Thank you, Senator Hutchison, for that kind introduction. It's a pleasure to be with a fellow Texan. I always like to say that Texas produces strong, independent-minded women. My husband has started saying the same recently. Living in a household full of Texas women will have that effect.

Of course, great women have come from every corner of this country. Senator Hutchison's great book, American Heroines, gives us a perspective on just how much women have contributed to the story of our nation.

I want to thank all of you for continuing that legacy through your leadership in the public and private sectors. Let me give a special thanks to Ambassador Nancy Brinker. She has been an incredible and inspiring force in the fight against breast cancer. It's also great to see Dr. Antonia Novello here today. She helped inspire a generation of young girls by becoming the first female U.S. surgeon general.

We have come a long way since the days when women could not vote. I'm proud to see so many women serving in high-level government positions. President Bush has appointed six women, including me, to his Cabinet and many more to his White House staff and throughout the government. You've already heard from many of them as part of this great program. And as we celebrate the 85th anniversary of winning the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, we must focus on helping the next generation take advantage of the freedoms we enjoy. The key is education.

Our Founding Fathers understood that education served as the best defense against tyranny and oppression. Thomas Jefferson warned that a free nation could not be an ignorant one. That's why building a democracy always starts with a commitment to education.

It's why tyrants fear learning and the open exchange of ideas. It's why the Taliban closed schools and threatened to jail those with the courage to openly educate young women. And it's why a newly freed Afghanistan has started to embrace the promise of education for both boys and girls.

Earlier this spring, I had the chance to visit Afghanistan with Mrs. Bush. I also had the chance to visit in February of 2004 with Karen Hughes and members of the Afghan Women's Council. Afghan women still face great challenges, but they face them with a new sense of hope. When you listen to women in Kabul, you no longer just hear about the sad stories of despair and cruelty under the Taliban. Now you also hear about progress and of dreams for a better future. It's a tribute to the spirit of the Afghan people and to the bravery and sacrifice of our armed forces. We all owe a great debt of gratitude to our military personnel and their families for their work to support a free, democratic Afghanistan.

Mrs. Bush and I had the chance to tour the new Women's Teacher Training Institute in Kabul. Women from all over Afghanistan will come to the school as students and then return to their communities as teachers. They will share their learning with other girls who otherwise would have no access to an education.

While in Kabul, I also signed an agreement on behalf of the United States government to provide more than $17 million for the new American University of Afghanistan, which will educate the country's future leaders—both men and women. Afghanistan has started down the path to democracy, and its women are committed to being a part of that process. We saw their courage in October when millions of them turned out to vote in Afghanistan's first-ever nationwide democratic presidential election. And we are seeing that courage again now. Over 100 women have registered to run for office in the parliamentary elections this fall.

Just a few years earlier, the Taliban deprived these same women of all basic human rights and treated them as prisoners in their own homes. Now women are playing a crucial role in building a more hopeful, democratic society. As Mrs. Bush said, "The survival of a free society ultimately depends on the participation of all its citizens."

From our own history, we know how rewarding and yet challenging that goal can be. And it reminds us that we still must do more to strengthen our own democracy here at home. When the Founding Fathers designed the Constitution, they did so with the purpose of forming "a more perfect Union." That same hope for a more perfect nation still guides us today. It calls on us to extend the promise of the American dream to every citizen.

I'm proud to serve a president who believes that we have a responsibility to do more than just talk about equal opportunity. We must give every child a chance to reach his or her potential. And that starts with a quality education for every child.

That's why President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law a little more than three years ago. The law says all children have the potential to achieve high standards in school. And it says we must measure student progress each year to make sure they all do. In other words, we want to see accountability for results for students.

You all understand the importance of accountability. As business professionals and community leaders, you depend on it every day. You would never settle for a half-finished job. It's the attitude that has made you so successful. And in the years before No Child Left Behind, it was missing from our schools.

As a result, the performance of minority, low-income, and special-needs students used to get lost in meaningless averages. We allowed the performance of the top students to overshadow the struggles of those falling behind. The results were devastating. In 2000, only one out of every 20 African-American fourth-graders could do math proficiently, and fewer than one in seven Hispanic fourth-graders could read proficiently. No Child Left Behind forced us to confront this achievement gap and to do something about it. The law holds schools accountable for making progress among all groups of students.

And that starts with annually assessing every student in reading and math and breaking down the results into student groups such as minority and special education students. This data provides parents and educators with a valuable tool. It shows which students need extra help and where. When we assess every student, we make sure every child counts. As the saying goes, "What gets measured gets done."

Now we expect all students to achieve high standards in school. And when schools fall short of their responsibilities, No Child Left Behind gives parents and students new options like the ability to transfer to a better-performing school or the ability to get free after-school tutoring. These resources help level the playing field for families who otherwise would be unable to afford extra help for their children.

