FOR RELEASE: April 17, 2007

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Thank you for that introduction. Before I start, I want to acknowledge the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Our thoughts and prayers are with the students and their families.

I want to thank the University of Texas of the Permian Basin (UTPB) for such a warm welcome. I'm proud to be here with so many distinguished Texans who have dedicated themselves to public service and education. And quite a few of them are products of the University of Texas system, I might add. My husband counts himself among these proud alumni, so it's a family affair for me too.

The UT system is of course a great source of pride for Texas. The fifteen campuses confer a third of the state's undergraduate degrees, and educate three quarters of our health care professionals.

It's hard to imagine Texas without the UT system. In fact, Texas wouldn't be Texas without this system, economically, educationally, civically, or culturally.

As always, it's good to get out of Washington and be back home in Texas for a few days. And it's particularly exciting to be at a campus that has received so much positive attention lately for its academic strength!

Congratulations to all the Falcons for the well-deserved recognition you've received. I want to talk more in just a bit about higher education and the great example that UTPB is setting for colleges and universities across the nation.

But first, a few words on the access piece—making sure our high school students are prepared for higher ed. And that means No Child Left Behind and my Department's efforts on K-12 education. Because that's where it all starts.

And Texas is an appropriate place to continue the conversation about public education in America. Texas helped pioneer the notion that we need more and better accountability from our schools.

And this is where I first cut my teeth on all things education, working with school boards and contributing to the education policy of then-Governor George W. Bush. And before that, working for Governor Bill Clements.

It was also back then that I had the pleasure of working with some prominent Odessians who are warriors for education, Jim Nelson and Steve Late—both UT alumni.

Jim worked hard at the county and state school board level and was named Commissioner of Education under Governor Bush, and Steve served on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. And of course, Jack Ladd served on one of our many school finance committees.

It is thanks to good Texans like them that our state has helped lead the way on education reform.

Just over five years ago, NCLB began fundamental and historic changes in education in this country.

With bipartisan support, and with the active support of the business community, parents, and many others, this law introduced accountability and set a national goal of having all students reading and doing math on grade-level by 2014.

In Texas terms, this meant "no excuses!"

Today, the numbers are speaking for themselves and we are in a place many could not have imagined before NCLB.

All fifty states have accountability plans. Reading scores among 9 year olds have increased more in five years than in the previous 28 years combined. Achievement gaps between poor and minority students and their peers are finally beginning to close, and African-American and Hispanic students are reaching all-time highs in reading and math.

And Texas is also on the move. The White-Hispanic achievement gap is closing in reading and math at nearly all grade levels.

Before NCLB, we didn't have this kind of individual data. Now that we do, teachers are being armed with information to improve and personalize instruction. We can fine tune the system to make sure every child is learning. As I like to say, what gets measured, gets done.

While we've gotten the ball rolling and built an appetite for innovation, we need to keep up the momentum. Our work is just beginning.

While the world is racing towards a global and more competitive economy, our approach to education remains ruled by a mindset that better reflects 19th century agrarian America than the country that gave birth to Microsoft and Google.

The challenge we face is to better harness the data and customize education. We also must maximize the technology that is all around us and has changed so many areas of our life so profoundly.

This year, we are working to reauthorize NCLB. We have learned some things during five years of implementation, and the President's new proposals will improve and strengthen the law—making it even more useful for students, teachers, and schools.

We're working to increase flexibility through a more nuanced system of accountability and allow the use of growth models that can measure individual student progress from year-to-year.

We're focusing on turning around chronically underperforming schools by giving local school leaders the power to make necessary changes. And we're working to improve rigor in our nation's high schools by expanding access to AP courses and requiring more accurate reporting of graduation rates.

We must reauthorize the law this year. If we miss the opportunity, we risk halting the progress we've been making. Or worse, we'll revert to a time when students moved from grade to grade without anyone knowing for sure if they were learning.

Our education system is a continuum, and strengthening K-12 education is the necessary first step to reaching our goal of expanding college access to more Americans.

It's true that our colleges and universities have been a national strength—we like to say, they're the finest in the world—and they're a source of our economic and civic vitality. But despite this success, and in some cases because of it, we have not paid enough attention to some alarming warning signs about the future of higher education.

When we talk about higher education reform, people often wonder what we're getting all worked up about. After all, aren't American colleges and universities the envy of the world?

Consider some of these facts—and you are all painfully aware of them:

• Only 9 percent of low-income students earn degrees by age 24.
• The average earnings of a college graduate are almost forty percent higher than those of a high school graduate.
• 43 states were recently given an "F" on college affordability (including Texas). Tuition has outpaced inflation, housing costs, and even health care.
• Federal Pell grants once covered 84 percent of college costs; they now cover only 36 percent. Of course, we're working to change this. The President's 2008 increase for Pell Grants, combined with an increase in Academic Competitiveness Grants, would cover 86 percent of college costs for freshmen at average four-year public colleges and 100 percent of costs for sophomores.

