Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on February 13

Speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on February 13, 2002:

The Honorable Rod Paige
United States Secretary of Education

Educating a New Generation

You know, it’s such an honor to be here and to be introduced by such a distinguished gentleman as Mr. [Eli] Broad, a person who puts his whole self into what he’s doing. Education couldn’t have a stronger friend. And for the children all across this nation, I want to thank you, your foundation, and your colleagues and each of you for your participation in this, what I think, most high mission and calling -- providing American children with a quality education, all America’s children.

January 8^th was a turn of the century because it was on that day that the President signed his landmark education bill, “No Child Left Behind,” putting the capstone on a year of outstanding bipartisan discussion and cooperation. So, this bill is not a Republican bill or a Democratic bill, it’s an American bill. And I’m so appreciative to the President and his leadership and to the Congress and their leadership for the way they worked together and the way they set aside their political ideologies in favor of something they thought was higher, which was the interest of our young children. So I congratulate Senator Kennedy and Senator Graham, men on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to being liberal and conservative in the Senate of the United States. I congratulate Mr. Boehner, who was the Chairman of the Committee and Mr. Miller, gentlemen who were on the opposite sides of the spectrum as far as being conservative or liberal, with respect to their joining hands together for this particular bill. And there’s a message I want to carry around the country because I think that debate is going to be ongoing, it’s going to take place in boards of education, it’s going to take place in state legislatures. We would like to encourage the same level of bipartisan cooperation for this higher calling -- our children.

By signing the law, the President began a year of dramatic change -- big change. It’s like a river that wandered sluggishly east and now suddenly shifted and begun to flow west. Everyone involved in education -- teachers and administrators, students and parents, business members and community leaders -- all will notice the change. And the westward current will flow swiftly and, like boats that have run aground or have been caught in a swell, they’ll be lifted up and shaken loose and moved back into the right direction.

This redefines the federal role in education, shifting from spending to investing, shifting from funding failure to enabling success, shifting from compliance to performance. “No Child Left Behind” helps us look at our schools in a different way and the federal role in a different way. It reminds us that the goal of schools is not just diplomas and our interest is not just in the system or the structure, it is in the child -- the student. And the system is important to the exact extent that it contributes to the student’s growth. And if the system is not contributing to the student’s growth, remember our interest is in the student. And also another big one: it assures us that responsibility for student performance is not just a responsibility for educators, it is a responsibility for communities, all communities -- faith-based community, business communities, civic communities -- it is a public issue.

President Bush made education his highest priority the first week of his presidency. He asked Congress to take his four principles: accountability for results, flexibility and local control, expanded parental options and doing what works to teach; to take those four principles and undergo vigorous debate -- but vigorous bipartisan debate -- and they did. And they produced this Act. But the President continues with his mission by this year requesting a budget of $56.5 billon for the U.S. Department of Education. This includes $11.4 billion for Title I, targeted specifically at those most in need. And because the President believes that reading is so fundamental, he literally tripled the funding in reading. And this year his budget request gave an additional 115 increase, bringing the funding for reading, if the Congress approves his request, to $1 billion, because reading is fundamental.

There is no doubt, though, that our education system is in need of repair. I’m careful with this, because I don’t want to be insulting to the thousands of teachers and principals all across America who have been working really hard, and many of them getting great results, because there are some outstanding schools in our country. But these exist as islands of excellence in an otherwise sea of mediocrity. And “No Child Left Behind” does not speak to some of the kids whom we’re doing a good job in educating now, some of the kids. The goal is to educate all the children and this isn’t just a goal of pious sentimentality. We don’t think our nation can continue its national and international leadership with anything less, so this is an important goal for us.

Half a century ago, for example, if we had known that America would have had the kind of improvements it has had in technology, [that we would] put an end to federal enforced segregation, and spend more than $8 trillion on schools, we would expect to have gotten better results than we have now. We would expect that we would have all kids reading, and all kids computing, but it isn’t so. What we have is a system that needs repair, a system that educates some of the children. Instead, our nation is blessed only with some excellent schools. We need more. Because, according to the most recent data from the National Assessment of Education Progress, only 32 percent of our 4^th graders can read proficiently at grade level. This is America, ladies and gentlemen. We can’t afford this. We cannot afford this.

