Let me also say a word to President Harvey, a president who bleeds Hampton blue. In a single generation, Hampton has transformed from a small black college into a world-class research institution. That transformation has come through the efforts of many people, but it has come through President Harvey’s efforts, in particular, and I want to commend him for his leadership.

I also want to recognize the Board of Trustees, faculty, alums, family, and friends with us today. And most importantly, I want to congratulate all of you, the Class of 2010 – I take it none of you walked across Ogden Circle.

We meet here today, as graduating classes have met for generations, not far from where it all began, near that old oak tree off Emancipation Drive. I know my University 101. There, beneath its branches, by what was then a Union garrison, about twenty students gathered on September 17, 1861. Taught by a free citizen, in defiance of Virginia law, the students were escaped slaves from nearby plantations, who had fled to the fort seeking asylum.

After the war’s end, a retired Union general sought to enshrine that legacy of learning. With collections from church groups, Civil War veterans, and a choir that toured Europe, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was founded here, by the Chesapeake – a home by the sea.

That story is no doubt familiar to many of you. But it is worth reflecting on why it happened; why so many people went to such trouble to found Hampton and all our Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The founders of these institutions knew, of course, that inequality would persist long into the future. They recognized that barriers in our laws, and in our hearts, wouldn’t vanish overnight.

But they also recognized a larger truth; a distinctly American truth. They recognized that with the right education, those barriers might be overcome and our God-given potential might be fulfilled. They recognized, as Frederick Douglass once put it, that “education…means emancipation.” They recognized that education is how America and its people might fulfill our promise. That recognition, that truth – that an education can fortify us to rise above any barriers, to meet any tests – is reflected, again and again, throughout our history.

In the midst of civil war, we set aside land grants for schools like Hampton to teach farmers and factory-workers the skills of an industrializing nation. At the close of World War II, we made it possible for returning GIs to attend college, building and broadening our great middle class. At the Cold War’s dawn, we set up Area Studies Centers on our campuses to prepare graduates to understand and address the global threats of a nuclear age.

Education, then, is what has always allowed us to meet the challenges of a changing world. And that has never been more true than it is today. You’re graduating in a time of great difficulty for America and the world. You’re entering the job market, in an era of heightened international competition, with an economy that’s still rebounding from the worst crisis since the Great Depression. You’re accepting your degrees as America wages two wars – wars that many in your generation have been fighting.

Meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.

It’s a period of breathtaking change, like few others in our history. We can’t stop these changes, but we can adapt to them. And education is what can allow us to do so. It can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time.

First and foremost, your education can fortify you against the uncertainties of a 21st century economy. In the 19th century, folks could get by with a few basic skills, whether they learned them in a school like Hampton, or picked them up along the way. For much of the 20th century, a high school diploma was a ticket to a solid middle class life. That is no longer the case.

Jobs today often require at least a bachelor’s degree, and that degree is even more important in tough times like these. In fact, the unemployment rate for folks who’ve never gone to college is over twice as high as it is for folks with a college degree or more.

The good news is, all of you are ahead of the curve. All those checks you wrote to Hampton will pay off. You are in a strong position to outcompete workers around the world. But I don’t have to tell you that too many folks back home aren’t as well prepared. By any number of different yardsticks, African Americans are being outperformed by their white classmates, and so are Hispanic Americans. And students in well-off areas are outperforming students in poorer rural or urban communities, no matter what color their skin.

Globally, it’s not even close. In 8th grade science and math, for example, American students are ranked about 10th overall compared to top-performing countries. African Americans, however, are ranked behind more than twenty nations, lower than nearly every other developed country.

All of us have a responsibility, as Americans, to change this; to offer every child in this country an education that will make them competitive in our knowledge economy. But all of you have a separate responsibility, as well. To be role models for your brothers and sisters. To be mentors in your communities. And, when the time comes, to pass that sense of an education’s value down to your children. To pass down that sense of personal responsibility and self-respect. To pass down the work ethic that made it possible for you to be here today.

So, allowing you to compete in the global economy is the first way your education can prepare you. But it can also prepare you as citizens. With so many voices clamoring for attention on blogs, on cable, on talk radio, it can be difficult, at times, to sift through it all; to know what to believe; to figure out who’s telling the truth and who’s not. Let’s face it, even some of the craziest claims can quickly gain traction. I’ve had some experience with that myself.

Fortunately, you’ll be well positioned to navigate this terrain. Your education has honed your research abilities, sharpened your analytical powers, and given you a context for understanding the world. Those skills will come in handy.

But the goal was always to teach you something more. Over the past four years, you’ve argued both sides of a debate. You’ve read novels and histories that take different cuts at life. You’ve discovered interests you didn’t know you had, and made friends who didn’t grow up the same way you did. And you’ve tried things you’d never done before, including some things I’m sure you wish you hadn’t.

All of it, I hope, has had the effect of opening your minds; of helping you understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. But now that your minds have been opened, it’s up to you to keep them that way. And it will be up to you to open minds that remain closed. That, after all, is the elemental test of any democracy: whether people with differing points of view can learn from each other, work with each other, and find a way forward together.

I’d also add one further observation. Just as your education can fortify you, it can also fortify our nation, as a whole. More and more, America’s economic preeminence, our ability to outcompete other countries, will be shaped not just in our boardrooms and on our factory floors, but in our classrooms, our schools, and at universities like Hampton; by how well all of us, and especially us parents, educate our sons and daughters.

What’s at stake is more than our ability to outcompete other nations. It’s our ability to make democracy work in our own nation. Years after he left office, decades after he penned the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson sat down, a few hours’ drive from here, in Monticello, to write a letter to a longtime legislator, urging him to do more on education. Jefferson gave one principal reason – the one, perhaps, he found most compelling. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” he wrote, “it expects what never was and never will be.”

What Jefferson recognized, like the rest of that gifted generation, was that in the long run, their improbable experiment – America – wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have their best interests at heart. It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged; if we held our government accountable; if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship.

The success of their experiment, they understood, depended on the participation of its people – the participation of Americans like all of you. The participation of all those who’ve ever sought to perfect our union. Americans like Dorothy Height.

As you probably know, Dr. Height passed away the other week at the age of 98. Having been on the firing line for every fight from lynching to desegregation to the battle for health care reform, she lived a singular life. But she started out just like you, understanding that to make something of herself, she needed a college degree.

So, she applied to Barnard – and got in. Only, when she showed up, they discovered she wasn’t white like they’d thought. You see, their two slots for African Americans had already been filled. But Dr. Height was not discouraged. She was not deterred. She stood up, straight-backed, and with Barnard’s acceptance letter in hand, marched down to NYU, where she was admitted right away.

Think about that for a moment. A woman, a black woman, in 1929, refusing to be denied her dream of a college degree. Refusing to be denied her rights. Her dignity. Her piece of America’s promise. Refusing to let any barriers of injustice or inequality stand in her way. That refusal to accept a lesser fate; that insistence on a better life is, ultimately, the secret of America’s success.

So, yes, an education can fortify us to meet the tests of our economy, the tests of citizenship, and the tests of our time. But what makes us American is something that can’t be taught – a stubborn insistence on pursuing a dream.

The same insistence that led a band of patriots to overthrow an empire. That fired the passions of union troops to free the slaves and union veterans to found schools like Hampton. That led foot-soldiers the same age as you to brave fire-hoses on the streets of Birmingham and billy clubs on a bridge in Selma. That led generation after generation of Americans to toil away, quietly, without complaint, in the hopes of a better life for their children and grandchildren.

That is what has makes us who we are. A dream of brighter days ahead, a faith in things unseen, a belief that here, in this country, we’re the authors of our own destinies. And it now falls to you, the Class of 2010, to write the next great chapter in America’s story; to meet the tests of your own time; and to take up the ongoing work of fulfilling our founding promise. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

As Prepared for Delivery–May 9, 2010

Copyright © 2010, Newport News, Va., Daily Press

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November 23, 2009

South Court Auditorium, Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I am extraordinarily excited to have you all here today. A couple of special acknowledgements I want to make — first of all, two of my outstanding Cabinet members: Secretary Arne Duncan, our Education Secretary; and Secretary Steven Chu, who is our Energy Secretary. They are both doing outstanding work each and every day.

I want to acknowledge Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who is from Texas, and she is one of the members of our Science and Technology Committee and doing outstanding work. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden is in the house. Where’s Charlie? There he is, right there in front. NSF Director Dr. Arden Bement is here, right there. Dr. John Holdren, my Science and Technology Advisor — where’s John? Right there. Melody Barnes, our Domestic Policy Council chair or head, director. (Laughter.) Director.

And then we’ve got some students from — some wonderful students from some wonderful schools: Oakton High School in Vienna, Virginia; Longfellow Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia; the Washington Mathematics Science Technology Public Charter High School here in D.C., and the Herndon High School in Herndon, Virginia. Welcome, everybody. (Applause.)

Now, the students from Oakton High School are going to be demonstrating the “Cougar Cannon,” designed to scoop up and toss moon rocks. I am eager to see what they do — for two reasons. As President, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I also want to keep an eye on those robots, in case they try anything. (Laughter.)

It’s an honor to be here and to be joined by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Sally. (Applause.) This is a person who’s inspired a generation of girls and boys to think bigger and set their sights higher. I want to thank NASA and Charlie for providing the interactive globe — an innovative and engaging way of teaching young people about our world.

Welcome, Mythbusters, from Discovery Channel. Where are they? There they are. (Applause.) I hope you guys left the explosives at home. (Laughter.) And finally, allow me to thank the many leaders here today who’ve agreed to be part of this historic effort to inspire and educate a new generation in math and science.

We live in a world of unprecedented perils, but also unparalleled potential. Our medical system holds the promise of unlocking new cures — but it’s attached to a health care system that’s bankrupting families and businesses and our government. The sources of energy that power our economy are also endangering our planet. We confront threats to our security that seek to exploit the very openness that is essential to our prosperity. And we face challenges in a global marketplace that link the trader to Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, to the office worker in America to the factory worker in China — an economy in which we all share in opportunity, but we also share, unfortunately, in crisis.

The key to meeting these challenges — to improving our health and well-being, to harnessing clean energy, to protecting our security, and succeeding in the global economy — will be reaffirming and strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And that leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today, especially in those fields that hold the promise of producing future innovations and innovators. And that’s why education in math and science is so important.

Now the hard truth is that for decades we’ve been losing ground. One assessment shows American 15-year-olds now rank 21st in science and 25th in math when compared to their peers around the world. And this isn’t news. We’ve seen worrying statistics like this for years. Yet, time and again, we’ve let partisan and petty bickering stand in the way of progress. And time and again, as a nation, we’ve let our children down.

So I’m here and you are here because we all believe that we can’t allow division and indifference to imperil our position in the world. It’s time for all of us — in Washington and across America — to take responsibility for our future.

And that’s why I’m committed to moving our country from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math education over the next decade. To meet this goal, the Recovery Act included the largest investment in education in history while preventing hundreds of thousands of educators from being fired because of state budget shortfalls. Under the outstanding leadership of Arne Duncan, we’ve launched a $4 billion Race to the Top fund, one of the largest investments in education reform in history.

And through the Race to the Top, states won’t just be receiving funding, they’ll have to compete for funding. And in this competition, producing the most innovative programs in math and science will be an advantage. In addition, we are challenging states to improve achievement by raising standards, using data to better inform decisions, and taking new approaches to turn around struggling schools. And because a great teacher is the single most important factor in a great education, we’re asking states to focus on teacher effectiveness and to make it possible for professionals — like many of the people in this room — to bring their experience and enthusiasm into the classroom.

But you are here because you know the success we seek is not going to be attained by government alone. It depends on the dedication of students and parents, and the commitment of private citizens, organizations, and companies. It depends on all of us. That’s why, back in April, at the National Academy of Sciences, I issued a challenge: to encourage folks to think of new and creative ways of engaging young people in science and engineering. And we are here because the leaders in this room answered that call to action.

Today, we are launching the “Educate to Innovate” campaign, a nationwide effort to help reach the goal this administration has set: moving to the top in science and math education in the next decade. We’ve got leaders from private companies and universities, foundations and non-profits, and organizations representing millions of scientists, engineers, and teachers from across America. The initial commitment of the private sector to this campaign is more than $260 million –- and we only expect the campaign to grow.

Business leaders from Intel, Xerox, Kodak, and Time Warner Cable are teaming up with Sally Ride, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the Carnegie Corporation, to find and replicate successful science, math, and technology programs all across America. Sesame Street has begun a two-year initiative to teach young kids about math and science. And Discovery Communications is going to deliver interactive science content to 60,000 schools reaching 35 million students.

These efforts extend beyond the classroom. Time Warner Cable is joining with the Coalition for Science After School and FIRST Robotics — the program created by inventor Dean Kamen, which gave us the “Cougar Cannon” — to connect one million students with fun after-school activities, like robotics competitions. The MacArthur Foundation and industry leaders like Sony are launching a nationwide challenge to design compelling, freely available, science-related video games. And organizations representing teachers, scientists, mathematicians, and engineers — joined by volunteers in the community — are participating in a grassroots effort called “National Lab Day” to reach 10 million young people with hands-on learning.

Students will launch rockets, construct miniature windmills, and get their hands dirty. They’ll have the chance to build and create — and maybe destroy just a little bit — (laughter) — to see the promise of being the makers of things, and not just the consumers of things.

