Virginia Association of Secondary School Principles

Thank you, Randy, for that kind introduction.

Good afternoon. It is great to be back with you. The last time I was before the Virginia Association of Secondary School Principals was during the campaign at the Homestead. It's funny how people meet at the Homestead. It doesn't seem to be as popular now.

I want to talk to you today about a plan that we will be outlining during the summer and into the fall about trying to bring excellence into all of our education system across the Commonwealth.

You know when I ran for governor, I ran with the message that Virginia could lead the nation in the 21st century - that Virginia could be the place that got the New Economy right - that Virginia could be the Commonwealth of Opportunity.

And let me assure you that, 17 months into this job, I believe that more than ever. That is our goal, that is our right, and that is what we should strive for.

You know, before I was Governor, I worked as a businessman for 20 years, and that experience taught me many valuable lessons. One of those lessons was about how to get through tough economic times. In tough times, it is those businesses with strong foundations and a focus on their core priorities that come out on top.

New leaders emerge in tough times - those that had the foresight to invest when no one else had the courage. I think the same thing is true with state governments - those that operate efficiently and invest in what is essential will lead our nation into the future.

And I believe it is Virginia's time.

I think we can all agree that the last 17 months could be classified as 'tough times.' We had to implement budget cuts totaling more than $6 billion. We now have 4,200 fewer positions in state government than when I took office. We had to take those steps if we wanted to re-establish our strong foundation and re-focus on what we believe are our core priorities.

Now, during this year's General Assembly session, we could have simply muddled through these tough times, taped-over some of the problems, and hoped and prayed for an economic recovery. But it seemed to me that this was an ideal time to re-examine everything that state government does, and see if we could do it more effectively and efficiently.

So we launched the most sweeping government reform program in more than a generation - from mental health, to workforce training, to veterans care. We are taking many aspects of state government and reorganizing and reforming them.

We have taken some of the agencies that we inherited that were truly broken - like the Virginia Department of Transportation - and put transportation professionals back in charge. The new watchword at VDOT is 'on time and on budget.' We have launched a government technology reform that could save us upwards of $100 million by the end of this administration. That would allow us to hire 5,000 new teachers.

But a strong foundation is not enough. To lead we must focus on our priorities. And let me clear: I believe that there is no greater priority for Virginia's future than our education system.

We all know those elected officials who go out and pound the podium and talk about how education is their top priority. Time and again, these are the same elected officials who often are the first to sign a 'no new revenue increase' pledge.

Well, during this last General Assembly session, we made Virginia one of just a handful of states that demonstrated what our top priority was. We did not cut funding for K-12 education. In fact, we went further - and added $82 million in additional funding to K-12 education in Virginia.

And when the General Assembly said, 'Maybe we will give our teachers and state workers a raise this fall -- IF the money is there,' I said: 'No way. We are NOT going to make that raise contingent. If we have to make additional cuts to fund it, we will make additional cuts.' We are going to honor that promise, and all of our teachers, principals and state workers will get that 2.25% raise later this year.

Our record shows that education is our top priority - and that is not just a sound bite. I think there are many other things we can celebrate.

We can celebrate today our Partnership for Achieving Successful Schools, our PASS initiative. A year ago, working with your organization, working with the superintendents and others, we said we have a lot to celebrate in Virginia about our success in terms of school accreditation - but there are still schools that are struggling. So we put together the PASS initiative, which focuses on those 117 schools that are still struggling with the Standards of Learning - more specifically, the 34 Title One schools that are in need of additional help.

We are taking the Governor's time and attention, and we have promised to visit each of the 34 Title One schools. Too often, our elected officials go and visit the most successful schools, but not the schools that need the most help. Many of these schools have never had a local school board member visit, let alone a Governor.

We went out and recruited more than 160 different businesses and over 800 individuals to come into these struggling schools to help with business partnerships and individual mentoring. This was recognition that the community has a critically important role in helping these schools, and more importantly, these students, succeed.

And we did something pretty radical: we reached out across school division lines. With the help of a variety of superintendents and principals, we put together academic intervention teams. Successful teachers and principals have gone into the struggling schools up to 12 days a year, and for the whole year in Richmond and Portsmouth, and said, 'Let's see if we can learn together.'

Now, we have not seen the full results of this yet. PASS already has been honored with national awards from the National Alliance of Business and the Southern Growth Policies Board. And I think it reflects the kind of innovative approach we need to make sure that we truly leave no school behind.