We can't continue to shrug off these facts just because our colleges and universities have been historically strong. We face a moral and economic urgency that will have broad implications far into the future.

It is tragic that 15 percent of our high schools produce half of our dropouts, and that these schools are disproportionately in low-income areas with mostly minority students.

As if the moral argument isn't enough, a quick survey of demographic realities and global competition demonstrate the huge economic costs we will face if we don't act.

Today, 90 percent of our fastest growing jobs require post-secondary education. We cannot pretend everything is okay when large portions of our population are denied these opportunities. If we are a nation dedicated to equality, we cannot be satisfied with the status quo.

By 2050, the majority of our population will be African American and Hispanic. Minority access to education must improve now, or our problems will be compounded and we will risk becoming a divided nation of those who have access to the opportunities of the 21st century, and those who do not.

The stakes are particularly high here in Texas, where almost half of all students are Hispanic, making them the largest student group. In the 2004-05 academic year, nearly 6 out of 10 dropouts in Texas were Hispanic.

We cannot afford to leave so much of our talent untapped and potential untouched. You at UTPB can be proud of a vibrant Hispanic student population of over 35%.

To tackle these pressing problems of accessibility, affordability, and accountability in post-secondary education, I convened my Commission on the Future of Higher Education.

The Commission's final report last September included recommendations like:

• aligning K-12 expectations with higher education needs;
• simplifying the financial aid process and providing more need-based aid;
• expecting information and transparency from higher education institutions;
• and putting better information in the hands of students and parents to help make the dream of college a reality for more Americans.

In terms of accessibility, we are working to improve high school graduation rates and promote rigor and competitiveness in our high schools. This is an urgent need because those students who take rigorous classes in high school are far more likely to reach college and succeed there.

In my hometown of Austin, suburban Westlake High offers 27 AP courses, but nearby Johnston High offers only 9. I'm sure this is true in your communities too. Nearly 40% of our nation's high schools don't offer AP classes at all.

This isn't about students failing to succeed in challenging environments; it's about schools failing to challenge them in the first place. So, we are working to expand access to AP courses and train more teachers to instruct them.

On accountability, we need to supply parents and students with better information so they can make smart decisions about college.

We expect clear information about all our other big investments in life, from health care to owning a home, so why haven't we expected it in what is arguably the most important investment? In the past, at the Federal level we've invested hundreds of billions of dollars and basically hoped for the best.

Some states and school systems are leading the way to promote better accountability, requiring their schools to release better data. I'm proud to say Texas—and this institution in particular—are among them!

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is working with all 35 public universities and both two-year state colleges to report key accountability measures.

These include everything from ethnic make-up of undergraduate students to detailed disaggregated financial aid information and student learning outcomes via the Collegiate Learning Assessment.

We all know what great press UT Permian Basin has been getting thanks to this data. Not only is UTPB demonstrating impressive student academic growth between freshman and senior year, but you have a higher percentage of students employed or enrolled in graduate education within a year compared with your peers! Congratulations UTPB!

The same US News article that cited UTPB's success quoted an educational consultant who said that, at most schools, it's easier to find statistics about a college football running back than is to find out graduation rates for African American males.

Since this is a football state, let's draw out that analogy. What really matters when determining how successful a running back is? Is it just his height, weight, how much he bench presses, and how quickly he runs a 40? Of course not—it's his output: his yards per carry, total yards, third down conversions, and touchdowns.

But when it comes to colleges, people are left to evaluate schools based on size, location, and how good they'll look in the school colors. Or in my daughter's case, because she "got the feeling."

This is because we usually don't have access to this information about outputs—about, say, value-added academic growth. This must change.

Finally, on affordability, the President's budget called for the largest Pell grant increase in over 30 years—raising the grant to $4,600 next year and increasing to $5,400 over the next five years.

It's important to remember though, that Federal Aid is just one slice of the financial aid pie, and states and institutions must work together with families to help make college more affordable.

I held a Higher Education Summit last month to follow-up on the Commission's recommendations. It's a discussion that will be ongoing, and, as members of the higher education community, it's one that you can all take part in and help lead.

We live in a new world where knowledge is the universal currency and intellectual agility is required to keep up. We must work to extend the opportunity of higher education to more Americans and equip them with the skills they need to take on the challenges of the 21st century.

This is the promise of America and the promise of UTPB: every student achieving—not based on their geography or family income—but according to the limits of their abilities and dreams.

Thank you. I'm happy to take your questions.

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