The administration is participating as well. We’ve already had a number of science-focused events with young people at the White House, including Astronomy Night a few weeks ago. The National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, under the leadership of a terrific scientist, Steven Chu, have launched an innovative — an initiative to inspire tens of thousands of students to pursue careers in clean energy.

And today, I’m announcing that we’re going to have an annual science fair at the White House with the winners of national competitions in science and technology. If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you’re a young person and you’ve produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too. Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models, and here at the White House we’re going to lead by example. We’re going to show young people how cool science can be.

Through these efforts, we’re going to expand the scope and scale of science and math education all across America. And we’re going to expand opportunities for all our young people — including women and minorities who too often have been underrepresented in scientific and technological fields, but who are no less capable of succeeding in math and science and pursuing careers that will help improve our lives and grow our economy. I also want to note that this is only the beginning. We’re going to challenge the private sector to partner with community colleges, for example, to help train the workers of today for the jobs of tomorrow, even as we make college more affordable — so that, by 2020, America once again leads the world in producing college graduates.

Now, I have to say to the young people who are here, we can’t let students off the hook. In the end, the success of this campaign depends on them. But I believe strongly that America’s young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity — and given a little bit of a push. We’ve got to work together to create those opportunities, because our future depends on it.

And I just want to mention the importance not only of students but also of parents. You know, I was in Asia, I think many of you are aware, for a week, and I was having lunch with the President of South Korea, President Lee. And I was interested in education policy — they’ve grown enormously over the last 40 years. And I asked him, what are the biggest challenges in your education policy? He said, the biggest challenge that I have is that my parents are too demanding. (Laughter.) He said, even if somebody is dirt poor, they are insisting that their kids are getting the best education. He said, I’ve had to import thousands of foreign teachers because they’re all insisting that Korean children have to learn English in elementary school. That was the biggest education challenge that he had, was an insistence, a demand from parents for excellence in the schools.

And the same thing was true when I went to China. I was talking to the mayor of Shanghai, and I asked him about how he was doing recruiting teachers, given that they’ve got 25 million people in this one city. He said, we don’t have problems recruiting teachers because teaching is so revered and the pay scales for teachers are actually comparable to doctors and other professions.

That gives you a sense of what’s happening around the world. There is a hunger for knowledge, an insistence on excellence, a reverence for science and math and technology and learning. That used to be what we were about. That’s what we’re going to be about again.

And I have to say that this doesn’t get a lot of focus. Not once was I asked about education policy during my trip by the press. And oftentimes events like this get short shrift. They’re not what’s debated on cable. But this is probably going to make more of a difference in determining how well we do as a country than just about anything else that we do here.

Everyone in this room understands how important science and math can be. And it goes beyond the facts in a biology textbook or the questions on an algebra quiz. It’s about the ability to understand our world: to harness and train that human capacity to solve problems and think critically, a set of skills that informs the decisions we make throughout our lives.

So, yes, improving education in math and science is about producing engineers and researchers and scientists and innovators who are going to help transform our economy and our lives for the better. But it’s also about something more. It’s about expanding opportunity for all Americans in a world where an education is the key to success. It’s about an informed citizenry in an era where many of the problems we face as a nation are, at root, scientific problems. And it’s about the power of science to not only unlock new discoveries, but to unlock in the minds of our young people a sense of promise, a sense that with some hard work — with effort — they have the potential to achieve extraordinary things.

This is a difficult time in our country, and it would be easy to grow cynical and wonder if America’s best days are behind us — especially at a time of economic uncertainty, especially when we’ve seen so many, from Wall Street to Washington, fail to take responsibility for so long. But I believe we have an opportunity now to move beyond the failures of the recent past and to recapture that spirit of American innovation and optimism.

This nation wasn’t built on greed. It wasn’t built on reckless risk. It wasn’t built on short-term gains and short-sighted policies. It was forged on stronger stuff, by bold men and women who dared to invent something new or improve something old — who took big chances on big ideas, who believed that in America all things are possible. That’s our history. And, if we remain fixed on the work ahead, if we build on the progress we’ve made today, this is going to be our legacy as well.

So, with that, just as proof of the extraordinary promise of American young people, I’d like to invite Steven Harris and Brian Hortelano from Oakton High School to come up here and demonstrate what their team has built. And it’s flashing so far. I don’t see it whirling. (Laughter.) Where are they? Give them a big round of applause. (Applause.)

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For Immediate Release November 04, 2009

James C. Wright Middle School, Madison, Wisconsin

1:40 P.M. CST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody. Hello, Madison! (Applause.) Thank you so much. Thank you. Everybody, please, have a seat. Have a seat.

It is good to see all of you. Good to be back in Madison. I want to first of all just say that Jim Doyle is not only one of the finest governors we have in the country, but is also a great friend, a great supporter; his entire family has been wonderful. And so I just could not be prouder to associate myself with the outstanding work that Jim has done in the state. Please give him a big round of applause. (Applause.)

We’ve got two wonderful mayors in the house. First of all, your own, Dave Cieslewicz, is here. Dave. (Applause.) And Milwaukee’s outstanding mayor, Tom Barrett, is in the house. (Applause.)

I am so impressed with the work that’s been done here at Wright Middle School and I know that Principal Nancy Evans deserves a huge amount of credit, so please give her a big round of applause. (Applause.) And to the faculty and the staff, but most importantly, the students, who I had a chance to meet with earlier today, they are just some outstanding young people. So if there are any parents of students in the house you should be proud — and give them all a big round of applause. (Applause.)

Now, it’s great to be back in Madison, great to be back in Wisconsin. And I’ve heard great things about Wright, so I’ve got very high expectations for all the students here — and I told them this. I expect them to keep up the good work that you’ve already been putting in to make sure that you succeed not just in middle school, but also in high school, also in college, and for the rest of your lives. And parents, I want you to stay on them because — because that is an absolutely critical ingredient for their success.

You know, one year ago, Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see. (Applause.) Election Day was a day of hope, it was a day of possibility, but it was also a sobering one because we knew even then that we faced an array of challenges that would test us as a country. We already saw that there was a financial crisis that threatened to plunge our economy into a great depression — the worst that we’ve seen in generations. We had record deficits, two wars, frayed alliances around the world.

Facing this reality, my administration had two fundamental obligations. The first was to rescue the economy from imminent collapse. And while we still have a long way to go, we have made meaningful progress toward achieving that goal. We acted boldly and swiftly to pass a Recovery Act that has made a difference for families right here in Wisconsin, and Jim, your governor, described the difference that it’s made.

We’ve put a tax cut into the pockets of 95 percent of hardworking families. We created or saved over one million jobs, including 4,000 education jobs right here in Wisconsin. We’ve taken steps to unlock our frozen credit markets so that the ordinary American can get the loan that he or she needs to buy a home or a car, to go to college or start a new business. We’ve enacted measures to stem the crisis in our housing market to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes and curb the decline of home values overall.

So all these things contributed to the first quarter of economic growth that we’ve had as a nation in over a year. The rate of job loss is slowing, although not nearly fast enough yet. The work continues. But we’re moving in the right direction, and we are going to keep on fulfilling our obligation to do every single thing we possibly can to pull this economy out of the ditch and to make sure that people can find jobs that pay good wages. That’s our top priority. (Applause.)

So that was the rescue part of our job, just solving the immediate crisis. But we also came into office with another goal, another obligation — not simply to do what needed to be done to deal with an emergency crisis, but to make those long-term investments necessary to build our economy stronger than before. It was an obligation to tackle problems that had been festering, problems that had been kicked down the road year after year, decade after decade; problems that have to be overcome for America to move forward.

See, even before the crisis we were having big problems. We were just papering them over. Manufacturing was declining and we weren’t producing as many high-tech, high-skilled jobs as we needed to be. We had an energy situation where suddenly oil producers or speculators want to constrict supply, and next thing you know you’re paying four bucks at the pump. So we didn’t have energy independence. Health care costs were skyrocketing — before the crisis — so that families were seeing more and more out-of-pocket costs and essentially trading away salary and wages just to keep up with their premiums.

So we had an obligation to create a better health care system that works for our people, our businesses, and our government alike. (Applause.) And that’s why we’ve been pushing so hard on health care reform. That’s why we took up the cause of a clean energy economy that will free America from the grip of foreign oil and generate millions of good-paying jobs in the process — green jobs in retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient, creating the batteries and other technologies needed for plug-in hybrids that can get 150 miles a gallon — and will help to curb climate change. And that’s why we’re taking up the cause that I’m here to talk about today, and that is offering the best possible education to America’s sons and daughters. (Applause.)

American prosperity has long rested on how well we educate our children. But this has never been more true than it is today. In the 21st century, when countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, there is nothing that will determine the quality of our future as a nation and the lives our children will lead more than the kind of education that we provide them. Nothing is more important.

And here is what we know: Over the course of a lifetime, those with a college degree — and I want the young people here especially to listen to this — over the course of a lifetime, those with a college degree earn over 60 percent more than those with only a high school diploma — 60 percent more. Most of the fastest growing jobs require a bachelor’s degree or more. This is what we were talking about earlier in the classroom. Four out of every 10 new jobs will require at least some advanced education or training within the next decade. So put simply, the right education is a prerequisite for success. There was a time when if you just got a high school education and you were willing to work hard, you could get a job in a trade or in the factory that paid a middle-class wage. And those days are declining. The currency of today’s economy is knowledge.

And yet we continue to trail other countries in a number of critical areas. The United States, a nation that has always led the way in innovation, is now being outpaced in math and science education. A handful of states have even gone in the wrong direction, lowering their standards at the very moment that they should be raising them. We used to rank number one in the number of college graduates and advanced degrees. That’s not the case anymore. Meanwhile, African American and Latino students continue to lag behind their white classmates — an achievement gap that will ultimately cost us hundreds of billions of dollars because that’s our future workforce.

Of course, these problems aren’t new. We’ve heard about them for years. But instead of coming together to solve them, we’ve let partisanship and petty bickering stand in the way of progress. (Applause.) It’s been Democrat versus Republican — it’s been Democrat versus Republican, it’s been voucher versus public schools, it’s been more money versus more reform. In some cases, people have seen schools as sort of a political spoil having to do with jobs and contracts instead of what we’re teaching kids. And this status quo has held back our children, it’s held back our economy, and it’s held back our country for too long. It’s time to stop just talking about education reform and start actually doing it. It’s time to make education America’s national mission. (Applause.)

Now, I’m proud to say that thanks to one of the best secretaries of education America has ever had, Arne Duncan, who’s here today — stand up, Arne, so everybody can see — (applause) — thanks to Arne’s passion and understanding of these issues and the ability to bring people together, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We are making this America’s national mission: improving our schools not in unrealistic ways, not in abstract ways, not in pie-in-the-sky ways — in concrete ways we are putting our resources behind the kinds of reforms that are going to make a difference.

In the coming weeks, states will be able to compete for what we’re calling a Race to the Top award. We’re putting over $4 billion on the table — $4 billion with a “b” — one of the largest investments that the federal government has ever made in education reform. But we’re not just handing it out to states because they want it. We’re not just handing it out based on population. It’s not just going through the usual political formulas. We’re challenging states to compete for it.

And I have to tell you, this was not an easy thing to get through Congress. This is not normally how federal dollars work. But because of Arne’s tenacity and our commitment to make sure that reform happens, that’s how we’ve structured it. We’re saying to states, if you are committed to real change in the way you educate your children, if you’re willing to hold yourselves more accountable, and if you develop a strong plan to improve the quality of education in your state, then we’ll offer you a big grant to help you make that plan a reality.

Now, before a state is even eligible to compete, they’ll have to take an important first step. And this has caused some controversy in some places, but it shouldn’t be controversial. Any state that has a so-called firewall law will have to remove them. Now, here’s what a firewall law is: It basically says that you can’t factor in the performance of students when you’re evaluating teachers. That is not a good message in terms of accountability. So we said, if you’ve got one of those laws, if you want to compete for these grants you got to get rid of that law.

And we’ll encourage states to take a better approach when it comes to charter schools and other innovative public schools. When these schools are performing poorly, they’ll be shut down. But when innovative public schools are succeeding, they shouldn’t be stifled — they should be supported.

And I’m proud to say that already a number of states have taken us up on this challenge. Across the country, different groups are coming together to bring about change in our schools — teachers unions and parents groups, businesses and community organizations. In places like New Haven, educators and city leaders have come together to find a smarter way to evaluate teachers and turn around low-performing schools. In states like California and Indiana and Wisconsin, you’re seeing steps taken to remove these so-called firewall laws so we can have a clear look at how well our children are learning and what can be done to help them learn better. States like Delaware and Louisiana, Tennessee and Illinois are all making efforts to let innovative charter schools flourish.

So, a race to the top has begun in our schools, but the real competition will begin when states apply for the actual Race to the Top grants. See, they had to make some changes just to even join the race. But now the race starts, and we’re going to start seeing even more interesting changes at the local level. So we’ll take a hard look at states’ applications to determine whether they measure up. We’ll take a look at a state’s track record to determine whether the steps they’ve taken have had real results when it comes to their students’ education. We’ll take a look at whether states are taking an all-hands-on-deck approach when it comes to reform. And in particular, we’ll take a look at how states are doing when it comes to four key measures of reform.

