this morning i want to provide a preliminary progress report on the school improvement grants. as all of you know sig seeks to accelerate achievement in the lowest performing 5% of schools through far-reaching interventions. the federal grant supports schools, leaders, teachers, unions, and local partners in the community to undertake this challenging work. we're seeing some very encouraging signs of progress in this first year of data from our s.i.g. schools which few experts anticipated but before i talk about that data, i want to put in context what we're seeing. the starting premise for the s.i.g. program is unfortunately painfully self evident. the united states simply cannot meaningfully boost graduation rates and promise a quality education to every single child without ending the cycle of failure in our chronically

low-performing schools. tragically, sometimes not just for a few years but literally decades children have been cheated out of a world class education and for fa too long we, adults, educators, leaders, passively observed this educational failure with a complacency deeply disturbing. states and district officials have traditionally tinkered in the schools instead of treating them as the educational emergencies they are. from the moment i became the ceo of the chicago public schools in 2001, i had so many people tell me not much could be done to transform a failing school. i was told that nothing could be done to transform failing schools at scale. skeptics on the left of the political spectrum said the barriers of poverty and race and the attachment of parents to the neighborhood schools were just too tough to overcome. those on the right of the political spectrum said that

teachers and unions and district administrators would never buy into dramatic and fundamental change. at the national level the no child left behind law required persistently low performing schools to take action to improve student learning. in reality, chronically under performing schools were required to do little and for years the federal government provided little or no resources to help support change in these schools. almost no high schools, for example, were included in federal school improvement efforts even though just 15% of our nation's high schools produce half, 50%, of our nation's 1.2 million dropouts. adults admired the problem, pointed fingers, bickered, and at the end of the day nothing meaningful changed for the nation's children. early in his administration president obama said that america could no longer maintain the status quo in chronically low performing schools. we could not continue to tinker.

he believes, and i believe, that the dramatic changes desperately needed in low-performing schools and we absolutely reject the idea that some schools or some children or some neighborhoods are just destined to file. so in 2009 our administration with the support of congress created a new and much more ambitious program for turning around low-performing schools. it gives states and districts four options for dramatic improvement but all four options require schools to institute far-reaching changes to improve student learning. as my friend dennis van roek he will, the head of the nea says, a sweek here or toggle there will not lead to fundamental change. for the first time the sprags put serious resources into supporting school turn around efforts to the tune of more than $4 billion. that money has gone to over 1,200 schools, each of which got a three-year grant of up to $2

million per school and in our first cohort of schools 45%, almost half, were high schools. we wanted to attack the toughest challenges head on. almost immediately arm chair analysts, blogger almost uniformly predicted it would flop, it would be a terrible waste of time, talent, goodwill and taxpayer dollars. they said it would have little effect on student learning and on student outcomes. they said that even if the program worked to turn around a few schools, it would never succeed at scale or produce lasting change. fortunately, great teachers, great school leaders, and great community partners and parents didn't listen to those skeptics and most importantly, students themselves more than stepped up to the challenge. these courageous teachers, school leaders and community partners understood that turning around low-performing schools is some of the toughest, most controversial work they would ever undertake. they knew it was also among the

most important and potentially rewarding work they would ever do in their entire careers. they knew the difficulty of the work could not be an excuse for inaction. they didn't claim to have all the answers. the approach worked as we all try to too with real humility coupled with a tremendous sense of urgency. we're still getting in the results from the first year of the s.i.g. program. our preliminary data shows that after just one year the commitment to change is producing dramatic gains in learning in a significant number of schools. we all know that none of these schools are yet where they need to be or where they will be, but the progress and sense of momentum and the sense of hope is real. we have about 850 schools in the first s.i.g. cohort and preliminary achievement data from 43 states covering about 700 of these schools in the first year of the program. in year one roughly 1 in 4

schools saw double-digit increases in math proficiency, about 1 in 5 schools had double-digit increases in reading proficiency. all told in roughly 60% of s.i.g. schools the percent of students proficient in math or reading went up in just the first year. now as encouraging as these increases and academic achievement are, i want to be clear that obviously they're still preliminary. we're only talking about the first year data and everyone realizes that we'll need several years of data to confirm a lasting improvement in academic achievement. we're also continuing to gather data on other critical outcomes that matter to assessing student progress, things like graduation rates, dropout rates, discipline, attendance, and other indices. so this is very much a first look at the initial results of s.i.g. and it is encouraging to see that rigorous research in cities like philly and new york city is also finding the turn around schools and reconstituted