With the “No Child Left Behind” law, American education reform grows up. Reform is no longer about access to money alone. It is no longer about compliance or excuses. It’s about improving student achievement. Its clear goal is student performance. We want the system to get better, but the bottom line is the system is there to get the student performance up. It’s about improving student achievement by improving the quality of education that we provide for American students. It’s once again focused on the student, not the system, on students, not just schools. We don’t strive for a great school system. We strive for a great education system. Researching and writing and passing laws was a challenge, but we have now moved into the implementation state and are focused on showing the American people the importance of the four principles -- accountability for results.

It’s time now to stop making excuses about which children can learn and which can’t. We can’t take the position that just because some students are difficult that we have low expectations for them. It’s time for parents to have the advantage of schools that take responsibility. We know that it’s difficult for parents. We know that public schools would like to have great parental involvement. We want great parental involvement, but if we don’t get it we still have the responsibility for student learning. So, accountability for results. You know, I would have some difficulty saying this if it were not for the fact that I’m aware of schools all across America that have children that have all of these at-risk characteristics, poverty and everything. But yet they still succeed. So then I’m beginning to be unabashedly ready to ask all other schools to step up to that bat because if some can, why can’t others? I think the evidence is pretty clear.

Local control and flexibility is the second principle. Washington has too often tried to micromanage the education system by being restrictive and having red tape and bureaucracy. We’re trying to release this and to provide more flexibility because, who knows better what is needed in a particular community than people in that community? Besides, here’s a big secret for everybody: if and when schools change, they will do so as a result of people in the schools and in the community: the people who walk up and down the halls and look into the eyes of the students; the people in the community who see the teachers and administrators on a day-to-day basis. It will not be because of acts that we take in Washington. We can make laws, we can provide resources, we can promote, but we need to do so in an environment that is flexible, that [allows] the decision-making process to go on in schools and in the communities.

Expanded parental options: Now the press has enjoyed talking about this, and there has been a lot of discussion of this, but I think probably the discussion of the quality we like is still to be held. It’s based on a very [important] premise, and that is that the most important force for change in schools is the parent who has information and who has options. We cannot force a situation where there are no options, where parents are just bystanders in this revolution for change. We want to engage them in this, we want to give them information and give them options.

Let me stop here and make this point: the President is a passionate supporter of the schools, as am I. I spent almost eight years in the Houston Independent School District as Superintendent making the point that public schools can really do this. But in order for that to happen, we also had to face the reality that we have to be competitive -- and these other systems are not going away. Home schooling is one of the fastest-growing educational delivery systems. Then we have parochial schools, private schools, Internet schools, virtual schools. These are choices. So then we must step up to the bat and compete and you know what? We can. Every time public schools decide to compete, they’re the best. They’re the best when they’re at their best. Only they’re not at their best too many times.

Here’s what works. I believe that there are a lot of really wonderful people spending a lot of energy, goodwill, working their little fannies off teaching their children to read. But yet, our children are not learning to read. Why is it that our fourth graders’ reading scores [have been] flat for the last two decades after all these efforts? So I don’t think we can criticize effort, but we can look back and say, “Are we doing the right things? Are we efficient here, doing things right, or doing the right things?” We believe that we were not doing the right things. Now we know what the right things are because of the work of the National Institutes of Health, which has for the last twenty-five years considered reading a health issue and has been doing clinical research to find out how children learn to read. Now that the research is out, we know. So, when we say “doing what works” we mean this: is there any other reason to teach any other way? Why don’t we now use the research that we have that we know what works, we know what has experienced success in the past? Those are the strategies we want the dollars from the federal government to fund. We do not want the dollars from the federal government to fund other programs that have less opportunities to produce results.

So, those four principles are what we think will drive this revolution. Clearer standards of what students should know and be able to do. Now, for you in the business community, I know you find this confusing because now we’ve adopted a whole new language in education that we call standards-based education -- as if it’s something different. Who, among you in business, would produce something if you didn’t have standards? You would consider standards fundamental to what you were trying to do, but in our community we say standards are revolutionary. We’ve got to have standards, big debate. Should we have standards? Should we know what we’re trying to do? Our job is just that fundamental. We ask each state to stop, discuss, decide, determine, exactly, explicitly what is it that a student should know and learn as a result of an education paid for by the citizens of that state. Be clear! Now, we don’t think that’s unusual. Now here comes the tricky part -- once you decide on what the students should know and learn and be able to do as a result of an education paid for by the citizens of that state, the next question is, “To what extent are they learning it?”