And I want to get into some details about this because I want you, as parents, as well as the educators, to understand what the data and the science and the studies and the research show actually make a big difference in terms of school improvement — because that’s what we are basing this stuff on. We didn’t just kind of make it up, didn’t just do it because it sounded good, this is what the research shows is really going to make a difference.

The first measure is whether a state is committed to setting higher standards and better assessments that prepare our children to succeed in the 21st century. And I’m pleased to report that 48 states are now working to develop internationally competitive standards — internationally competitive standards because these young people are going to be growing up in an international environment where they’re competing not just against kids in Chicago or Los Angeles for jobs, but they’re competing against folks in Beijing and Bangalore.

This is something I called for earlier this year, and I want to commend the leadership of the governors and school chiefs who’ve joined together to get this done. And because of these efforts, there will be a set of common standards that any state can adopt, beginning early next year. And I urge all our states to do so and to upgrade what’s taught in the classroom accordingly to meet these international standards.

I also challenge states to align their assessments with high standards — because we should — we should not just raise the bar, we should prepare our kids to meet it. There’s no point in having really high standards but we’re not doing what it takes to meet those standards. And I want to be clear. This is not just about more tests, because I know that in the past people have been concerned about, you know, is this about standardized tests, or are we going to have our young people being taught to the test? That’s the last thing we want. (Applause.)

But what we want to do — what we want to do is finally get testing right. So it’s not about more tests, it’s about being smarter about our assessments. It’s about measuring not only whether our kids can master the basics, but whether they can solve challenging tasks, do they have the skills like critical thinking and teamwork and entrepreneurship; assessments that don’t just give us a snapshot of how a student is doing in a particular subject, but a big picture look at how they’re learning overall; and assessments that will help tell us if our kids have the knowledge and the skills to thrive when they graduate.

So we’re not just interested in can they fill out a bubble. What we want to do is to take a look generally — are kids learning and gaining the critical thinking skills that they need to succeed. Now, these are the kinds of assessments that our states should be putting in place, and we’re setting up a separate competition where they can win grants, extra grants to help them do just that.

So, standards and assessments, that’s the first measure; are we doing that well? If the state wants to get a Race to the Top grant, they’ve got to do that well. And because we know that from the moment our kids enter a school, the most important factor in their success — other than their parents — is the person standing in front of the classroom, the teacher. The second measure is whether a state is committed to putting effective teachers in its classrooms and effective principals at the helm of its schools.

Now, it’s time to start taking this commitment seriously. We’ve got to do a better job recruiting and preparing new teachers. We’ve got to do a better job of rewarding outstanding teachers. And I’ve got to be honest, we’ve got to do a better job of moving bad teachers out of the classroom, once they’ve been given an opportunity to do it right. (Applause.)

And that means creating alternate pathways to teaching for talented young people by expanding programs like the one used in Boston, where aspiring teachers work side-by-side with effective mentors in a year-long residency. It means bringing quality teachers in — it means bringing quality teachers to the neighborhoods that need them the most, because right now a lot of what happens is, is that some of the best teachers, as they get seniority, they move on to the places — the school districts that pay better and, frankly, are easier to teach. And we’ve got to give them some incentives to stay so that the kids who need the most help are getting some of the best teachers. (Applause.)

It means boosting the number — the numbers of quality teachers who can help our special education and English language learners meet high standards — and you’ve done that here at Wright, so congratulations on that. (Applause.) It means improving instruction in science, technology, reading, math, and ensuring that more women and people of color are doing well in those subjects. (Applause.) So that’s the second — the second factor.

Third factor, third measure we’ll use in this Race to the Top competition, is whether states are tracking the progress of our students and teachers to make sure every child graduates ready for college and a career. (Applause.) So as I said earlier — as I said earlier, before a state can even apply for a grant, it has to change any laws that prevent us from factoring in the performance of students when they’re evaluating their teachers. But that’s not enough. If a state wants to increase its chances of actually winning a grant, it’s going to have to do more. It’s going to have to collect information about how students are doing in a particular year and over the course of an academic career, and make this information available to teachers so they can use it to improve the way they teach.

One of the things that teachers get so frustrated about is these standardized tests come at a time when it’s too late to use to actually help the students improve their performance. (Applause.) So if we’re going to collect — if we’re going to collect data on how kids are doing, let’s make sure the teachers have it in usable form so that they can actually start doing a better job. (Applause.)

That’s how teachers can determine what they should be doing differently in the classroom. That’s how principals can determine what changes need to be made in our schools. And that’s how school districts can determine what they need to be doing better to prepare our teachers and principals.

Now, even with stronger standards, better assessments, outstanding teachers, some schools will still be difficult to turn around. I want us to be honest about this. There are some schools that are starting in a tough position — a lot of kids coming from impoverished backgrounds, a lot of kids coming in that may have not gotten the kind of head start that they needed; they start school already behind. And even though there are heroic teachers and principals in many of these schools, the fact is that they need some extra help.

And that’s why the fourth measure we’ll use in awarding Race to the Top grants is whether a state is focused on transforming not just its high-performing schools, not just the middle-of-the-pack schools, but the lowest-performing schools. (Applause.) We’ll look at whether they’re willing to remake a school from top to bottom with new leaders and a new way of teaching, replacing a school’s principal if it’s not working, and at least half its staff — (applause) — close a school for a time and then reopen it under new management, even shut down the school entirely and send its schools — send its students to a better school nearby.

There’s always excuses for why these schools can’t perform. But part of what we want is an environment in which everybody agrees — from the governor to the school superintendent, teachers, principals, and most importantly parents and students — that there’s no excuse for mediocrity. And we will take drastic steps when schools aren’t working. (Applause.)

So these are the kinds of vigorous strategies that are necessary to turn around our most troubled schools: transforming our lowest-performing schools; using timely information to improve the way we teach our children; outstanding teachers and principals in our classrooms and our schools that are getting the support they need; higher standards and better assessments that prepare our kids for life beyond a classroom. These are the challenges, the four challenges that states have to take up if they want to win a Race to the Top award.

And these are the four challenges that our country has to meet for our children to outcompete workers around the world, for our economy to grow and to prosper, and for America to lead in the 21st century.

Now, let me just close by saying this — I’ve said this before, but I never miss an opportunity to impress this upon an audience. Lifting up American education is not a task for government alone. It will take parents getting more involved — (applause) — it will take parents getting more involved in their child’s education. It will take schools doing more to reach out with parents. It will take students — students — accepting more responsibility for their own education.

I was explaining to them that education is not saying where, you know, you just tilt your ear and you just pour it in your ear. (Laughter.) You’ve got to be an active participant in wanting to get an education.

These aren’t in my prepared remarks, but I think it’s important to note that Malia and Sasha are just wonderful kids, and Michelle is a wonderful mother. But in our own household, with all the privileges and opportunities that we have, there are times — look, there are times when kids slack off. There are times where they would rather be watching TV or playing a computer game than hitting the books. And part of our job as parents — Michelle and my job — is not just to tell our kids what to do, but to start instilling in them a sense that they want to do it for themselves.

So Malia came home the other day. She had gotten a 73 on her science test. Now, she’s a 6th grader. There was a time a couple years ago when she came home with like an 80-something and she said, “I did pretty well.” And I said, “No, no, no. That’s” — I said, “Our goal is” — “Our goal is 90 percent and up.” (Applause.)

Here is the interesting thing. She started internalizing that. So she came and she was depressed, “I got a 73.” And I said, “Well, what happened?” “Well, the teacher — the study guide didn’t match up with what was on the test.” “So what’s your idea here?” “Well, I’m going to start — I’ve got to read the whole chapter. I’m going to change how I study, how I approach it.” So she came home yesterday, she was — “I got a 95″ — right? — so she’s high-fiving. (Applause.)

But here’s the point. She said — she said, “I just like having knowledge.” That’s what she said. And what was happening was she had started wanting it more than us. Now, once you get to that point, our kids are on our [sic] way. But the only way they get to that point is if we’re helping them get to that point.

So it’s going to take that kind of effort from parents to set a high bar in the household. Don’t just expect teachers to set a high bar. You’ve got to set a high bar in the household all across America. (Applause.)

It will take teachers unions and parents and elected leaders working together as partners in common effort — not seeing each other as antagonists, but all of us having the same goal. It will take each and every one of us doing our part on behalf of our children and our country and the future that we share.

I’ll never forget a moment many years ago — this is long before I ran for President, before I ran for elected office. I was just starting out as a community organizer in Chicago. And we had set up a meeting to figure out how to rebuild our neighborhoods that I was working in — very impoverished neighborhoods on the South Side. And nobody showed up to the meeting. This is my first big meeting — nobody showed up. So I was pretty depressed. I had some community leaders, some volunteers who had helped me try to organize this thing, and they were depressed. They felt so defeated they were talking about quitting. Everybody was too apathetic, they said, there’s no point in trying.

But then, I looked outside as I was listening to them talk and I saw some young boys playing in a vacant lot across the street, and they were just throwing rocks at an old apartment building that was boarded up. And those boys reminded me of me, who didn’t have a father in the house and who had gotten in some trouble when he was young. And I turned to those volunteers and I said, “Before we quit, I want to ask you a question. What’s going to happen to those boys if we quit, if we give up on them?” And I thought, if we can’t see that we have got a stake in those young boys, if we’re not willing to do our part on their behalf, if we fail to recognize that the fight for their future is the fight for our own future, well, who is going to do it?

So one by one, those volunteers, they stayed. Family by family, we reached out to the community. Slowly people started coming to meetings. Block by block, we helped to turn those neighborhoods around and helped to improve some of those schools in the area.

And that’s the common spirit — the spirit of common purpose, that all of us have to have in America today. And I’m absolutely confident that if we’re all willing to come together and embrace that spirit — in the living room, in the classroom, and the State House, on Capitol Hill — then not only will we see our students reaching farther, not only will we see our schools performing better, not only are we going to help ensure our children outcompete workers abroad and that America outcompetes nations, but we’re going to protect the dream of our founding and give all of our children, every last one of them, a fair chance and an equal start in the race to life. (Applause.)

Thank you very much, everybody. All right. Thank you. God bless, and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

END

2:13 P.M. CST

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Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

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White House transcript

The following is a transcript of President Obama’s speech to the NAACP Centennial Convention Thursday night in New York:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. What an extraordinary night, capping off an extraordinary week, capping off an extraordinary 100 years at the NAACP. (Applause.)

So Chairman Bond, Brother Justice, I am so grateful to all of you for being here. It’s just good to be among friends. (Applause.)

It is an extraordinary honor to be here, in the city where the NAACP was formed, to mark its centennial. What we celebrate tonight is not simply the journey the NAACP has traveled, but the journey that we, as Americans, have traveled over the past 100 years. (Applause.)

It’s a journey that takes us back to a time before most of us were born, long before the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, Brown v. Board of Education; back to an America just a generation past slavery. It was a time when Jim Crow was a way of life; when lynchings were all too common; when race riots were shaking cities across a segregated land.

It was in this America where an Atlanta scholar named W.E.B. Du Bois — (applause) — a man of towering intellect and a fierce passion for justice, sparked what became known as the Niagara movement; where reformers united, not by color, but by cause; where an association was born that would, as its charter says, promote equality and eradicate prejudice among citizens of the United States.

From the beginning, these founders understood how change would come — just as King and all the civil rights giants did later. They understood that unjust laws needed to be overturned; that legislation needed to be passed; and that Presidents needed to be pressured into action. They knew that the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation had to be lifted in the courtroom, and in the legislature, and in the hearts and the minds of Americans.

They also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people. It would come from people protesting lynchings, rallying against violence, all those women who decided to walk instead of taking the bus, even though they were tired after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry, looking after somebody else’s children. (Applause.) It would come from men and women of every age and faith, and every race and region — taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; sitting down at Greensboro lunch counters; registering voters in rural Mississippi, knowing they would be harassed, knowing they would be beaten, knowing that some of them might never return.

Because of what they did, we are a more perfect union. Because Jim Crow laws were overturned, black CEOs today run Fortune 500 companies. (Applause.) Because civil rights laws were passed, black mayors, black governors, and members of Congress served in places where they might once have been able [sic] not just to vote but even take a sip of water. And because ordinary people did such extraordinary things, because they made the civil rights movement their own, even though there may not be a plaque or their names might not be in the history books — because of their efforts I made a little trip to Springfield, Illinois, a couple years ago — (applause) — where Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged — and began the journey that has led me to be here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America. (Applause.)

Because of them I stand here tonight, on the shoulders of giants. And I’m here to say thank you to those pioneers and thank you to the NAACP. (Applause.)

And yet, even as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of the past 100 years; even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folk — we know that too many barriers still remain.

We know that even as our economic crisis batters Americans of all races, African Americans are out of work more than just about anybody else — a gap that’s widening here in New York City, as a detailed report this week by Comptroller Bill Thompson laid out. (Applause.)

We know that even as spiraling health care costs crush families of all races, African Americans are more likely to suffer from a host of diseases but less likely to own health insurance than just about anybody else.

We know that even as we imprison more people of all races than any nation in the world, an African American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a prison.

We know that even as the scourge of HIV/AIDS devastates nations abroad, particularly in Africa, it is devastating the African American community here at home with disproportionate force. We know these things. (Applause.)

