As honorary ambassador for the United Nation's Decade of Literacy, Mrs. Laura Bush today announced an upcoming Conference on Global Literacy to be held in September in New York. The conference will be held in conjunction with the Department of Education, Department of State, USAID and UNESCO. The announcement was made at an event that coincided with the annual celebration of UNESCO's Education for All (EFA) Week to make quality education and literacy universal.

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings joined Mrs. Bush in heralding the importance of universal education. Education for All Week, a joint effort of the U.S. Departments of State and Education, is celebrated in many countries. The theme for EFA Week 2006 is "Every Child Needs a Teacher."

Education for All Week is celebrated each year around the anniversary of the 2000 World Education Forum, known as the "Dakar Framework," which set out six goals for achieving universal education around the globe. These are:

• Expanding early childhood care and education;
• Ensuring free and compulsory primary education of high quality by 2015;
• Eliminating gender disparities in access to primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieving gender equality by 2015;
• Enhancing educational quality;
• Promoting learning and life skills programs for young people and adults; and
• Expanding adult literacy by 50 percent by 2015.

In her remarks, the secretary discussed the importance of arming teachers with scientifically proven strategies to help children learn to read, strategies that have helped increase reading scores here in the U.S. Following are her prepared remarks:

Thank you, Ambassador Ensenat for that kind introduction and for welcoming Mrs. Bush and me here today to celebrate Education for All Week. It's an honor be here with all the distinguished ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps. I want to give a special thanks to Ambassador Tobias, Assistant-Director General Smith, and all of you here today who are working to improve education around the world.

I was in Paris last fall to celebrate the 60th anniversary of UNESCO. The United States was one of the first nations to ratify UNESCO's constitution in the wake of World War II.

We believed then, as we do today, that a more hopeful, democratic future depends on education for all. And today, we're proud to support UNESCO's effort to make Education for All a reality by 2015.

We know the path to universal education starts with expanding global literacy because reading is the key to all learning. And educators around the world are on the frontlines of this important work. They're spreading literacy and hope. President Bush likes to say teaching is more than a job. It's a calling. And I want to thank the 60 million teachers around the world who answer that call every day for children.

We know every child can learn with a great teacher - for me, it was Miss Brown. And every child deserves to have a teacher like Miss Brown who has high expectations for every student. We will need 15-35 million new teachers around the world to meet UNESCO's 2015 goal of Education for All. But numbers aren't the only issue. We must ensure all our students have high-quality teachers as well. This is especially important for students in lower-income communities where a great teacher can make all the difference in the world.

That's a challenge for every country, including my own, where for years, we've faced an ongoing struggle to provide every child with a quality education. Four years ago, for the first time ever, we Americans made a commitment to ensure every child in the United States has a highly qualified teacher. And we set a historic goal to ensure all children, regardless of race or income, learn to read and do math at grade level by 2014.

We're seeing some great results. Our nation's education report card shows reading scores for 9-year-olds have increased more over the last five years than in the previous 28 years combined.

We still don't have all the answers, but we've learned a lot about what works in our schools and what doesn't. We've launched a new program called Reading First to arm teachers with scientifically proven strategies for helping students learn to read. This work is too important to rely on fads and guesswork. We must focus our resources on research-based strategies that are proven to help children.

I'm looking forward to working with UNESCO and other countries to share what we've learned. We must bring this same research-based approach to our shared fight against illiteracy. The problem is acute, and we only have time to do what works. Around the world, 771 million adults still cannot read, and two-thirds of them are women.

Mrs. Bush has been a powerful voice for helping these people as the United Nations' Honorary Ambassador for the Decade of Literacy.

It's been my privilege to know and work with Mrs. Bush for more than 10 years and to observe her lifelong passion for helping others. She has traveled all around the world as a tireless advocate for our children. As a former teacher and librarian, Mrs. Bush knows how learning to read can change lives and lift people out of poverty. And she's committed to expanding opportunity and empowering people by spreading literacy across the globe.

It's now my honor to introduce the First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Bush.

###

Top

Back to April 2006