DR. MARIA FERRIER: Please join me in welcoming the Honorable Dr. Rod Paige. [Applause.]

SECRETARY PAIGE: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Let me begin by thanking this beautiful lady for all the hard work she's done. I know that many of you are here because of your trust and love for her. Let's hear a further round of applause. She's the one who deserves a round of applause. [Applause.]

Another one of the ladies too who I have the opportunity to work with very closely is Dr. Marina Tse. [Applause.]

State Assemblywoman Julie Chu, thank you. [Applause.]

I've got myself in some real trouble here calling out people by name, because there are so many wonderful people here today. Let me stop at that and just thank all of you, all of you for coming out today. Thank you. [Applause.]

I was listening as you were naming off the various groups here, all ending in 'America'. That's the wonderful thing about this. Though we come from different parts of the world, we've all chosen that one special place, and it is our responsibility to make this place a wonderful place, a more wonderful place, and that is America. Barbara Jordan who was from Texas, a Congressman from the 18th Congressional District—Congresswoman from the 18th Congressional District, I think put it best when she said with respect to this great country, "We may have come here on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." And what we want to do is do the best we can to make this country the greatest country it can be. And our President believes the best way to do that is to ensure that every single child in this great country has a wonderful education, every one. [Applause.] It's a civil right. Every child has a right to expect that.

So he wants me to communicate this to all Americans, no matter what part of the world we come from. Our children deserve the opportunities that this great country provides for those with a good education. That's why on his fourth day in office, the very first legislative action was to propose to Congress the No Child Left Behind Act. Clearly, there are a lot of things going on in the world. The President is pulled in all kinds of different directions, protecting the country from terrorism, protecting the homeland, boosting the economy, assuring that every American who wants a job can find one. Clearly, he's busy with all these things. But the one thing he never, ever fails to have time to address is education. This is reflected in his budget as well. He means it from the depth of his heart. When he was on the campaign trail he used to say a lot, "If you could see my heart." I've known him for so many years that I can see his heart, and I can tell you that this is a legitimate genuine interest in education for all children.

Now, I want to be sure that I thank all Americans who are involved in education for the fine work that we're doing in educating children now. We are educating some of the children very well. We have some wonderful schools in this country, and we applaud the schools and we applaud the people who make them great. But we cannot take our mind away from those children who are not being served well in grade school, who don't have great schools to go to, and that's why special attention has to be paid to them.

We know that in the Asian community there are needs as well. We know that many subscribe to the myth of the model minority when it comes to education, and they feel that because so many Asian students are doing so well in school by knocking the top off the exams that there's no need to worry about the Asian community because that's taken care of on its own. We know that is a myth. We know that—we think your kids deserve the same kinds of attention. [applause.] So when we say "no child left behind," please believe that that is not just a statement of pious sentimentality, that's a statement of expectation. We intend to do that under this President's leadership. This is a special job that we've accepted.

For the first time in the history of our nation every single school is being held accountable for the performance at that school. No longer can these schools say, "Well, these children didn't do well because they come from this community, that community, across the tracks or wherever." Our message is, it doesn't matter; the school must make the difference, and we must hold the schools accountable. For the first time schools will be identified as achieving or not achieving. When a school does not achieve, then we want the parents in those schools to have the option to find schools that will serve them better.

And we've set a goal that we think is the most important goal that education's ever set, and that is that every classroom should have a highly-qualified teacher in that classroom, because that is the bottom line: how well the teacher can get the job done.

With respect to the special interests of your wonderful community, I want you to know that we are working very hard to provide the kind of language—English acquisition services that your children need. Today there are 5 million children, who speak some 400 different languages, and we know the vast majority of those speak Spanish, about 80 percent, but the second largest group would be an Asian language, so we know we've got a lot of work to do there. So funding for English language learners has increased under the President's budget proposal by nearly 50 percent. It's up now to $665 million. [Applause.]

And the person standing in front of the classroom of your child must be ready to meet the needs of these diverse language learners. So we've got to spend even more money making sure that the teachers are equipped to manage classrooms when there are multiple first languages in those classrooms. We've got to remedy the problem that teachers have expressed when saying, only about 20 percent of our teachers nationally feel that they are comfortable in the classroom when there are a lot of different languages in the classroom. We've got to get that fixed. So, additionally, the President's No Child Left Behind reform requires that all English language learners be tested every year, and this is not because we want to punish them. It's because we want to know how much progress they're making. We want to know if they're not making progress. We want to know this early so we can help them provide the assistance that they need so that they can learn. We want to know this so that we can focus our attention on them and provide them with the help they need.

And finally, under the President's historic education reform, parents have rights. We want parents to express those rights. We want parents to know what those rights are. The U.S. Department of Education has developed a Bill of Rights for parents of English language learners. There are 10 rights that parents should know about. There are 10 rights that parents should take advantage of to ensure that their children are getting the very best education possible. Are we going to have, Marina, those available? They're going to be available to hand out, and we hope that you will take advantage of that and spread that around to all the parents you can find in your community to have them know that we have a President of the United States of America who is interested in their children, and we're going to do the best we can to make sure that not a single child is left behind.

Thank you so much. [Applause.]

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