These are some of the barriers of our time. They’re very different from the barriers faced by earlier generations. They’re very different from the ones faced when fire hoses and dogs were being turned on young marchers; when Charles Hamilton Houston and a group of young Howard lawyers were dismantling segregation case by case across the land.

But what’s required today — what’s required to overcome today’s barriers is the same as what was needed then. The same commitment. The same sense of urgency. The same sense of sacrifice. The same sense of community. The same willingness to do our part for ourselves and one another that has always defined America at its best and the African American experience at its best. (Applause.)

And so the question is, where do we direct our efforts? What steps do we take to overcome these barriers? How do we move forward in the next 100 years?

The first thing we need to do is make real the words of the NAACP charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States. (Applause.) I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there probably has never been less discrimination in America than there is today. I think we can say that.

But make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America. (Applause.) By African American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender. (Laughter.) By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. (Applause.) By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their God. (Applause.) By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights. (Applause.)

On the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination cannot stand — not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the United States of America. That’s what the NAACP stands for. That’s what the NAACP will continue to fight for as long as it takes. (Applause.)

But we also know that prejudice and discrimination — at least the most blatant types of prejudice and discrimination — are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.

These are barriers we are beginning to tear down one by one — by rewarding work with an expanded tax credit; by making housing more affordable; by giving ex-offenders a second chance. (Applause.) These are barriers we’re targeting through our White House Office on Urban Affairs, through programs like Promise Neighborhoods that builds on Geoffrey Canada’s success with the Harlem Children’s Zone — (applause) — that foster a comprehensive approach to ending poverty by putting all children on a pathway to college, and giving them the schooling and after-school support that they need to get there. (Applause.)

I think all of us understand that our task of reducing these structural inequalities has been made more difficult by the state and structure of our broader economy; an economy that for the last decade has been fueled by a cycle of boom and bust; an economy where the rich got really, really rich, but ordinary folks didn’t see their incomes or their wages go up; an economy built on credit cards, shady mortgage loans; an economy built not on a rock, but on sand.

That’s why my administration is working so hard not only to create and save jobs in the short-term, not only to extend unemployment insurance and help for people who have lost their health care in this crisis, not just to stem the immediate economic wreckage, but to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within the reach of not just African Americans, but all Americans. All Americans. (Applause.) Of every race. Of every creed. From every region of the country. (Applause.) We want everybody to participate in the American Dream. That’s what the NAACP is all about. (Applause.)

Now, one pillar of this new foundation is health insurance for everybody. (Applause.) Health insurance reform that cuts costs and makes quality health coverage affordable for all, and it closes health care disparities in the process. Another pillar is energy reform that makes clean energy profitable, freeing America from the grip of foreign oil; putting young people to work upgrading low-income homes, weatherizing, and creating jobs that can’t be outsourced. Another pillar is financial reform with consumer protections to crackdown on mortgage fraud and stop predatory lenders from targeting black and Latino communities all across the country. (Applause.)

All these things will make America stronger and more competitive. They will drive innovation, they will create jobs, they will provide families with more security. And yet, even if we do all that, the African American community will still fall behind in the United States and the United States will fall behind in the world unless we do a far better job than we have been doing of educating our sons and daughters. (Applause.)

I hope you don’t mind — I want to go into a little detail here about education. (Applause.) In the 21st century — when so many jobs will require a bachelor’s degree or more, when countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow — a world-class education is a prerequisite for success.

There’s no two ways about it. There’s no way to avoid it. You know what I’m talking about. There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools. There’s a reason Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown. There’s a reason why the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob. It’s because there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential. (Applause.)

And yet, more than half a century after Brown v. Board, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across the country. African American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math — an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way in the civil rights movement. Over half of all African American students are dropping out of school in some places. There are overcrowded classrooms, and crumbling schools, and corridors of shame in America filled with poor children — not just black children, brown and white children as well.

The state of our schools is not an African American problem; it is an American problem. (Applause.) Because if black and brown children cannot compete, then America cannot compete. (Applause.) And let me say this, if Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg, and Newt Gingrich can agree that we need to solve the education problem, then that’s something all of America can agree we can solve. (Applause.) Those guys came into my office. (Laughter.) Just sitting in the Oval Office — I kept on doing a double-take. (Laughter and applause.) So that’s a sign of progress and it is a sign of the urgency of the education problem. (Applause.) All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country — every child –

AUDIENCE: Amen!

THE PRESIDENT: Got an “Amen corner” back there — (applause) — every child — every child in this country the best education the world has to offer from cradle through a career.

That’s our responsibility as leaders. That’s the responsibility of the United States of America. And we, all of us in government, have to work to do our part by not only offering more resources, but also demanding more reform. Because when it comes to education, we got to get past this whole paradigm, this outdated notion that somehow it’s just money; or somehow it’s just reform, but no money — and embrace what Dr. King called the “both-and” philosophy. We need more money and we need more reform. (Applause.)

When it comes to higher education we’re making college and advanced training more affordable, and strengthening community colleges that are the gateway to so many with an initiative — (applause) — that will prepare students not only to earn a degree, but to find a job when they graduate; an initiative that will help us meet the goal I have set of leading the world in college degrees by 2020. We used to rank number one in college graduates. Now we are in the middle of the pack. And since we are seeing more and more African American and Latino youth in our population, if we are leaving them behind we cannot achieve our goal, and America will fall further behind — and that is not a future that I accept and that is not a future that the NAACP is willing to accept. (Applause.)

We’re creating a Race to the Top fund that will reward states and public school districts that adopt 21st century standards and assessments. We’re creating incentives for states to promote excellent teachers and replace bad ones — (applause) — because the job of a teacher is too important for us to accept anything less than the best. (Applause.)

We also have to explore innovative approaches such as those being pursued here in New York City; innovations like Bard High School Early College and Medgar Evers College Preparatory School that are challenging students to complete high school and earn a free associate’s degree or college credit in just four years. (Applause.)

And we should raise the bar when it comes to early learning programs. It’s not enough just to have a babysitter. We need our young people stimulated and engaged and involved. (Applause.) We need our — our folks involved in child development to understand the latest science. Today, some early learning programs are excellent. Some are mediocre. And some are wasting what studies show are by far a child’s most formative years.

That’s why I’ve issued a challenge to America’s governors: If you match the success of states like Pennsylvania and develop an effective model for early learning; if you focus reform on standards and results in early learning programs; if you demonstrate how you will prepare the lowest income children to meet the highest standards of success — then you can compete for an Early Learning Challenge Grant that will help prepare all our children to enter kindergarten all ready to learn. (Applause.)

So these are some of the laws we’re passing. These are some of the policies we are enacting. We are busy in Washington. Folks in Congress are getting a little tuckered out. (Laughter.) But I’m telling them — I’m telling them we can’t rest, we’ve got a lot of work to do. The American people are counting on us. (Applause.) These are some of the ways we’re doing our part in government to overcome the inequities, the injustices, the barriers that still exist in our country.

But all these innovative programs and expanded opportunities will not, in and of themselves, make a difference if each of us, as parents and as community leaders, fail to do our part by encouraging excellence in our children. (Applause.) Government programs alone won’t get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mind set, a new set of attitudes — because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we’ve internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves.

We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades — (applause) — that’s not a reason to cut class — (applause) — that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. (Applause.) No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands — you cannot forget that. That’s what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses. (Applause.) No excuses.

You get that education, all those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes we can. (Applause.)

To parents — to parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home. (Applause.) You can’t just contract out parenting. For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox — (applause) — putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. (Applause.) It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework. (Applause.)

And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor’s sons and daughters. (Applause.) We need to go back to the time, back to the day when we parents saw somebody, saw some kid fooling around and — it wasn’t your child, but they’ll whup you anyway. (Laughter and applause.) Or at least they’ll tell your parents — the parents will. You know. (Laughter.) That’s the meaning of community. That’s how we can reclaim the strength and the determination and the hopefulness that helped us come so far; helped us make a way out of no way.

It also means pushing our children to set their sights a little bit higher. They might think they’ve got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can’t all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne. (Applause.) I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers — (applause) — doctors and teachers — (applause) — not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. (Applause.) I want them aspiring to be the President of the United States of America. (Applause.)

I want their horizons to be limitless. I don’t — don’t tell them they can’t do something. Don’t feed our children with a sense of — that somehow because of their race that they cannot achieve.

Yes, government must be a force for opportunity. Yes, government must be a force for equality. But ultimately, if we are to be true to our past, then we also have to seize our own future, each and every day.

And that’s what the NAACP is all about. The NAACP was not founded in search of a handout. The NAACP was not founded in search of favors. The NAACP was founded on a firm notion of justice; to cash the promissory note of America that says all of our children, all God’s children, deserve a fair chance in the race of life. (Applause.)

It’s a simple dream, and yet one that all too often has been denied — and is still being denied to so many Americans. It’s a painful thing, seeing that dream denied. I remember visiting a Chicago school in a rough neighborhood when I was a community organizer, and some of the children gathered ’round me. And I remember thinking how remarkable it was that all of these children seemed so full of hope, despite being born into poverty, despite being delivered, in some cases, into addiction, despite all the obstacles they were already facing — you could see that spark in their eyes. They were the equal of children anywhere.

And I remember the principal of the school telling me that soon that sparkle would begin to dim, that things would begin to change; that soon, the laughter in their eyes would begin to fade; that soon, something would shut off inside, as it sunk in — because kids are smarter than we give them credit for — as it sunk in that their hopes would not come to pass — not because they weren’t smart enough, not because they weren’t talented enough, not because of anything about them inherently, but because, by accident of birth, they had not received a fair chance in life.

I know what can happen to a child who doesn’t have that chance. But I also know what can happen to a child that does. I was raised by a single mom. I didn’t come from a lot of wealth. I got into my share of trouble as a child. My life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. When I drive through Harlem or I drive through the South Side of Chicago and I see young men on the corners, I say, there but for the grace of God go I. (Applause.) They’re no less gifted than me. They’re no less talented than me.

But I had some brakes. That mother of mine, she gave me love; she pushed me, she cared about my education; she took no lip; she taught me right from wrong. Because of her, I had a chance to make the most of my abilities. I had the chance to make the most of my opportunities. I had the chance to make the most of life.

The same story holds true for Michelle. The same story holds true for so many of you. And I want all the other Barack Obamas out there, and all the other Michelle Obamas out there — (applause) — to have the same chance — the chance that my mother gave me; that my education gave me; that the United States of America has given me. That’s how our union will be perfected and our economy rebuilt. That is how America will move forward in the next 100 years.

And we will move forward. This I know — for I know how far we have come. Some, you saw, last week in Ghana, Michelle and I took Malia and Sasha and my mother-in-law to Cape Coast Castle, in Ghana. Some of you may have been there. This is where captives were once imprisoned before being auctioned; where, across an ocean, so much of the African American experience began.

We went down into the dungeons where the captives were held. There was a church above one of the dungeons — which tells you something about saying one thing and doing another. (Applause.) I was — we walked through the “Door Of No Return.” I was reminded of all the pain and all the hardships, all the injustices and all the indignities on the voyage from slavery to freedom.

But I was reminded of something else. I was reminded that no matter how bitter the rod, how stony the road, we have always persevered. (Applause.) We have not faltered, nor have we grown weary. As Americans, we have demanded, and strived for, and shaped a better destiny. And that is what we are called on to do once more. NAACP, it will not be easy. It will take time. Doubts may rise and hopes may recede.

But if John Lewis could brave Billy clubs to cross a bridge — (applause) — then I know young people today can do their part and lift up our community. (Applause.)

If Emmet Till’s uncle, Mose Wright, could summon the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew, I know we can be better fathers and better brothers and better mothers and sisters in our own families. (Applause.)

If three civil rights workers in Mississippi — black, white, Christian and Jew, city-born and country-bred — could lay down their lives in freedom’s cause, I know we can come together to face down the challenges of our own time. (Applause.) We can fix our schools — (applause) — we can heal our sick, we can rescue our youth from violence and despair. (Applause.)

And 100 years from now, on the 200th anniversary of the NAACP — (applause) — let it be said that this generation did its part; that we too ran the race; that full of faith that our dark past has taught us, full of the hope that the present has brought us — (applause) — we faced, in our lives and all across this nation, the rising sun of a new day begun. (Applause.)

Thank you, God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

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I’m proud to work for a President who has created a comprehensive agenda that addresses the needs at every level of our educational system, from expanding access to high-quality early childhood programs to improving the rigor of the academic programs in our K-12 schools to making college more affordable and accessible.

We have gotten off to a fast start. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we have laid the groundwork for reform on the K-12 level and made an early down payment on expanding access to early childhood education and increasing student aid for college students. The law made available almost $100 billion for education. That money will help prevent layoffs, fill holes in state and local budgets, and provide financial aid to college students. The money is needed to help our economy in the short term, but reforms efforts driven by these funds will be the key to our long-term economic success.

Under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, states will receive $48.6 billion to supplement their own budgets during these difficult economic times. The Recovery Act says that states must spend most of that funding on education. $39.8 billion of that should go to schools.