schools can dramatically improve student performance and substantially boost graduation rates. even more encouraging they're doing so district wide, not in isolated pockets of success. as we all know, scale is so important to this effort. it is equally heartening to hear as we learned earlier this morning in the grand nation update there has been a big drop in the number of high school dropout factories nationwide, especially since 2008. from 2008 to 2010 the number of high schools in america where graduation is not the norm fell from about 1,750 schools to 1,550 schools and all told nearly 400,000 fewer students attended high school dropout factories in 2010 than just two years earlier. what are the ingredients? what are the secrets to this success? in a s.i.g. program we're seeing the schools that boost student achievement tend to share two common elements. first, they have a new dynamic

leader deeply committed to the on students and to the surrounding kmund like roy sand vol who, works as a turn around high school on an indian reservation 200 miles northeast of arizona. every monday he gets up early and drives two and a half hours to his school. all week long he lives on the reservation before driving two and a half hours back to his family for the weekend. the second thing that turn around schools have in common is they have teachers and adults that share a focus on improving instruction through collaboration and through the use of data. all four of the s.i.g. models give professionals the resources they need to be ambitious teachers. they all provide for embedded professional development, greater use of data to inform instruction and increased learning time including more time for collaboration among teachers and they all provide for improved teacher evaluation systems and for the first time provide meaningful feedback to

support instruction and rigorous instructional programs aligned with state standards. the road to success is not the program itself. it is the focus, the passion, the commit canment of practitioners that drives success. contrary to a lot of predictions made about s.i.g., the program helped to spur innovation in the field instead of somehow stifling it. max field magnet elementary school in st. paul adopted a peer to peer observation system and now requires all teachers to be observed in their classrooms and also serve as observers in other teacher classrooms three times a year and in ontario high school in ontario, oregon, teachers are making better and smarter use of technology to improve instruction in realtime. in las vegas the principal of kit carson elementary used s.i.g. funds to institute a tutoring program that added an hour of learning time at the understand of the school day and

the result of the additional hour, reading and math proficiency both improved by more than 20 percentage points. down the road in reno smith ridge elementary hired a stew coach and data specialist to give teachers meaningful feedback and daily coaching. students themselves have a big role in tracking and analyzing their own progress and empowering students to take ownership of their own learning that's so important. weekly assessments monitor how students are learning state standards and all data is tracked for each student in a data journal. at the heart of all of these successes are teachers and school leaders who are excited about the prospect for change. it is what motivates them. it is what gets them up every morning and keeps them working late into the night. this is absolutely a labor of love. these teachers recognize how demanding this work is and also see the potential for fundamentally transforming the life chances of their students. they know that school culture is a difficult, difficult thing to

change but they also believe that all children, all children must be given an opportunity to fulfill their academic and social poe he shall it. as one study of turn around schools in philadelphia put it, teachers at successful turn around schools feel they're part of something big and let me give you an example of being part of something big. one of our panelists you will hear from in a few minutes, carol smith, a fantastic superintendent in portland, oregon, will talk in a moment you about the program worked in her district at roosevelt high school. two years ago roosevelt was named one of the worst schools in the state. in its first year in the s.i.g program roosevelt has had a 14% jump in the four-year graduation rate. attendance is up. test scores are up. discipline issues are down. just as telling and important roosevelt's educators have fostered a new belief among students about what is possible for them, the arts, for example, are thriving, and so is the school's drama program.

last summer the students performed a play at the international thespian festival in nebraska, a first for a public school from portland and to make sure they all could make the trip the drama director took out a second mortgage on her home. we have to give her help, and i am going to figure out how to do that. in cities like st. louis and portland, maine, local unions are looking to improve. a final barrier to turning around schools is that parents are supposed to fight change in neighborhood schools. sometimes parents do cling to the familiar, but we're finding that parents and community organizations are in many cases actually helping to drive change and to enhance learning opportunities. community engagement is crucial to successful turn arounds.

