education. The United States Department of Education and the Broad Foundation began an initiative with Standard and Poor's School Evaluation Services and the National Center for Educational Accountability, world-class information analyzers. We wanted to give parents, educators, the media and policy-makers the information and analytical resources necessary to make the best possible decisions about their child's schools. The public and private sector partners, represented here today, pledged to produce a unique website—www.SchoolMatters.com—to display relevant and comparable school, school district, and state-wide data from all 50 states. In effect, we would create a consumer's clearinghouse for American education.

"All the relevant information would be here, in one spot. This would eliminate the need for concerned parents to search multiple websites, read numerous written reports, find scattered assessments, or track down other sources of information. By typing in one address and clicking, parents would find simple, comprehensive, and valuable data about neighborhood schools, their local school districts, and their particular state.

"Parents, educators, and taxpayers will benefit. The website gives parents greater knowledge, and more awareness of their realistic range of choices. It helps policy-makers generate greater accountability from schools. It enables educators to identify schools with high achievement and focus on the reasons for such achievement. It also helps them focus resources so that schools that need help get it. Taxpayers can see what their hard-earned money purchases. This is democracy in action, working best with the free-flow of public data.

"Many parents will tell you this information is desperately needed. Information is power. The data will help advance a national debate about the performance of our educational system – it can no longer be hidden in the shadows. The website will help diagnose the problem and help states and school districts fix it. Information that was once the province of superintendents, school boards, state education departments, or legislative committees needs to be readily available to the entire public – students, parents, teachers, taxpayers, government officials, the media – everyone. The data will strengthen the entire American educational endeavor, from pre-school to university, from Florida to Alaska, and from parents to governmental officials. We will all be able to do our job better and more effectively with the data that will be available on schoolmatters.com.

"Today we are extremely pleased that some states are already online. The rest of the states are working with the Partnership and will soon have their information available. By the summer, we anticipate having the majority of states involved with the initiative online. Information will be added incrementally as it becomes available. But the first set of data for some states is ready, and parents and educators in those states deserve to get this information as quickly as it can be made available.

"I encourage other states to follow the timely example set by the online states and have their data included as quickly as possible. Your participation will benefit your state's parents and teachers, and participation also counts as meeting the report card requirements of No Child Left Behind. I also want to ask that all of our schools and states continue their efforts to improve and enhance their data systems. Such investments facilitate partnerships such as the School Information Partnership. They also help provide the information you need to make the decisions that are best for our children.

"After all, we want—we need—empowered parents, teachers and decision-makers. Thanks to the vision of the President and the bi-partisan support of Congress, we have ignited a revolution in education. The indifference, exclusion, and blindness that hampered educational quality are being replaced by accountability, inclusion, and partnership. The most visible symbol of this revolution is the No Child Left Behind Act. It creates a new, open, and rigorous educational environment. Now, finally, our schools have objective requirements that will institute greater accountability, testing, local control, qualified teachers, and parental empowerment. And now we will have the data available to make this law even more effective and workable.

"On behalf of the President, the state governors assembled here, educators, and parents, I want to thank Eli Broad and the Broad Foundation, the National Center for Educational Accountability, and Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services for their leadership, vision, commitment, and support for this remarkable initiative."

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