Thank you. This is my first time before your committee as Secretary, but I know you will treat me as gently as all the other Administration officials who visit!

I'd like to first introduce my budget team, Budget Service Director Tom Skelly and Todd Jones, Associate Deputy Secretary for Budget.

Let me take this opportunity to say a special thanks to Chairman Specter. My Department and I wish you a full and speedy recovery.

I am here to testify on behalf of President Bush's FY 2006 discretionary budget request for the Department of Education. The President's budget accomplishes several important goals. The first is fiscal discipline.

In his February 2nd State of the Union Address, the President underscored the need to restrain spending in order to sustain our economic growth and prosperity. It is important that total discretionary and non-security spending be held to levels proposed in the FY 2006 budget.

Its savings and reforms will help us achieve the President's goal of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009. We urge Congress to support them.

The FY 2006 budget includes more than 150 reductions, reforms and terminations in non-defense discretionary programs. Of those, a third are under the Department of Education. We are committed to working with Congress to achieve these savings. Given the fiscal realities, we must target our resources toward flexibility and results.

Let me now tell you about those results.

First, the budget would expand the promise of the No Child Left Behind Act to our nation's high schools. No Child Left Behind rests on the common-sense principles of accountability for results, data-based decision making, high expectations for all, and empowering change. These principles have proven good for our elementary and middle schools—and they are needed today in our high schools.

Let me share with you a few facts:

• Our 15-year-olds perform below average internationally in mathematics literacy and problem-solving [2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)]
• Just 68 out of every 100 entering ninth-graders will receive their high school diploma on time [Achieve.; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education]
• Just 27 will enter college and still be enrolled by their sophomore year [Achieve.; National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education]
• Two-thirds of high school graduates are not prepared for college [Manhattan Institute]
• And about half of all college students must take remedial English or math classes [Achieve].

Last weekend, the bipartisan National Governors Association reported, "High schools are failing to prepare too many of our students for work and higher education."

And Bill Gates said, "Training the workforce of tomorrow with today's high schools is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe."

Even the New York Times and Washington Post editorial pages have weighed in. The Times said "American students are falling further and further behind their peers in Asia and Europe." It called for a "far more rigorous" curriculum "across the board." And the Post called on states not to "block testing and standards," but to "find ways to raise them."

Call it what you will—a challenge, a problem or a crisis. But it is imperative that we give our high schools the tools to succeed in an economy in which 80 percent of the fastest-growing jobs will require some post-secondary education.

The President's $1.24 billion High School Intervention Initiative would help give students the academic skills needed to succeed in the 21st Century. These reforms would be designed and directed not by the federal government, but by states and school districts themselves.

The budget would provide $250 million to measure student achievement annually and hold schools accountable for students' performance. As we have learned, what gets measured gets done.

We've made a serious effort at improving basic literacy in the early grades. We've sent more than $2.7 billion in Reading First grants to states and school districts, training more than 90,000 teachers and teaching 1.5 million students. Today, reading scores in 4th and 8th grade are up in states all across the nation, with urban school districts leading the way.

Some high school students struggle with reading and math, too. They would benefit from our Striving Readers program—$200 million, a $175 million increase over 2005—and a new Secondary Education Mathematics Initiative—$120 million.

A $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund would reward our best educators and attract more of them to serve in challenging schools.

As you've heard, there is a near-unanimous call for more rigorous high school curricula. The President's budget would invest $45 million, an increase of $42.5 million, to encourage students to take more challenging coursework.

This includes a boost for the public/private State Scholars program, which strives for a college-ready curriculum in every high school; and new Enhanced Pell Grants for students completing such rigorous programs.

The budget also provides a 73 percent increase to expand the availability of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs in high-poverty schools.

Second, the President's budget continues the solid progress begun under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Congress overwhelmingly passed this bipartisan law just over three years ago. Today, across the country, test scores are rising, schools are improving, and the achievement gap is beginning to close for our youngest learners. We must stay the course.

The budget would increase Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies—the engines of No Child Left Behind—by $603 million. This represents a 52 percent increase since the law was signed.

The budget also provides a $508 million increase for the Special Education Grants to States program—75 percent higher than five years ago.

Finally, the President's budget makes college affordability a high priority. It would provide $19 billion over 10 years in mandatory funds for Pell Grants, resulting from student loan program reforms. This will retire the funding shortfall, and help more than five million recipients attend college next year alone.

The maximum individual Pell Grant would be increased by $100 for each of the next five years. And grants would be made available year-round, so students can learn on their own timetable.

To encourage more students—especially poor and minority students—to enter the critical fields of math and science, our budget also includes a new Presidential Math-Science Scholars Program. It would award up to $5,000 each to low-income college students pursuing degrees in those demanding and in-demand fields.

Finally, the budget establishes a new $125 million Community College Access Grants Fund to support dual-enrollment credit transfers for high school students taking college-level courses.

With this budget's passage, student financial assistance will have risen from $48 billion to $78 billion during this Administration.

In conclusion, let me say that I appreciate and respect the priorities you make and promises you keep as the people's representatives. What I have just outlined are the President's education priorities. The common thread in all of them is aligning needs with results.

We will not agree on everything. It will not always be easy to find common budgetary ground in a nation on a wartime footing and in a tight fiscal climate. But I am here to listen to your priorities. The President has made tough choices. We know you will too. And we want to work with you to make the very best choices for America.

Thank you.

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