I want to assure you that I will be scrutinizing how states spend their stabilization money to make sure they are focused on education. I have heard that some states plan to use their stabilization money so as to maintain their rainy day fund and that others may rely on their stabilization grants to pay for tax cuts instead of investing in reforms. I will do everything in my power to reject any schemes that would subvert the intended purpose of the Recovery Act, which is to help schools through the economic downturn and push reform, thereby ensuring our economic prosperity in the future. When reviewing applications for the Race to the Top Fund, we plan to consider whether a state used their stabilization money to aggressively push reforms.

In addition to helping states solve their budget problems, the stabilization fund lays out a path to reform. To receive their money, states must make four commitments that are essential to reforming our K-12 schools. They will improve the effectiveness of teachers and make sure the best teachers are in the schools that need them the most. They will promise to improve the quality of their academic standards so that they lead students down a path that prepares them for college and the workforce and global competitiveness. These standards need to be aligned with strong assessments. In addition, states must work to ensure that these assessments accurately measure the achievement of English language learners and students with disabilities.

Under the third assurance, states must commit to fixing their lowest-performing schools. Finally, states must build data systems that can track student performance from one year to the next, from one school to another, so that those students and their parents know when they are making progress and when they need extra attention. This information must also be put in the hands of educators so they can use it to improve instruction. Right now, according to the Data Quality Campaign (DQC), Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, and Utah are the only states that are reporting to have comprehensive data systems meeting the basic elements of a good system. With $250 million in the stimulus and another $65 million in our annual budget for fiscal year 2009 and again in fiscal year 2010, we expect these numbers to continue to grow, which is vital for reform.

In addition to the stabilization money, the Recovery Act gave us $5 billion to spur innovation in states and districts. Through the Race to the Top Fund, we will be awarding $4.35 billion in competitive grants to states built around the four pillars of reform outlined in the stabilization fund. Through the What Works and Innovation Fund, we also will be awarding $650 million in competitive grants to districts and non-profit organizations to scale up successful programs and evaluate promising practices.

Our fiscal year 2010 budget will expand our commitment to reforms in several important ways, addressing the needs from early childhood through K-12 education.

Under the Title I program, we will provide $1.5 billion for the School Improvement program. This money is vital for helping states and districts address problems in schools in the most trouble. We already have $3 billion for this program from the Recovery Act and another $545 million from fiscal year 2009. By adding $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2010, we’ll have more than $5 billion to address the problems of our lowest-performing schools. I’d like to set a goal to turn around 1,000 low-performing schools a year for each of the next five years. I don’t want to invest in the status quo. I want states and districts to take bold actions that will lead directly to the improvement in student learning. I want local leaders to find change agents who can fix these schools. I want them to provide incentives for their best teachers to take on the challenge of teaching in these schools. And where appropriate, I want them to create partnerships with charter school operators with a track record of success. I want superintendents to be aggressive in taking the difficult step of shutting down a failing school and replacing it with one they know will work. We’ve proposed a $52 million increase in funding to develop and expand successful charter schools.

Many of you have heard me say that I believe education is the civil rights issue of our time. I truly believe every child is entitled to a high-quality education. I will work closely with the Office of Civil Rights to make sure that we properly review compliance in all programs and policymaking.

The fiscal year 2010 budget starts new programs and expands existing ones to address our priorities in early childhood education and literacy. We will create the $300 million Early Learning Challenge Fund that will award grants to help states set up the support and services necessary to build quality early childhood education. We will provide $500 million in grants through Title I to help districts use their Title I money to establish and expand preschool programs. We will expand the Striving Readers program from a small $35 million program focused on middle school and high schools to a $370 million program that addresses the reading needs of children in elementary schools as well. The program will take a comprehensive approach to reading instruction, ensuring that students develop the basic skills as well as the reading comprehension that is so vital to their success in high school and beyond.

We also continue our focus on promoting the teaching profession. With $517 million in our fiscal year 2010 budget, we will continue and expand our support for local efforts under the Teacher Incentive Fund to develop comprehensive strategies for recruiting, preparing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers. We also request $10 million to plan new Promise Neighborhoods, modeled on the successful Harlem Children’s Zone. We are committed to acting on the evidence. And we request $72 million more for the Institute for Education Sciences, so we can identify what works based on rigorous research.

Our agenda from early childhood through 12th grade is focused on helping states do the right thing. And that’s appropriate because States are responsible for establishing systems of education through the 12th grade. It’s our role to make it a national priority to reform schools and help states and districts do that.

For more than 40 years, the federal government has played a leading role in helping students pay for college. Continuing this vital role, the total amount of aid for students has increased by $32 billion since President Obama has taken office. By subsidizing loans and by providing work-study programs and, most importantly, giving Pell Grants to low-income students, the federal government is fulfilling the dreams of students who want to go to college but might not be able to pay for it. President Obama has set a goal that, by 2020, the United States once again will have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That’s an achievable goal but, to do that, we have to make college affordable.

The Recovery Act made an important down-payment on our plans to expand student aid. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $17.1 billion so we could raise the maximum Pell award from $4,731 to $5,350. It also added $200 million to the Work-Study program, providing colleges and universities with additional money to provide jobs to students to help with their college and living expenses.

In our fiscal year 2010 budget, we make three important and permanent changes to ensure students have access to student aid and loans. The first thing it will do is move the Pell Grant program from a discretionary program into a mandatory, appropriated entitlement. This approach will provide more certainty to students and families applying for student aid about the aid that’s available to them. In addition, the Pell Grant amounts will grow annually at a rate higher than inflation so that it keeps up with rising college costs.

The second thing this budget does is address the problems with the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program. I think we can all agree that the FFEL structure is broken and the federal student loan programs are in need of a dependable, cost-effective way of providing college-bound students and their families with the resources they need to meet the growing cost of postsecondary education. The direct lending program is the best way to do that. Through it, we are able to leverage the government’s lower cost of funds to finance and originate student loans and private-sector expertise to service the loans. The President’s proposal provides a comprehensive and reliable solution for today’s students while saving taxpayers over $4 billion a year. It will be more stable and efficient – reducing risk for students and lowering costs for taxpayers.

The third thing we are doing is boosting the Perkins loan program from $1 billion to $6 billion per year. The number of students served will rise from 500,000 to 2.7 million – and the number of schools that can participate in the program will increase from 1,800 to 4,400, which also means that we will serve more students. Also, to help keep college affordable our Perkins proposal allocates funds to schools based on their role in keeping tuition down and providing grant aid to needy students. This further builds upon Congress’ recent mandate to create watch lists of colleges with high or excessive increases in tuition.

In closing, I’d like to remind you of one thing the President said when he addressed Congress in February. “In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity — it is a prerequisite.”

Thank you for your support so far in ensuring that our children and young adults have the education they need to ensure they enter the workforce with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful and to help rebuild our economy.

Delivered on May 20, 2009  | Speaker sometimes deviates from text.

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I was just informed backstage that Ralph and John both are 1965 graduates of MIT — same class. And so I’m not sure this is the perfectly prescribed scientific method, but they’re sort of a control group — (laughter) — who ages faster: The President’s Science Advisor or the President of the Academy? (Laughter.) And we’ll check in in a couple of years. But it is wonderful to see them.

To all of you, to my Cabinet Secretaries and team who are here, thank you. It is a great privilege to address the distinguished members of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the leaders of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine who’ve gathered here this morning.

And I’d like to begin today with a story of a previous visitor who also addressed this august body. In April of 1921, Albert Einstein visited the United States for the first time. And his international credibility was growing as scientists around the world began to understand and accept the vast implications of his theories of special and general relativity. And he attended this annual meeting, and after sitting through a series of long speeches by others, he reportedly said, “I have just got a new theory of eternity.” (Laughter.) So I will do my best to heed this cautionary tale. (Laughter.)

The very founding of this institution stands as a testament to the restless curiosity, the boundless hope so essential not just to the scientific enterprise, but to this experiment we call America.

A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won, before Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences — in the midst of civil war.

Lincoln refused to accept that our nation’s sole purpose was mere survival. He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add — and I quote — “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery… of new and useful things.”

This is America’s story. Even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we’ve never given in to pessimism; we’ve never surrendered our fates to chance; we have endured; we have worked hard; we sought out new frontiers.

Today, of course, we face more complex challenges than we have ever faced before: a medical system that holds the promise of unlocking new cures and treatments — attached to a health care system that holds the potential for bankruptcy to families and businesses; a system of energy that powers our economy, but simultaneously endangers our planet; threats to our security that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness and openness so essential to our prosperity; and challenges in a global marketplace which links the derivative trader on Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in America to the factory worker in China — a marketplace in which we all share in opportunity, but also in crisis.

At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before. (Applause.)

And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it’s today. We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it’s not a cause for alarm. The Department of Health and Human Services has declared a public health emergency as a precautionary tool to ensure that we have the resources we need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively. And I’m getting regular updates on the situation from the responsible agencies. And the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Centers for Disease Control will be offering regular updates to the American people. And Secretary Napolitano will be offering regular updates to the American people, as well, so that they know what steps are being taken and what steps they may need to take.

But one thing is clear — our capacity to deal with a public health challenge of this sort rests heavily on the work of our scientific and medical community. And this is one more example of why we can’t allow our nation to fall behind.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened.

Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we’ve allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse.

Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries. Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world. And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas.

We know that our country is better than this. A half century ago, this nation made a commitment to lead the world in scientific and technological innovation; to invest in education, in research, in engineering; to set a goal of reaching space and engaging every citizen in that historic mission. That was the high water mark of America’s investment in research and development. And since then our investments have steadily declined as a share of our national income. As a result, other countries are now beginning to pull ahead in the pursuit of this generation’s great discoveries.

I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow. It’s our character to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. So I’m here today to set this goal: We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development. We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science. (Applause.)

This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history.

Just think what this will allow us to accomplish: solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again; an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us. We can do this.

The pursuit of discovery half a century ago fueled our prosperity and our success as a nation in the half century that followed. The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years. That’s how we will ensure that our children and their children will look back on this generation’s work as that which defined the progress and delivered the prosperity of the 21st century.

This work begins with a historic commitment to basic science and applied research, from the labs of renowned universities to the proving grounds of innovative companies.

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and with the support of Congress, my administration is already providing the largest single boost to investment in basic research in American history. That’s already happened.

This is important right now, as public and private colleges and universities across the country reckon with shrinking endowments and tightening budgets. But this is also incredibly important for our future. As Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said: “Basic scientific research is scientific capital.”

The fact is an investigation into a particular physical, chemical, or biological process might not pay off for a year, or a decade, or at all. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not.

And that’s why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in this kind of research — because while the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society.

No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals, or new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and to drought.

It was basic research in the photoelectric field — in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today’s GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago.

In addition to the investments in the Recovery Act, the budget I’ve proposed — and versions have now passed both the House and the Senate — builds on the historic investments in research contained in the recovery plan.

So we double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from — from testing “smart grid” designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes.

And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials — because we know that a nation’s potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools that it makes available to its researchers.

But the renewed commitment of our nation will not be driven by government investment alone. It’s a commitment that extends from the laboratory to the marketplace. And that’s why my budget makes the research and experimentation tax credit permanent. This is a tax credit that returns two dollars to the economy for every dollar we spend, by helping companies afford the often high costs of developing new ideas, new technologies, and new products. Yet at times we’ve allowed it to lapse or only renewed it year to year. I’ve heard this time and again from entrepreneurs across this country: By making this credit permanent we make it possible for businesses to plan the kinds of projects that create jobs and economic growth.

Second, in no area will innovation be more important than in the development of new technologies to produce, use, and save energy — which is why my administration has made an unprecedented commitment to developing a 21st century clean energy economy, and why we put a scientist in charge of the Department of Energy. (Applause.)

Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution. And our future as a nation depends upon our willingness to embrace this challenge as an opportunity to lead the world in pursuit of new discovery.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a little more than a half century ago, Americans were stunned. The Russians had beaten us to space. And we had to make a choice: We could accept defeat or we could accept the challenge. And as always, we chose to accept the challenge.

President Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA and to invest in science and math education, from grade school to graduate school. And just a few years later, a month after his address to the 1961 Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, President Kennedy boldly declared before a joint session of Congress that the United States would send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth.

The scientific community rallied behind this goal and set about achieving it. And it would not only lead to those first steps on the moon; it would lead to giant leaps in our understanding here at home. That Apollo program produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water purification systems; sensors to test for hazardous gasses; energy-saving building materials; fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and soldiers. More broadly, the enormous investment in that era –- in science and technology, in education and research funding –- produced a great outpouring of curiosity and creativity, the benefits of which have been incalculable. There are those of you in this audience who became scientists because of that commitment. We have to replicate that.

There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation’s challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge even tougher to solve –- and makes it all the more important to keep our eyes fixed on the work ahead.

But energy is our great project, this generation’s great project. And that’s why I’ve set a goal for our nation that we will reduce our carbon pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050. And that is why — (applause) — and that is why I’m pursuing, in concert with Congress, the policies that will help meet us — help us meet this goal.

My recovery plan provides the incentives to double our nation’s capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years — extending the production tax credit, providing loan guarantees and offering grants to spur investment. Just take one example: Federally funded research and development has dropped the cost of solar panels by tenfold over the last three decades. Our renewed efforts will ensure that solar and other clean energy technologies will be competitive.