Now, at the same time, we know that we have another deadline coming up. The year 2004 is when the rubber meets the road.

We recently have seen some states were not prepared when their accountability requirements clicked-in. Some of those states have even started to retreat. Well, I do not believe that after seven years we can retreat from our higher standards and accountability.

But, the deal we made with the people of Virginia and the deal that was made with you as teachers and principals was that we would have high standards -- and yes, we would have accountability. But we would not have those high standards and accountability simply to tear down schools or tear down students, but to identify those schools and students that needed extra help so they truly would not be left behind.

That is why we launched, earlier this month, Project Graduation. Project Graduation says that we have got to prepare right now for graduation in 2004. We must put in place right now the summer academies that will provide additional tutoring and allow students to take the SOLs during the summer. Once they have passed the test, summer school is over for them.

We have put in place on-line tutorials, and on-line courses, for those students who need not only the SOL remediation but also the course remediation. We also are showcasing a model program developed in Arlington, where caseworkers are assigned to help students who need it.

We will try other models as well. But we want to make sure that starting this fall, when we have identified those rising seniors who are still struggling in reading and writing, those students will have the tools available to get extra help. We will walk that extra mile with these students to make sure that they do not get left behind.

If 'Leave No Child Behind' is going to be more than political rhetoric, if it truly is our obligation and our responsibility, then we must have the resources and the commitment to make sure that we carry through with it. I believe that Project Graduation will show great success this summer with our first academies, and the successful pilot programs will be expanded statewide later in the year.

But our goal is not simply to get students to pass a test: it is to equip them with the skills they need to get ahead in a changing economy.

The fact is, from somebody who spent 20 years as an employer, I can assure you that a student will not be able to succeed unless they can develop and demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency in reading and writing. It is our obligation to ensure that all of our students have those skills.

Project Graduation, PASS, and our success in holding the line on education funding are causes for celebration. But if we are to work to truly build a Commonwealth of Opportunity for all Virginians, it is clear that we must do more.

So going forward, I want us to fundamentally change the way we think about education. I believe that we need to view education not as a series of disconnected phases of life, but as a continuous process that is the birthright of every Virginian.

And so later on this summer and into the fall, I will outline a plan I call an Education of a Lifetime that will look at all the phases of a Virginian's life, and the importance of education in each phase. Because you are going to be part of that plan, I thought I would take a few moments and outline some components today.

First, we all must acknowledge that a child's education does not start with kindergarten, or even pre-kindergarten. It starts much earlier. In the Formative Years, research overwhelmingly demonstrates that a system focusing on the first five years of a child's life can dramatically improve school performance in later years. If children are going to succeed in school, they must come ready to learn.

Fortunately, the federal government has made some federal funds available for these early childhood initiatives. But to date, the Commonwealth has not made good use of these available funds. My administration will lay out a plan to use all available federal funds to put in place a highly qualified early childhood development system for Virginia's children and families.

But a ready child is not enough. We must also require that each school and each school system function at the highest level so that our children have the opportunity to learn.

I believe that just as we have launched a reform of every aspect of state government, looking at ways to deliver services more efficiently, we will have to do the same in terms of how we view our education spending. Combined with that, we will launch an initiative designed to make sure that our students learn from the highest quality teachers. It has become evident in the commonwealth and across the nation that we really do not have a teacher recruitment problem: we have a teacher retention problem.

And you who are on the front lines must be involved in how we look at keeping good teachers, particularly those in urban areas and rural communities. For those in the Learning Years, there is nothing more important than the instructors and the principals who teach our children. We must make sure that Virginia's children have the best teachers and principals, and that they are working in an environment that encourages learning.

When a student gets to the end of their high school career, we all know that he or she is faced with many choices and some very important decisions that will begin to chart the course of his or her life. I do not believe that our education system places enough emphasis on the importance of these Transition Years. When you think about it, our system of high school education has not changed in 100 years. We are looking at a major effort to reform high schools, particularly in the senior year.

Our schools should be designed to ensure that students are ready to move into the workforce or go on to higher education. We intend to dramatically increase opportunities for students to earn college or technical credit while in high school, particularly in that senior year. This change could substantially reduce the amount of higher education tuition that families will have to pay down the road.