Thanks to an amendment sponsored by Senator Hutchison and Senator Clinton, districts now can use federal money to give students the option of learning in single-sex classrooms. Some children learn better in single-sex environments, and districts should be able to offer parents this alternative. We believe every child deserves an equal opportunity to succeed. And that's the spirit of this law.

We can already see what a difference it is making. In states across the country, more and more schools are moving in the right direction. Test scores are rising, and the stubborn achievement gap is starting to close. By 2014, we expect every child to be proficient in reading and math. And we are well on our way to getting there.

No society has ever made such a commitment to equality. And if we stay the course and resist calls to lower our standards for success, we can do what no other nation has ever done. We can give every child a quality education and an equal opportunity to succeed in school and life. It's the moral imperative of the 21st century.

And we need your help. I hope you'll take an active role in the schools in your communities. Check in to see how they're doing, ask the tough questions about strategies and plans to have every child on grade level by 2014, and help make sure parents and students know about all their options.

You can also help by supporting mentoring and tutoring programs. These programs can make a real difference in a child's life. We need to make sure young girls and boys have positive role models to follow. My daughters don't like to admit it publicly, but children and even teenagers look up to the adults in their lives. And I want to thank you for setting such an inspiring example for children, and especially young girls, across this nation. As a result, female high school seniors now have higher educational aspirations than their male counterparts.

Unfortunately, there's still a large gap between our students' aspirations and reality. For example, we've done a good job selling the dream of college to our students. Almost three-quarters of all high school sophomores hope to graduate from college. But studies show that many of these same students will leave high school unprepared for the challenges of higher education.

We must close this gap between expectations and reality. And when you consider that 80 percent of the fastest-growing jobs will require some postsecondary education, we must close it now.

Of course, we can't help more students succeed in college unless we first help them make it through high school. We face some serious challenges. By some estimates, nearly one-third of incoming ninth-graders do not graduate from high school on time.

The result is that you in the business community end up paying for our students' education twice—first as taxpayers and then as providers of remedial education. By some estimates, American companies, universities, and of course, taxpayers must spend billions of dollars each year just to teach employees and students the basic skills they should have learned in high school.

The costs are even higher for our children. The average college grad makes about $30,000 more than the average high school dropout, who earns only around $23,000 a year. That's not the future we want for our children or the future we want for our country.

That's why the president has proposed a new $1.5 billion High School Initiative to make sure every student graduates high school with the skills to succeed in life. This initiative will allow high schools to develop timely intervention programs to save students at risk of falling behind in reading and math.

Of course, we can't know where students are struggling unless we expand annual assessment. We must measure student progress in at least three grades during high school so we can ensure no one falls behind just as they're nearing the finish line. It's the only way to ensure every ninth-grader graduates on time with the skills to succeed in college or in the increasingly competitive global workplace.

And no one has a better idea of what it will take to succeed in the 21st century than you do. For years, you have warned us that our students need to develop stronger math and science skills if they want to keep up with the competition. Yet almost two-thirds of employers give high school graduates only fair to poor marks in math. And even worse, recent studies have shown that our students have fallen behind their peers across the world in problem-solving.

If America is going to stay the best place to do business in the world, we must have the best math students. The president has proposed a new $120 million program to strengthen the quality of middle and high school math especially for underachieving students. We'll use these funds to provide teachers with teaching methods that are proven to work.

This is especially important for our girls. Over the last 30 years, we've made a lot of progress raising expectations for girls in school. Females are now less likely to drop out of high school than males and more likely to receive bachelor's degrees. And the number of women-owned businesses has grown almost twice as quickly as the rate for all businesses.

But according to the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 15-year-old girls in this country still lag behind their male peers in mathematics literacy. And women are still underrepresented in crucial fields of study like computer science, engineering, and physical sciences. As you all know, the demand for these skills is only going to keep growing in the 21st century.

We must encourage students to take a greater interest in these important subjects. And of course, nothing inspires a young mind like a great teacher. We want to make it easier for capable professionals from other walks of life to become teachers in our public schools. The president has proposed a new initiative to eliminate the barriers that have kept these talented non-traditional teachers out of our classrooms. These men and women can bring valuable real-life experience to the classroom especially in the fields of math and science. Their passion for these subjects is contagious. Who knows? Perhaps some of you in this room have heard the calling to become a teacher, tutor, or mentor.

Thank you for inviting me today. I hope you will take a stand for our children. We need you to ask the hard questions about how our schools are doing. You can be powerful advocates for our students. The days when we looked past the achievement gap and left children behind are over.

Now we must take the next step and bring high standards and accountability to our high schools. The stakes have never been higher and the opportunity never greater. We need your help spreading the message. I need your help. America's economic future depends on our success.

As we watch nations across the globe take the first steps toward democracy, we remember that democracy begins with education. And after more than two centuries, education still lies at the heart of our great experiment and our quest for a more perfect union. We can't fulfill the promise of equal opportunity until we first provide every boy and girl with a quality education. It's a promise we need to keep.

Thank you.

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