My budget includes $150 billion over 10 years to invest in sources of renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. It supports efforts at NASA, recommended as a priority by the National Research Council, to develop new space-based capabilities to help us better understand our changing climate.

And today, I’m also announcing that for the first time, we are funding an initiative — recommended by this organization — called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E. (Applause.)

This is based, not surprisingly, on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik. It has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research. And the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET, stealth technology, the Global Positioning System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA.

So ARPA-E seeks to do the same kind of high-risk, high-reward research. My administration will pursue, as well, comprehensive legislation to place a market-based cap on carbon emissions. We will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. We will put in place the resources so that scientists can focus on this critical area. And I am confident that we will find a wellspring of creativity just waiting to be tapped by researchers in this room and entrepreneurs across our country. We can solve this problem. (Applause.)

Now, the nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy. I believe America can and must be that nation. But in order to lead in the global economy and to ensure that our businesses can grow and innovate, and our families can thrive, we’re also going to have to address the shortcomings of our health care system.

The Recovery Act will support the long overdue step of computerizing America’s medical records, to reduce the duplication, waste and errors that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

But it’s important to note, these records also hold the potential of offering patients the chance to be more active participants in the prevention and treatment of their diseases. We must maintain patient control over these records and respect their privacy. At the same time, we have the opportunity to offer billions and billions of anonymous data points to medical researchers who may find in this information evidence that can help us better understand disease.

History also teaches us the greatest advances in medicine have come from scientific breakthroughs, whether the discovery of antibiotics, or improved public health practices, vaccines for smallpox and polio and many other infectious diseases, antiretroviral drugs that can return AIDS patients to productive lives, pills that can control certain types of blood cancers, so many others.

Because of recent progress –- not just in biology, genetics and medicine, but also in physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering –- we have the potential to make enormous progress against diseases in the coming decades. And that’s why my administration is committed to increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health, including $6 billion to support cancer research — part of a sustained, multi-year plan to double cancer research in our country. (Applause.)

Next, we are restoring science to its rightful place. On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. (Applause.) Our progress as a nation –- and our values as a nation –- are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life. (Applause.)

That’s why I’ve charged John Holdren and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions — and not the other way around. (Laughter.)

As part of this effort, we’ve already launched a web site that allows individuals to not only make recommendations to achieve this goal, but to collaborate on those recommendations. It’s a small step, but one that’s creating a more transparent, participatory and democratic government.

We also need to engage the scientific community directly in the work of public policy. And that’s why, today, I am announcing the appointment — we are filling out the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, known as PCAST, and I intend to work with them closely. Our co-chairs have already been introduced — Dr. Varmus and Dr. Lander along with John. And this council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experiences and views. And I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation.

In addition to John — sorry, the — I just noticed that I jumped the gun here — go ahead and move it up. (Laughter.) I’d already — I’d already introduced all you guys.

In biomedicine, just to give you an example of what PCAST can do, we can harness the historic convergence between life sciences and physical sciences that’s underway today; undertaking public projects — in the spirit of the Human Genome Project — to create data and capabilities that fuel discoveries in tens of thousands of laboratories; and identifying and overcoming scientific and bureaucratic barriers to rapidly translating scientific breakthroughs into diagnostics and therapeutics that serve patients.

In environmental science, it will require strengthening our weather forecasting, our Earth observation from space, the management of our nation’s land, water and forests, and the stewardship of our coastal zones and ocean fisheries.

We also need to work with our friends around the world. Science, technology and innovation proceed more rapidly and more cost-effectively when insights, costs and risks are shared; and so many of the challenges that science and technology will help us meet are global in character. This is true of our dependence on oil, the consequences of climate change, the threat of epidemic disease, and the spread of nuclear weapons.

And that’s why my administration is ramping up participation in — and our commitment to — international science and technology cooperation across the many areas where it is clearly in our interest to do so. In fact, this week, my administration is gathering the leaders of the world’s major economies to begin the work of addressing our common energy challenges together.

Fifth, since we know that the progress and prosperity of future generations will depend on what we do now to educate the next generation, today I’m announcing a renewed commitment to education in mathematics and science. (Applause.) This is something I care deeply about. Through this commitment, American students will move from the middle of the top — from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade — for we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow. And I don’t intend to have us out-educated.

We can’t start soon enough. We know that the quality of math and science teachers is the most influential single factor in determining whether a student will succeed or fail in these subjects. Yet in high school more than 20 percent of students in math and more than 60 percent of students in chemistry and physics are taught by teachers without expertise in these fields. And this problem is only going to get worse. There is a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015.

And that’s why I’m announcing today that states making strong commitments and progress in math and science education will be eligible to compete later this fall for additional funds under the Secretary of Education’s $5 billion Race to the Top program.

And I’m challenging states to dramatically improve achievement in math and science by raising standards, modernizing science labs, upgrading curriculum, and forging partnerships to improve the use of science and technology in our classrooms. (Applause.) I’m challenging states, as well, to enhance teacher preparation and training, and to attract new and qualified math and science teachers to better engage students and reinvigorate those subjects in our schools.

And in this endeavor, we will work to support inventive approaches. Let’s create systems that retain and reward effective teachers, and let’s create new pathways for experienced professionals to go into the classroom. There are, right now, chemists who could teach chemistry, physicists who could teach physics, statisticians who could teach mathematics. But we need to create a way to bring the expertise and the enthusiasm of these folks –- folks like you –- into the classroom.

There are states, for example, doing innovative work. I’m pleased to announce that Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania will lead an effort with the National Governors Association to increase the number of states that are making science, technology, engineering and mathematics education a top priority. Six states are currently participating in the initiative, including Pennsylvania, which has launched an effective program to ensure that the state has the skilled workforce in place to draw the jobs of the 21st century. And I want every state, all 50 states, to participate.

But as you know, our work does not end with a high school diploma. For decades, we led the world in educational attainment, and as a consequence we led the world in economic growth. The G.I. Bill, for example, helps send a generation to college. But in this new economy, we’ve come to trail other nations in graduation rates, in educational achievement, and in the production of scientists and engineers.

That’s why my administration has set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of the future –- and to foster the next generation of scientists and engineers. In the next decade –- by 2020 –- America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal that we are going to set. And we’ve provided tax credits and grants to make a college education more affordable.

My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships. (Applause.) This program was created as part of the space race five decades ago. In the decades since, it’s remained largely the same size –- even as the numbers of students who seek these fellowships has skyrocketed. We ought to be supporting these young people who are pursuing scientific careers, not putting obstacles in their path.

So this is how we will lead the world in new discoveries in this new century. But I think all of you understand it will take far more than the work of government. It will take all of us. It will take all of you. And so today I want to challenge you to use your love and knowledge of science to spark the same sense of wonder and excitement in a new generation.

America’s young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity –- if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves. We’ve got evidence. You know, the average age in NASA’s mission control during the Apollo 17 mission was just 26. I know that young people today are just as ready to tackle the grand challenges of this century.

So I want to persuade you to spend time in the classroom, talking and showing young people what it is that your work can mean, and what it means to you. I want to encourage you to participate in programs to allow students to get a degree in science fields and a teaching certificate at the same time. I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it’s science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent — to be makers of things, not just consumers of things.

I want you to know that I’m going to be working alongside you. I’m going to participate in a public awareness and outreach campaign to encourage students to consider careers in science and mathematics and engineering — because our future depends on it.

And the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy.

It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge, and will create research opportunities for undergraduates and educational opportunities for women and minorities who too often have been underrepresented in scientific and technological fields, but are no less capable of inventing the solutions that will help us grow our economy and save our planet. (Applause.)

And it will support fellowships and interdisciplinary graduate programs and partnerships between academic institutions and innovative companies to prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge.

For we must always remember that somewhere in America there’s an entrepreneur seeking a loan to start a business that could transform an industry — but she hasn’t secured it yet. There’s a researcher with an idea for an experiment that might offer a new cancer treatment -– but he hasn’t found the funding yet. There’s a child with an inquisitive mind staring up at the night sky. And maybe she has the potential to change our world –- but she doesn’t know it yet.

As you know, scientific discovery takes far more than the occasional flash of brilliance –- as important as that can be. Usually, it takes time and hard work and patience; it takes training; it requires the support of a nation. But it holds a promise like no other area of human endeavor.

In 1968, a year defined by loss and conflict and tumult, Apollo 8 carried into space the first human beings ever to slip beyond Earth’s gravity, and the ship would circle the moon 10 times before returning home. But on its fourth orbit, the capsule rotated and for the first time Earth became visible through the windows.

Bill Anders, one of the astronauts aboard Apollo 8, scrambled for a camera, and he took a photo that showed the Earth coming up over the moon’s horizon. It was the first ever taken from so distant a vantage point, and it soon became known as “Earthrise.”

Anders would say that the moment forever changed him, to see our world — this pale blue sphere — without borders, without divisions, at once so tranquil and beautiful and alone.

“We came all this way to explore the moon,” he said, “and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

Yes, scientific innovation offers us a chance to achieve prosperity. It has offered us benefits that have improved our health and our lives — improvements we take too easily for granted. But it gives us something more. At root, science forces us to reckon with the truth as best as we can ascertain it.

And some truths fill us with awe. Others force us to question long-held views. Science can’t answer every question, and indeed, it seems at times the more we plumb the mysteries of the physical world, the more humble we must be. Science cannot supplant our ethics or our values, our principles or our faith. But science can inform those things and help put those values — these moral sentiments, that faith — can put those things to work — to feed a child, or to heal the sick, to be good stewards of this Earth.

We are reminded that with each new discovery and the new power it brings comes new responsibility; that the fragility, the sheer specialness of life requires us to move past our differences and to address our common problems, to endure and continue humanity’s strivings for a better world.

As President Kennedy said when he addressed the National Academy of Sciences more than 45 years ago: “The challenge, in short, may be our salvation.”

Thank you all for all your past, present, and future discoveries. (Applause.) May God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

April 27, 2009

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There are few things as fundamental to the American Dream or as essential for America’s success as a good education. This has never been more true than it is today. At a time when our children are competing with kids in China and India, the best job qualification you can have is a college degree or advanced training. If you do have that kind of education, then you’re well prepared for the future — because half of the fastest growing jobs in America require a Bachelor’s degree or more. And if you don’t have a college degree, you’re more than twice as likely to be unemployed as somebody who does. So the stakes could not be higher for young people like Stephanie.

And yet, in a paradox of American life, at the very moment it’s never been more important to have a quality higher education, the cost of that kind of that kind of education has never been higher. Over the past few decades, the cost of tuition at private colleges has more than doubled, while costs at public institutions have nearly tripled. Compounding the problem, tuition has grown ten times faster than a typical family’s income, putting new pressure on families that are already strained and pricing far too many students out of college altogether. Yet, we have a student loan system where we’re giving lenders billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies that could be used to make college more affordable for all Americans.

This trend — a trend where a quality higher education slips out of reach for ordinary Americans — threatens the dream of opportunity that is America’s promise to all its citizens. It threatens to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. And it threatens to undercut America’s competitiveness — because America cannot lead in the 21st century unless we have the best educated, most competitive workforce in the world. And that’s the kind of workforce — and the kind of citizenry — to which we should be committed.

And that’s why we have taken and proposed a number of sweeping steps over our first few months in office — steps that amount to the most significant efforts to open the doors of college to middle-class Americans since the GI Bill. Millions of working families are now eligible for a $2,500 annual tax credit that will help them pay the cost of tuition; a tax credit that will cover the full cost of tuition at most of the two-year community colleges that are some of the great and undervalued assets of our education system.

We’re also bringing much needed reform to the Pell Grants that roughly 30 percent of students rely on to put themselves through college. Today’s Pell Grants cover less than half as much tuition at a four-year public institution as they did a few decades ago. And that’s why we are adding $500 to the grants for this academic year, and raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 next year, easing the financial burden on students and families.

And we are also changing the way the value of a Pell Grant is determined. Today, that value is set by Congress on an annual basis, making it vulnerable to Washington politics. What we are doing is pegging Pell Grants to a fixed rate above inflation so that these grants don’t cover less and less as families’ costs go up and up. And this will help prevent a projected shortfall in Pell Grant funding in a few years that could rob many of our poorest students of their dream of attending college. It will help ensure that Pell Grants are a source of funding that students can count on each and every year.

Now, while our nation has a responsibility to make college more affordable, colleges and universities have a responsibility to control spiraling costs. And that will require hard choices about where to save and where to spend. So I challenge state, college and university leaders to put affordability front and center as they chart a path forward. I challenge them to follow the example of the University of Maryland, where they’re streamlining administrative costs, cutting energy costs, using faculty more effectively, making it possible for them to freeze tuition for students and for families.

At the same time, we’re also working to modernize and expand the Perkins Loan Program by changing a system where colleges are rewarded for raising tuition, and instead, rewarding them for making college more affordable.

Now just as we’ve opened the doors of college to every American, we also have to ensure that more students can walk through them. And that’s why I’ve challenged every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or advanced training — because by the end of the next decade, I want to see America have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. We used to have that; we no longer do. We are going to get that lead back.

And to help us achieve that goal, we are investing $2.5 billion to identify and support innovative initiatives that have a record of success in boosting enrollment and graduation rates — initiatives like the IBEST program in Washington state that combines basic and career skills classes to ensure that students not only complete college, but are competitive in the workforce from the moment they graduate.