Now we get into another problem – that problem is called testing. Should you test to determine if they’re learning or not? Why are we forced into a debate like this? Why isn’t that fundamental? Should we say, “Oh, we’re not interested in knowing whether or not they’re achieving this?” This is sometimes a situation that causes me to kind of keep my blood pressure down, because it is so fundamental. Simple, simple. Fundamental. Be clear with your standards, measure to determine if you’re achieving the standard. If you measure, you’re going to get news. We need to measure in order to know. That’s what the measuring is about – to know. So let me spend the rest of the few minutes here about why we’re testing and why it’s important to measure because we want to know.

The central component of this whole thing is accountability. It fuels the change that we want. It sets clear and visible standards. Now we want to know to what extent these standards are being met. A lot of people want to know. The funders should know, the people who are investing, they should know. The teachers should know, because if the teachers know, they know that what they’re doing is working or is not working. The teacher material -- is it working or is it not working? The teachers’ strategies -- are they working or not working? You need to know this and, as soon as you find out that they’re not working, you need to revise them. How much does the student know, where are the weak spots in the student’s growth? We need to know this.

I was at a charter school last week and we discussed this a little bit. One teacher stood and said, “I have to test my students because I want to know what they don’t know in order for me to teach them well. I must know this.” And that is absolutely the key element. It goes both ways. I’ll tell you a couple of stories real quickly. In Houston, we rely so heavily on this information because we wanted to know, we didn’t want to spend time working on things that were not important. We want to spend our energy on high-leverage things. So in examining some of the data we could see in one place, in one particular school that I won’t name, we found that a teacher, this particular teacher, had not been very successful. It was a middle school and math scores for her class -- she had about twenty-five students in her class -- that year only about five of them passed the state-mandated test. So the principal looked back at last year’s record, and learned that only three or four of them passed last year. He looked back at the record for the year before and found similar results. Okay. It’s time to call the teacher in. “So, I know you’re working hard at this, but is there any way we can help here?” so we can now set out a development path for her to upgrade her skills so that this can be changed. She wants to do better, we want to do better, we know specifically how to help her….

Let’s take a positive example. One school, which I will name, Shadaba [sic] Elementary, was testing its students. This is a very successful school, it’s a premier school, it’s an exemplary school, it’s one of the best schools in the nation, and one of the particular teachers is one of the best teachers in the nation. But in this particular class, one of the best classes in the nation, we found out that one objective the students always missed. In this great teacher’s class, in this great school, students were answering this objective wrong. We wouldn’t have known that if we hadn’t had the test data. So we brought the teacher in, we looked at the data, and she said all of a sudden, “My goodness, I’ve been misinterpreting this objective all these years. I’m glad to get this new information.” Now she straightened it out, and what happens? Everybody improves. You can’t know that unless you test this kind of information. So, it’s very useful.

We need to create data bases that show us how schools are working on a long-term basis so we can follow the trends. We’ve created data bases on schools so we know that some poverty schools can do real well because we’ve seen examples of them doing well. They’re doing well because they’re teaching what they know, and they know what they’re teaching.

Every child’s education should be a voyage of discovery. “No Child Left Behind” is about discovering that. It’s about information being used properly. It’s about providing precision in the teaching process. It’s about changing teaching of classes to teaching individuals in the class because each individual in the class has what will be analogous in a hospital to a medical record. You can see this child’s progress from point to point. This improves it. Their test scores will be disaggregated by poverty, by race and by disability, in limited English proficiency, so we know where the achievement gaps exist.

In this state, in a city I won’t name that I visited about five years ago, I participated in a workshop where they were very excited about how the school district was performing because the school district had an average score that was exemplary So you could judge that this school was doing very well because of the high scores and average. When I took the data and broke it down, I found out that that wasn’t the case. The case was that certain ethnic groups in the community were doing very well and, therefore, they were pulling the average scores up high. But when you looked down deep inside the schools, you found some ethnic groups that were really struggling. Now, unless you disaggregate the data you wouldn’t know that, so the school system can go merrily along and say, “We’re doing great,” notwithstanding the fact that some of the populations are doing poorly. See the difference then? “No Child Left Behind.” This way, some children are not being left behind and everybody’s happy that they’re doing good. But when this data is visible for everybody to see, that makes a big difference. Test scores give us that kind of information and so, without any apology, we continue to talk about that.