When I ran for this job, I talked often about the fact that we needed a system in Virginia that put as much value on a plumber or an electrician as it did on a doctor or a lawyer. Let me assure you that we will also continue to focus on revamping our system of career and technical education. We have some very specific ideas about how we can work with you to make that a reality.

We have to look at reform in higher education as well. One of the most interesting things I have learned is that a student who attends William & Mary or Norfolk State or Christopher Newport University for a couple of years but does not graduate does little to increase their long-term earning power.

We need a much greater focus not only on attracting students to our colleges and universities and community colleges, but actually graduating students. We must put a focus in terms of funding and incentives toward ensuring that these young people get those degrees so that their career earning power is substantially increased.

Now, most people consider education, in the traditional sense, to be finished after you finish school, or a community college, or a four-year institution, or graduate school. But I believe there is a fourth phase to a Virginian's educational development - what I call the Career Advancement Years. In this changing economy, education continues throughout a person's life well into their senior years. Regardless of what the stock market is saying today, we are in a knowledge- based economy that requires more knowledge-based jobs.

Without those skills, without a commitment to career advancement and lifelong learning, then your economic and life potential will be limited regardless of your degree. We must continue to emphasize workforce development as a key part of building a world-class education system.

We already have started working to streamline the mish-mash of workforce programs that cuts across twenty-two separate initiatives by ten state agencies within three separate secretariats. Bringing a more rational focus to workforce training is part of our Education of a Lifetime as well. We also will lay out a plan to use all of our assets - our community colleges, our training facilities - in new and exciting ways to develop our workforce.

Only when we focus on the Education of a Lifetime process, when we have a plan for the four phases of education - Formative Years, Learning Years, Transition Years and Career Advancement Years - will we be able to differentiate ourselves from other states and truly become that Commonwealth of Opportunity.

Now, let me say at the outset, I do not expect all of these initiatives to be met with universal acclaim, particularly from all parts of the education community. Change is always met with some resistance. And these reforms will be no different. But before we ask Virginians to do more for our public schools, we need to pursue these reforms in our educational system.

This is the same type of approach that we are demanding from other parts of state government. We need to show Virginians that we are achieving savings and giving the taxpayer the best value for their dollar. To build the broad-based education coalition that I believe we will need to take advantage of this opportunity, this moment in time, we will first need to show that our fiscal house is in order. And that is why this part of the reform agenda, in terms of bringing efficiency to our school systems, is terribly important.

The needs are great. Last year, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission determined that the state-mandated Standards of Quality were under-funded by about $500 million. Our State Board of Education recently identified another $300 million in terms of new SOQs. And that is before we even go through the next biennium's benchmarking process.

Now JLARC, as you all know, is an arm of the legislature, and the Board of Education is still made up of a majority of those who were appointed by my predecessor. So it is clear: there are unmet needs in education, and this is not a partisan issue.

As we work on SOQ funding, as we work on these reforms, as we work on trying to ensure this Education of a Lifetime, I want to urge you to work with other organizations that have a common view of where we need to take Virginia. We need to build a broader coalition than the traditional education coalition that focuses on teacher salaries, school buildings and classroom sizes. Those are important issues, but we need to build a coalition that is broader than that.

If we are going to move forward, if we are going to make this Education of a Lifetime a reality, then we must create a grassroots movement. We need parents, teachers, principals, administrators, business leaders, retirees. We welcome anyone who understands that at this moment in time, when states are retrenching in terms of their commitment to education, is our opportunity for Virginia to make these kinds of long-term investments that will pay dividends for years to come.

The only way we can do that is to bring all of these disparate groups together -- the advocates for early childhood, you as advocates for K-12 education, the broad group of advocates for higher education, for our colleges and universities, and those who advocate for increased commitment to workforce training.

Let me assure you that your involvement will be crucial in building this coalition, but more importantly crucial in making these reforms possible so that we can have that Education of a Lifetime that will distinguish Virginia.

Finally, I want to say a word of thanks to all of you for all that you do.

You are not recognized enough. Lord knows, your job is challenging. You are not compensated enough, but I understand as a parent of three daughters what a critically important role you play. On behalf of umpteen million other parents across Virginia, let me say, 'Thank you for a job well done.'

And I hope that you will join me as we move forward to make sure that Virginia, this Commonwealth that led our country in its first century, will also lead America in the 21st century.

Thank you all very much, and God bless you.