And to help cover the cost of all this, we’re going to eliminate waste, reduce inefficiency, and cut what we don’t need to pay for what we do. And that includes reforming our student loan system so that it better serves the people it’s supposed to serve — our students.

Right now, there are two main kinds of federal loans. First, there are Direct Loans. These are loans where tax dollars go directly to help students pay for tuition, not to pad the profits of private lenders. The other kinds of loans are Federal Family Education Loans. These loans, known as FFEL loans, make up the majority of all college loans. Under the FFEL program, lenders get a big government subsidy with every loan they make. And these loans are then guaranteed with taxpayer money, which means that if a student defaults, a lender can get back almost all of its money from our government.

And there’s only one real difference between Direct Loans and private FFEL loans. It’s that under the FFEL program, taxpayers are paying banks a premium to act as middlemen — a premium that costs the American people billions of dollars each year. Well, that’s a premium we cannot afford — not when we could be reinvesting that same money in our students, in our economy, and in our country.

And that’s why I’ve called for ending the FFEL program and shifting entirely over to Direct Loans. It’s a step that even a conservative estimate predicts will save tens of billions of tax dollars over the next ten years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the money we could save by cutting out the middleman would pay for 95 percent of our plan to guarantee growing Pell Grants. This would help ensure that every American, everywhere in this country, can out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world.

In the end, this is not about growing the size of government or relying on the free market — because it’s not a free market when we have a student loan system that’s rigged to reward private lenders without any risk. It’s about whether we want to give tens of billions of tax dollars to special interests or whether we want to make college more affordable for eight and a half million more students. I think most of us would agree on what the right answer is.

Now, some of you have probably seen how this proposal was greeted by the special interests. The banks and the lenders who have reaped a windfall from these subsidies have mobilized an army of lobbyists to try to keep things the way they are. They are gearing up for battle. So am I. They will fight for their special interests. I will fight for Stephanie, and other American students and their families. And for those who care about America’s future, this is a battle we can’t afford to lose.

So I am looking forward to having this debate in the days and weeks ahead. And I am confident that if all of us here in Washington do what’s in the best interests of the people we represent, and reinvest not only in opening the doors of college but making sure students can walk through them, then we will help deliver the change that the American people sent us here to make. We will help Americans fulfill their promise as individuals. And we will help America fulfill its promise as a nation.

So thank you very much. And thank you, Stephanie. And thank you, Stephanie’s mom.

All right. Thanks, guys.

For Immediate Release April 24, 2009

(Diplomatic Reception Room; 1:46 P.M. EDT. END 1:56 P.M. EDT)

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On March 10, 2009, President Obama gave a major speech before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce outlining his plans for education. During the speech, Obama emphasized the presence of and showed his support for Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. Duncan was highlighted as an enforcer of “innovation” through his executive use of monetary “incentives” given to him through the recent stimulus package (ARRA).

A main feature of the speech was to use the current economic crisis to further push the test-prep for global competition agenda. He called for more high-stakes testing along with “national standards”, more corporate-style charter schools, financially rewarding teachers who produce high test scores, as well as other changes such as extending the school day and year (an initiative that is not only linked to “closing the achievement gap” but also linked to eliminating unions and collective bargaining, as contracts block corporate charter schools from imposing sweatshop conditions on young teachers). These initiatives are taken up under the banner that education be limited to “prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world.” Other countries, Obama claims, are “spending less time teaching things that don’t matter, and more time teaching things that do. They’re preparing their students not only for high school or college, but for a career. We are not.” While many critics focus energy on debating Obama’s claims with respect to U.S. graduation rates, international testing, etc., the real problem is the aim of global competition that is given to education.

Most Americans have rejected the notion that they should prosper at the expense of the world’s peoples. And, after eight years of the testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, public opinion is clearly against sending children to school to prepare for arbitrary tests so as to serve the monopolies in their quest to win “global competition”. Public opinion is also clearly in favor of more art, music, media, physical education, and so on, all which continue to be cut to make space for testing. According to a recent study prepared for the Alliance for Childhood, test preparation now dominates the kindergarten experience.

While many themes are present in the speech, the emphasis given to the American Dream is particularly significant as an effort to restore credibility of the U.S. as “land of opportunity.” In fact, Obama began his presentation by chanting “Si se puede,” (yes we can), a popular slogan defending the rights of immigrants in response to on-going government attacks. But Obama did not speak of winning rights in his speech. He instead spoke to re-invigorate the American Dream, presenting his ascension to power as evidence of the vitality of the Dream. After pointing to current economic crises and presenting some statistics about the failure of the U.S. education system to compete with the rest of the world, He said:

What’s at stake is nothing less than the American Dream. It’s what drew my father and so many of your fathers and mothers to our shores in pursuit of an education. It’s what has led generations of Americans to take on that extra job, to sacrifice the small pleasures, to scrimp and save wherever they can, in hopes of putting away enough, just enough, to give their child the education that they never had. It’s that most American of ideas, that with the right education, a child of any race, any faith, any station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way and fulfill their God-given potential.

In order to confront the current economic crisis, Obama imposes on Americans the past, with their role to protect “the dream of its founding for posterity.” “This is a responsibility that’s fallen to our generation,” he said.

Obama’s emphasis on the American Dream is significant in part because Americans increasingly see the Dream as just that: only a dream. In 2006, a CNN poll reported “that more than half of those surveyed, 54 percent, considered the American Dream unachievable.” In 2008 this trend continued. The American Dream in the Balance survey reported, “Only 52 percent believed that the American Dream was alive and well. Similarly only 48 percent said that the American Dream was an important part of their family history.” After reading Obama’s speech, one has the impression that being identified as not believing in the American Dream is somehow anti-American and a threat. “To any student who’s watching,” Obama threatens, “I say this: Don’t even think about dropping out of school. Don’t even think about it.”

Having just rewarded Wall Street failures with trillions of public dollars Obama says, speaking of education: “I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high.” This points not simply to Obama’s double standard but to the problem he is trying to solve. How to secure the allegiance of the American people to a system that denies their rights, while simultaneously training them to accept the blame for things they have no control over.

A major thesis of the speech is that low quality education has resulted in the Dream being unattainable for many. Teachers, students and parents are, in turn, blamed for low quality education. “Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world,” Obama asserts, ignoring the vast inequalities in school funding across the U.S., “we’ve let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us.” Repeating the Bush doctrine that the problem is the attitudes of students, teachers and parents, he says: “It’s time to expect more from our students. It’s time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones.” Students, who inherit this crisis-ridden system, are actually blamed for America’s decline: “America cannot succeed unless our students take responsibility for their own education,” Obama says. And for parents: “Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your child leaves for school on time and does their homework when they get back at night.”

These admonitions reflect a profound detachment from the problems facing most people, ignoring the growing, crushing poverty and economic insecurity, segregation, police brutality, and all the attending social and health problems from violence to asthma to lead poisoning. The system of unequal funding is completely ignored and will actually flourish under Duncan’s corporate charter model. In short, Americans are to ignore their experience of a government that denies rights as a matter of course, demanding that more and more people go without, while working longer and harder, if they can find a job. They are to ignore the fact that society has developed to the point where needs of all can be readily met. Instead of taking rights as a starting point, Obama calls on Americans to “to scrimp and save wherever they can” and ensure children show up at school on time!

The blame placed on teachers, students and parents is to be made acceptable with the detached “positive psychology” of “anything is possible if you try”. The call “yes we can” win rights by immigrant groups is transformed by Obama into a demand to pull oneself up by their bootstraps…or else, where academic failure is rendered as a threat to America: “dropping out is quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country, and it’s not an option — not anymore.”

Given the widespread rejection of the direction Obama and Duncan are pushing education, the new administration has resorted to bribes to push people to do what they would otherwise not do. This is referred to by Obama as “incentivising excellence,” a fanatical pragmatism that says whatever gets test scores up and dropouts down is acceptable (and this includes fudging the data), no matter how vile. If perverting learning by offering money for grades “works” (that is, raises test scores), it is acceptable; if humiliating students “works” to “raise achievement” than humiliation is acceptable. If military academies “work” that is fine too.

What is significant, however, is not simply the manner in which this violates rights and in no way will contribute to raising the level of education, but also how it facilitates shoring up the power of executive federal bodies over state and local authorities. Obama presents in his speech a model where federal monies will only be appropriated to those education agencies that toe the line. He says: “Show us how you’ll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant…That’s how we will reward quality and incentivize excellence, and make a down payment on the success of the next generation.” Arne Dunacn has been given $5 billion to bribe educators into more testing, more corporate charters, and more anti-human teaching methods which can only be understood as methods for socializing the next generation to accept arbitrary executive power against the public interest.

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AUDIENCE: Si se puede! Si se puede! Si se puede!

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, everybody have a seat. Thank you for the wonderful introduction, David. And thank you for the great work that you are doing each and every day. And I appreciate such a warm welcome. Some of you I’ve gotten a chance to know; many of you I’m meeting for the first time. But the spirit of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the desire to create jobs and provide opportunity to people who sometimes have been left out — that’s exactly what this administration is about. That’s the essence of the American Dream. And so I’m very proud to have a chance to speak with all of you.

You know, every so often, throughout our history, a generation of Americans bears the responsibility of seeing this country through difficult times and protecting the dream of its founding for posterity. This is a responsibility that’s fallen to our generation. Meeting it will require steering our nation’s economy through a crisis unlike anything that we have seen in our time.

In the short term, that means jump-starting job creation and restarting lending, and restoring confidence in our markets and our financial system. But it also means taking steps that not only advance our recovery, but lay the foundation for lasting, shared prosperity.

I know there’s some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time. And they forget that Lincoln helped lay down the transcontinental railroad and passed the Homestead Act and created the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of civil war. Likewise, President Roosevelt didn’t have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war; he had to do both. President Kennedy didn’t have the luxury of choosing between civil rights and sending us to the moon. And we don’t have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term.

America will not remain true to its highest ideals — and America’s place as a global economic leader will be put at risk — unless we not only bring down the crushing cost of health care and transform the way we use energy, but also if we do — if we don’t do a far better job than we’ve been doing of educating our sons and daughters; unless we give them the knowledge and skills they need in this new and changing world.

For we know that economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand in hand in America. The land-grant colleges and public high schools transformed the economy of an industrializing nation. The GI Bill generated a middle class that made America’s economy unrivaled in the 20th century. Investments in math and science under President Eisenhower gave new opportunities to young scientists and engineers all across the country. It made possible somebody like a Sergei Brin to attend graduate school and found an upstart company called Google that would forever change our world.

The source of America’s prosperity has never been merely how ably we accumulate wealth, but how well we educate our people. This has never been more true than it is today. In a 21st-century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there’s an Internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know — education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it’s a prerequisite for success.

That’s why workers without a four-year degree have borne the brunt of recent layoffs, Latinos most of all. That’s why, of the 30 fastest growing occupations in America, half require a Bachelor’s degree or more. By 2016, four out of every 10 new jobs will require at least some advanced education or training.

So let there be no doubt: The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens — and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation. We have the best universities, the most renowned scholars. We have innovative principals and passionate teachers and gifted students, and we have parents whose only priority is their child’s education. We have a legacy of excellence, and an unwavering belief that our children should climb higher than we did.

And yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we’ve let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. Let me give you a few statistics. In 8th grade math, we’ve fallen to 9th place. Singapore’s middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should. And year after year, a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, it’s unsustainable for our democracy, it’s unacceptable for our children — and we can’t afford to let it continue.

What’s at stake is nothing less than the American Dream. It’s what drew my father and so many of your fathers and mothers to our shores in pursuit of an education. It’s what led Linda Brown and Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez to bear the standard of all who were attending separate and unequal schools. It’s what has led generations of Americans to take on that extra job, to sacrifice the small pleasures, to scrimp and save wherever they can, in hopes of putting away enough, just enough, to give their child the education that they never had. It’s that most American of ideas, that with the right education, a child of any race, any faith, any station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way and fulfill their God-given potential. (Applause.)

Of course, we’ve heard all this year after year after year after year — and far too little has changed. Certainly it hasn’t changed in too many overcrowded Latino schools; it hasn’t changed in too many inner-city schools that are seeing dropout rates of over 50 percent. It’s not changing not because we’re lacking sound ideas or sensible plans — in pockets of excellence across this country, we’re seeing what children from all walks of life can and will achieve when we set high standards, have high expectations, when we do a good job of preparing them. Instead, it’s because politics and ideology have too often trumped our progress that we’re in the situation that we’re in.

For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline. Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom. Too many in the Republican Party have opposed new investments in early education, despite compelling evidence of its importance. So what we get here in Washington is the same old debate about it’s more money versus more reform, vouchers versus the status quo. There’s been partisanship and petty bickering, but little recognition that we need to move beyond the worn fights of the 20th century if we’re going to succeed in the 21st century. (Applause.)

I think you’d all agree that the time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding us — holding ourselves accountable is here. What’s required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It’s time to expect more from our students. It’s time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones. It’s time to demand results from government at every level. It’s time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world. (Applause.) It’s time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career. We’ve accepted failure for far too long. Enough is enough. America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world — and that’s exactly what we intend to do.

