A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

It's a great pleasure to be here with so many people who are committed to improving education. Our focus for this session is how to make high schools more engaging and more challenging and how community and technical colleges play an important role in advancing educational leaders in a community.

I want to start by noting that there are more students at the secondary level in the United States than ever before. That's a result of what we call the "Baby Boom Echo" phenomenon. The "Baby Boom" was made up of the children of the post-World War II era. The next generation, which is even larger, is the "Baby Boom Echo."

I understand that secondary schools in Brazil, for completely different reasons, are also seeing record numbers of students. That makes it especially important for both our nations to focus on secondary schools. What we do now will have a profound effect on millions of young people.

The reality of life in the 21st century means that secondary schools must prepare all students for a lifetime of learning.

There was a time in the United States when we really didn't try to provide an excellent education for every child. The top third of students was challenged to do their very best. We prepared many of them to go on to college and to be leaders in their communities. But the middle third was given just enough to skills to make a living. And the bottom third was left to fend for themselves.

Today, however, we must make a strong commitment to provide a quality education for every child. That includes children with disabilities, poor children, and children who don't speak English in their homes.

This commitment to "excellence for all" has created challenges at every level of schooling. At middle schools and high school in the United States, we are asking more students to take algebra and advanced science classes. We are working to provide more foreign language instruction for students. We are raising standards and demanding more from teachers and students.

At the same time, we need to expand the availability of arts and music. We also need to find ways to use the creativity and teamwork inherent in the arts to make other subjects more engaging and more exciting.

Every student needs to take the core academic classes. Every student needs to be comfortable with technology, which is a necessity for most careers. And I believe that every student, starting at an early age, should be encouraged to do everything possible to finish high school and go on to post-high school technical education or a community college or a university.

For our efforts to be successful, there are three steps we must take.

First, we need to make middle schools and high schools more engaging and more challenging. Technology can help us achieve this. Smaller classes and smaller schools may be part of the solution. We should promote hands-on learning and provide music and the arts as part of every student's experience. But whatever approach we take, we need to make sure that we teach young people the joy of learning.

Second, we need to recruit and retain excellent teachers. It certainly will mean better preparation and professional development. We also need to make sure that we are not asking history teachers to teach algebra or Spanish teachers to teach science. That's not fair to the students or the teachers.

Third, as important as a high school education is, we need to recognize that a high school diploma is not the end of education for Americans or Brazilians in the 21st century. Many of our students will benefit from college; others will pursue work-based training programs. That means that everything we do at the secondary level should be geared toward preparing students to succeed at the postsecondary level.

That's why we need to encourage postsecondary institutions to get involved with the public schools. And I'm so pleased that we have invited community colleges to be part of this conference.

Let me just take a minute to tell you why community colleges in the United States are so important. As you know, they provide a quality education for millions of young people. That makes them a crucial part of our higher education system, which I believe is the best in the world. In addition, they offer older adults the opportunity to go back to school and pick up new skills.

If we focus on the three steps I have mentioned and work together, I know that we'll succeed in our efforts to improve education in Brazil and in the United States.

In both countries, we have many success stories. There are schools in the poorest neighborhoods that challenge every student to do his or her very best. There are teachers who are incredibly talented and dedicated. There are parents who will sacrifice everything so that their children can get a good education. There are technical schools and community colleges that are serving as job incubators and raising the quality of life in the surrounding community.

And there are many people in both our countries who have good ideas for improving education.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that Nature seemed to have designed ideas so that they would "freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition."

I am convinced that the good ideas coming out of this conference will spread freely and improve the condition of students in the United States and Brazil and across the world.

This will be my last binational meeting as the U.S. Secretary of Education. In speeches all over the world, I have used USA-Brazil partnership as an example of what I call "education diplomacy."

I urge to continue to work together and to learn together. Our hemisphere depends on it.

Thank you very much.