More Resources Secretary's Remarks

Grapevine, Texas — Saying "the American people see education as a value, not an issue," U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings thanked the nation's state legislators for supporting the No Child Left Behind Act and urged them to help bring high standards and accountability to the nation's high schools as the next step in the reform process. She made her remarks today at the American Legislative Exchange Council's 32nd Annual Meeting.

"No Child Left Behind is good policy and good politics," Spellings said, adding that the reforms spurred by the law "...made a lot of sense to people, and especially to parents.... More than three-quarters of Americans believe that if our high schools don't change in the next 25 years, our country will be less able to compete in the global marketplace."

"A majority of adults say that a high-quality public education system is the most important factor in our country's global success, and a fundamental part of our nation's legacy of innovation and achievement," she noted. "This value is a driving motivation for people throughout our country."

Speaking one day after President Bush addressed the group, Spellings said that the drive for true education reform started at the state level, after A Nation at Risk was published in the 1980s. She recounted her days working with then-Governor Bush later to improve Texas's schools.

"At that time, we knew that there were problems with our education system, but the main solution being offered was to spend more money," she said. "We campaigned for a new solution—bringing high standards and accountability into our schools, and disaggregating data so that parents, teachers and schools would know how every child was doing in school."

"We now have evidence" that high standards and accountability are working for all Americans, Spellings said. She cited:

• the recently released 2004 Nation's Long-Term Report Card, which found "...all-time highs in student achievement—scores are rising and the achievement gap is closing"; and

• "terrific progress on state assessments" in states such as Georgia, Wisconsin and Maryland.

Spellings said governors and state legislators remain the driving forces behind reform. "We at the Department of Education are good federalists," she said. "We all know that when our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they clearly reserved certain powers for the state—not the federal government. One of those responsibilities was education."

Spellings pledged to continue to meet with legislators and work with states to help them implement No Child Left Behind "in a sensible, workable way." She vowed to use "our best research" in considering growth models, measurements for English language learners, new tests for students with special needs and disabilities and other flexibilities sought by states.

Spellings also noted other positive aspects of the law, such as the 250,000 students who took advantage of free tutoring or school choice options last year. She also pointed to the "more than 1,000 students" who have benefited under Washington, D.C.'s groundbreaking D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first federally funded school voucher program in the nation.

Spellings thanked ALEC for helping to "make education reform happen....You're helping people, you're changing lives, you're educating kids.... It's the best part of democracy."

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