That’s exactly what the budget I’m submitting to Congress has begun to achieve. Now, at a time when we’ve inherited a trillion-dollar deficit, we will start by doing a little housekeeping, going through our books, cutting wasteful education programs. My outstanding Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who’s here today — stand up, Arne, so everybody can see you. (Applause.) I’m assuming you also saw my Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. (Applause.) But Secretary Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works. And this will help free up resources for the first pillar of reforming our schools — investing in early childhood initiatives.

This isn’t just about keeping an eye on our children, it’s about educating them. Studies show that children in early childhood education programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job, and more likely to earn more in that job. For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get nearly $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health care costs, and less crime. That’s why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that I signed into law invests $5 billion in growing Early Head Start and Head Start, expanding access to quality child care for 150,000 more children from working families, and doing more for children with special needs. And that’s why we are going to offer 55,000 first-time parents regular visits from trained nurses to help make sure their children are healthy and prepare them for school and for life. (Applause.)

Even as we invest in early childhood education, let’s raise the bar for early learning programs that are falling short. Now, today, some children are enrolled in excellent programs. Some children are enrolled in mediocre programs. And some are wasting away their most formative years in bad programs. That includes the one-fourth of all children who are Hispanic, and who will drive America’s workforce of tomorrow, but who are less likely to have been enrolled in an early childhood education program than anyone else.

That’s why I’m issuing a challenge to our states: Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs; show us how you’ll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact. That’s how we will reward quality and incentivize excellence, and make a down payment on the success of the next generation.

So that’s the first pillar of our education reform agenda. The second, we will end what has become a race to the bottom in our schools and instead spur a race to the top by encouraging better standards and assessments. Now, this is an area where we are being outpaced by other nations. It’s not that their kids are any smarter than ours — it’s that they are being smarter about how to educate their children. They’re spending less time teaching things that don’t matter, and more time teaching things that do. They’re preparing their students not only for high school or college, but for a career. We are not. Our curriculum for 8th graders is two full years behind top performing countries. That’s a prescription for economic decline. And I refuse to accept that America’s children cannot rise to this challenge. They can, and they must, and they will meet higher standards in our time. (Applause.)

So let’s challenge our states — let’s challenge our states to adopt world-class standards that will bring our curriculums to the 21st century. Today’s system of 50 different sets of benchmarks for academic success means 4th grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming — and they’re getting the same grade. Eight of our states are setting their standards so low that their students may end up on par with roughly the bottom 40 percent of the world.

That’s inexcusable. That’s why I’m calling on states that are setting their standards far below where they ought to be to stop low-balling expectations for our kids. The solution to low test scores is not lowering standards — it’s tougher, clearer standards. (Applause.) Standards like those in Massachusetts, where 8th graders are — (applause) — we have a Massachusetts contingent here. (Laughter.) In Massachusetts, 8th graders are now tying for first — first in the whole world in science. Other forward-thinking states are moving in the same direction by coming together as part of a consortium. And more states need to do the same. And I’m calling on our nation’s governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

That is what we’ll help them do later this year — that what we’re going to help them do later this year when we finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results. (Applause.) And Arne Duncan will also back up this commitment to higher standards with a fund to invest in innovation in our school districts.

Of course, raising standards alone will not make much of a difference unless we provide teachers and principals with the information they need to make sure students are prepared to meet those standards. And far too few states have data systems like the one in Florida that keep track of a student’s education from childhood through college. And far too few districts are emulating the example of Houston and Long Beach, and using data to track how much progress a student is making and where that student is struggling. That’s a resource that can help us improve student achievement, and tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what’s working and what’s not. That’s why we’re making a major investment in this area that we will cultivate a new culture of accountability in America’s schools.

Now, to complete our race to the top requires the third pillar of reform — recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers. From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it’s the person standing at the front of the classroom. That’s why our Recovery Act will ensure that hundreds of thousands of teachers and school personnel are not laid off — because those Americans are not only doing jobs they can’t afford to lose, they’re rendering a service our nation cannot afford to lose, either. (Applause.)

America’s future depends on its teachers. And so today, I’m calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms. If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation, if you want to make the most of your talents and dedication, if you want to make your mark with a legacy that will endure — then join the teaching profession. America needs you. We need you in our suburbs. We need you in our small towns. We especially need you in our inner cities. We need you in classrooms all across our country.

And if you do your part, then we’ll do ours. That’s why we’re taking steps to prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities, and encourage them to stay in the profession. That’s why we’re creating new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they’re needed most. That’s why we support offering extra pay to Americans who teach math and science to end a teacher shortage in those subjects. It’s why we’re building on the promising work being done in places like South Carolina’s Teachers Advancement Program, and making an unprecedented commitment to ensure that anyone entrusted with educating our children is doing the job as well as it can be done.

Now, here’s what that commitment means: It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable -– in up to 150 more school districts. New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools. Teachers throughout a school will benefit from guidance and support to help them improve.

And just as we’ve given our teachers all the support they need to be successful, we need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. And that means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. But let me be clear — (applause.) Let me be clear — the overwhelming number of teachers are doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances. My sister is a teacher, so I know how tough teaching can be. But let me be clear: If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high. We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children’s teachers and the schools where they teach. (Applause.)

Now, that leads me to the fourth part of America’s education strategy –- promoting innovation and excellence in America’s schools. One of the places where much of that innovation occurs is in our most effective charter schools. And these are public schools founded by parents, teachers, and civic or community organizations with broad leeway to innovate -– schools I supported as a state legislator and a United States senator.

But right now, there are many caps on how many charter schools are allowed in some states, no matter how well they’re preparing our students. That isn’t good for our children, our economy, or our country. Of course, any expansion of charter schools must not result in the spread of mediocrity, but in the advancement of excellence. And that will require states adopting both a rigorous selection and review process to ensure that a charter school’s autonomy is coupled with greater accountability –- as well as a strategy, like the one in Chicago, to close charter schools that are not working. Provided this greater accountability, I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place.

Now, even as we foster innovation in where our children are learning, let’s also foster innovation in when our children are learning. We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. That calendar may have once made sense, but today it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children — listen to this — our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea — every year. That’s no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy. That’s why I’m calling for us not only to expand effective after-school programs, but to rethink the school day to incorporate more time -– whether during the summer or through expanded-day programs for children who need it. (Applause.)

Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas. (Laughter.) Not with Malia and Sasha — (laughter) — not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America.

Of course, no matter how innovative our schools or how effective our teachers, America cannot succeed unless our students take responsibility for their own education. That means showing up for school on time, paying attention in class, seeking out extra tutoring if it’s needed, staying out of trouble. To any student who’s watching, I say this: Don’t even think about dropping out of school. Don’t even think about it. (Applause.)

As I said a couple of weeks ago, dropping out is quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country, and it’s not an option — not anymore. Not when our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past 30 years. Not when high school dropouts earn about half as much as college graduates. Not when Latino students are dropping out faster than just about anyone else. It’s time for all of us, no matter what our backgrounds, to come together and solve this epidemic.

Stemming the tide of dropouts will require turning around our low-performing schools. Just 2,000 high schools in cities like Detroit and Los Angeles and Philadelphia produce over 50 percent of America’s dropouts. And yet there are too few proven strategies to transform these schools. And there are too few partners to get the job done.

So today, I’m issuing a challenge to educators and lawmakers, parents and teachers alike: Let us all make turning around our schools our collective responsibility as Americans. And that will require new investments in innovative ideas — that’s why my budget invests in developing new strategies to make sure at-risk students don’t give up on their education; new efforts to give dropouts who want to return to school the help they need to graduate; and new ways to put those young men and women who have left school back on a pathway to graduation.

Now, the fifth part of America’s education strategy is providing every American with a quality higher education -– whether it’s college or technical training. Never has a college degree been more important. Never has it been more expensive. And at a time when so many of our families are bearing enormous economic burdens, the rising cost of tuition threatens to shatter dreams. And that’s why we will simplify federal college assistance forms so it doesn’t take a Ph.D to apply for financial aid. (Applause.)

That’s why we’re already taking steps to make college or technical training affordable. For the first time ever, Pell Grants will not be subject to the politics of the moment or the whim of the market –- they will be a commitment that Congress is required to uphold each and every year. (Applause.) Not only that; because rising costs mean Pell Grants cover less than half as much tuition as they did 30 years ago, we’re raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 a year and indexing it above inflation. We’re also providing a $2,500-a-year tuition tax credit for students from working families. And we’re modernizing and expanding the Perkins Loan Program to make sure schools like UNLV don’t get a tenth as many Perkins loans as schools like Harvard.

To help pay for all of this, we’re putting students ahead of lenders by eliminating wasteful student loan subsidies that cost taxpayers billions each year. All in all, we are making college affordable for 7 million more students with a sweeping investment in our children’s futures and America’s success. And I call on Congress to join me and the American people by making these investments possible. (Applause.)

This is how we will help meet our responsibility as a nation to open the doors of college to every American. But it will also be the responsibility of colleges and universities to control spiraling costs. We can’t just keep on putting more money in and universities and colleges not doing their part to hold down tuitions. And it’s the responsibility of our students to walk through the doors of opportunity.

In just a single generation, America has fallen from 2nd place to 11th place in the portion of students completing college. That is unfortunate, but it’s by no means irreversible. With resolve and the right investments, we can retake the lead once more. And that’s why, in my address to the nation the other week, I called on Americans to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training, with the goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. And to meet that goal, we are investing $2.5 billion to identify and support innovative initiatives across the country that achieve results in helping students persist and graduate.

So let’s not stop at education with college. Let’s recognize a 21st century reality: Learning doesn’t end in our early 20s. Adults of all ages need opportunities to earn new degrees and new skills — especially in the current economic environment. That means working with all our universities and schools, including community colleges — a great and undervalued asset — to prepare workers for good jobs in high-growth industries; and to improve access to job training not only for young people who are just starting their careers, but for older workers who need new skills to change careers. And that’s going to be one of the key tasks that Secretary Solis is involved with, is making sure that lifelong learning is a reality and a possibility for more Americans.

It’s through initiatives like these that we’ll see more Americans earn a college degree, or receive advanced training, and pursue a successful career. And that’s why I’m calling on Congress to work with me to enact these essential reforms, and to reauthorize the Workforce Reinvestment Act. That’s how we will round out a complete and competitive education in the United States of America.

So here’s the bottom line: Yes, we need more money; yes, we need more reform; yes, we need to hold ourselves more accountable for every dollar we spend. But there’s one more ingredient I want to talk about. No government policy will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents — because government, no matter how wise or efficient, cannot turn off the TV or put away the video games. Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your child leaves for school on time and does their homework when they get back at night. These are things only a parent can do. These are things that our parents must do.

I say this not only as a father, but also as a son. When I was a child my mother and I lived overseas, and she didn’t have the money to send me to the fancy international school where all the American kids went to school. So what she did was she supplemented my schooling with lessons from a correspondence course. And I can still picture her waking me up at 4:30 a.m., five days a week, to go over some lessons before I went to school. And whenever I’d complain and grumble and find some excuse and say, “Awww, I’m sleepy,” she’d patiently repeat to me her most powerful defense. She’d say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.” (Laughter and applause.)

And when you’re a kid you don’t think about the sacrifices they’re making. She had to work; I just had to go to school. But she’d still wake up every day to make sure I was getting what I needed for my education. And it’s because she did this day after day, week after week, because of all the other opportunities and breaks that I got along the way, all the sacrifices that my grandmother and my grandfather made along the way, that I can stand here today as President of the United States. It’s because of the sacrifices — (applause.) See, I want every child in this country to have the same chance that my mother gave me, that my teachers gave me, that my college professors gave me, that America gave me.

You know these stories; you’ve lived them, as well. All of you have a similar story to tell. You know, it’s — I want children like Yvonne Bojorquez to have that chance. Yvonne is a student at Village Academy High School in California. Now, Village Academy is a 21st century school where cutting edge technologies are used in the classroom, where college prep and career training are offered to all who seek it, and where the motto is “respect, responsibility, and results.”

Now, a couple of months ago, Yvonne and her class made a video talking about the impact that our struggling economy was having on their lives. And some of them spoke about their parents being laid off, or their homes facing foreclosure, or their inability to focus on school with everything that was happening at home. And when it was her turn to speak, Yvonne said: “We’ve all been affected by this economic crisis. [We] are all college bound students; we’re all businessmen, and doctors and lawyers and all this great stuff. And we have all this potential — but the way things are going, we’re not going to be able to [fulfill it].”

It was heartbreaking that a girl so full of promise was so full of worry that she and her class titled their video, “Is anybody listening?” So, today, there’s something I want to say to Yvonne and her class at Village Academy: I am listening. We are listening. America is listening. (Applause.) And we will not rest until your parents can keep your jobs — we will not rest until your parents can keep their jobs and your families can keep their homes, and you can focus on what you should be focusing on — your own education; until you can become the businessmen, doctors, and lawyers of tomorrow, until you can reach out and grasp your dreams for the future.

For in the end, Yvonne’s dream is a dream shared by all Americans. It’s the founding promise of our nation: That we can make of our lives what we will; that all things are possible for all people; and that here in America, our best days lie ahead. I believe that. I truly believe if I do my part, and you, the American people, do yours, then we will emerge from this crisis a stronger nation, and pass the dream of our founding on to posterity, ever safer than before. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. Thank you. (Applause.)

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