Let me close by just dealing with some of the arguments that we hear. When we test children, it’s critical that we test all of the children. This means that we don’t just test the good children and end up having high test scores, but we test all the children and eliminate the achievement gap. To improve student performance across the board we have to hold educators accountable for every child. Each child that’s there. So believe President Bush that we’re going to take this seriously. We don’t mean here that once you siphon off the children with disabilities, or once you siphon off children who were never taught properly to read, or once you siphon off children who never learned English properly, or children who are disruptive in the classroom, then you test the rest of the students. No. We’re going to test all the students, because each child deserves us knowing how that child is progressing.

Either educators believe that every child can learn or they do not, and that’s a big difference. For example, if you believe every child cannot learn as a teacher or as a school board member, and your evidence is by looking at what is happening, and you see that every child is not learning, then what action does that promote? You don’t need to do anything now. Your belief is that every child can’t learn. You see that every child has not learned -- the world is right here. So you don’t have to deal with it. Now, if you believe that every child can learn, and your evidence is every child is not learning, then this sends you in a direction to explain why is it that every child is not learning -- because we have the belief already that every child can learn. That’s why we talk about this so much, because of the importance of those two philosophical poles. We’ve got to say you’ve got to be on the right one. This year the federal government will spend $387 million dollars to assist states with the cost of developing these assessments that I’m talking about. Even states that have already developed the assessments will be able to share in some of this money to be used for some other purposes. So then we’re not only asking to do this but we are funding it, we’ll take care of it, we’ll help with the financing of it.

Some people say you shouldn’t test because you narrow the curriculum. Let me ask you: of what value is a broad curriculum for a person who can’t read? Nothing narrows the curriculum more than a person who didn’t learn to read. Some teachers say you’re teaching to the test. President Bush had a perfect answer to this. He said, “If you test a child on basic math and reading skills and you are teaching to the test, then you’re teaching basic math and reading skills. What’s the deal here?” That’s exactly what we’re looking for. Some say testing is too expensive. How expensive is it now for this society to absorb the large numbers of people who can’t read? When we say from fourth grade on less than a third of our kids can read at proficient level, how expensive is it going to be for us as a society to deal with other kids? Some say testing is unfair to poor children. I say it’s unfair to a poor child if you don’t test him because if you don’t test him you don’t get a signature from him, you don’t get a record from him, you don’t make that deficit visible, because if you make it visible, then the public is going to insist that you do something about it. That’s why it’s important.

It might also be that these objections are starting to sound the same and that’s because most of the objectives share the same flaw. That flaw is they oppose gathering information and disseminating this objective information. Most people find it difficult to imagine why anyone would oppose gathering the information, but in this particular sense we find that this is true. Most people have common sense and they understand why testing is important and that is why I believe that the polls, the polls which we don’t pay much attention to, suggest that the public supports this important concept. Are tests perfect? Of course not. Do we have to make sure that they’re used properly? Yes. There are many examples of poorly-designed tests. There are many examples of tests that are designed properly that are used improperly. There are all kinds of things, but none of them rise to the level of throwing out the whole idea of testing.

So let me end by saying this. We look for, not an improved school system; we’re looking for an improved education system, because our emphasis is on individual children. I want to end this with a statement that I’m so impressed by that was uttered by one of our greatest Americans -- one of the greatest Americans -- Abraham Lincoln, because I think it said so clearly what our challenge is today -- us, you and me, people who live today in this society, people who are developing the history that is going to be judged by those who are going to come behind us, people who are active in determining whether or not those who follow us are going to find us in default of the great mission that was left to us by our forefathers with respect to education. Abraham Lincoln said: “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth,” and I think that “last, best hope of earth” is the education of our children.

And so I congratulate you and the great leadership in this community for what has been done here. Even though you’ve done wonderful and great things, I hope that you can kick it up a notch and go even stronger, because I think we have an urgent issue.

Thank you so much