as dennis points out, you can't spell partners without parents. that's one reason that our administration has announced a new initiative called together for tomorrow to foster and expand community engagement in low performing schools, schools shouldn't and can't do this by themselves. together for tomorrow is already under way at six demonstration sites around the country working with the white house and the corporation for national and community service will be expanding this effort to foster more community partnerships to advance school improvement. in the end none of us can do this work alone. promoting the community culture where educational improvement is everyone's responsibility is our national mission. it does take a village. children only get one chance to get a quality education. as dr. martin luther king said, we cannot wait for reform to happen. we cannot wait for equal educational opportunities to be realized. this is the civil rights challenge of our generation.

i want to thank everyone here and everyone in this field for their courage, their commitment, and their leadership in bringing new hope to schools, to communities, and most importantly to children where the light of hope had dimmed. this is at heart a movement and i believe it is about so much more than education. it is a daily fight for social justice and together it is a fight we will win. thank you so much. i would like to bring out the real stars of the show and carol smith as i talked about, the superintendent of the portland public schools, and then we have a fantastic turn around school in d.c., luke moore high school, an alternative high school with a charismatic and hard-driving principal, rose smith, the about is and tech teacher there and doc burley, a senior there and if i can ask them to come out,

please. i will start with the real star of the show, docwon burley. i could not have done this in high school. you're way ahead of me. you're a senior now. i would love to hear about what the school is like in the first couple years before the turn around and what the environment and culture is like now. >> well, the first couple of years me so young, when i came i was 14 years old and everybody else was older than me so my first year there i was young, so a lot of stuff was new to me like kids in there in there. >> a couple of dudes, that's okay. >> yeah, you know, like i w'treg

and gambling and things like that. >> in the school. >> in the school. i tried my best to stay away from it. it was all around. it was kind of hard. the couple of years after that, though, when the new staff came, wasn't really none of that, everything was shut down. >> students are taking education more seriously now. >> yes, sir. >> what changed their behavior? >> i think the teachers because my first couple of years it was like most of the teachers really didn't care. we would do the work and even if it was wrong they still pass us anyway. now they make sure we sit down in a chair and do it right or we can't leave. me being on the basketball team, they won't let me play in the game unless the work is right. >> it is not too tough. >> no, i didn't like that at all. >> how long have you been

teaching. >> i have been at luke moore seven years. >> it is not the eurozone iest school to teach out, alternative school, students struggle and why do you choose to work there and not another school? >> i feel that it is my duty not only as a product of a d.c. public schools and also a former resident of the city to give back to the students what i received when i was in school. i had teachers that cared. i had teachers that motivated me. i had teacher that is made me feel as if i mattered and that i did have a stake in my own future, and i feel like it is my duty to give that back to my students and i continue to work at luke moore and be fulfilled every day by it. >> give a round of applause. walk me through, you have been there seven years before and after the sichlt sig program. where are thing at as you tr i to make this an extraordinary school? >> before we had a very, very,

very low attendance rate. our graduation rate was very low as well. we had students who would come to us every day who were disengaged academically and socially. now that we have made changes, which have been difficult because changes is difficult, but change is also necessary. we now have students who come to school because they want to be there. we have students who come to school because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel per se with regard to graduation and being able to move on with their lives. those students now have an opportunity to not only come to school and feel a sense of pride and be encouraged in their academic and social standing but they can also receive their graduation diploma quicker with our accelerated program that allows them to earn more credits over the course of a school year than ever before. >> walk me through, again, change is hard and can be threatening and you were there before and how much were you scared of it and how much did you resist it? how much were you worried about the change going in the wrong direction? just walk me through mentally

your thought process walking into this. >> for me personally i had to feel empowered myself. i had to get up in the morning and tell myself, yes, i can do this, yes, i do make a difference at the end of the day, and although i am not able to reach all of the students who were in my classes, i have been able to touch a few and being able to touch those few, seeing them graduate, go onto college, seeing them successfully go out into the world of work makes all the difference. >> what do you think about this young man? >> this is my teddy bear. i say that very affectionately. i have seen him grow into a fine young man. he would come to school and he was one of those did he say engaged students and he is now been empowered and he received instruction that was quality instruction. he wasn't just in class to just get a grade. he realizes the skills he is learning will make a better and brighter future for him and i am excited and happy for him as he is preparing to graduate this

june. >> after a quick conversation with superintendent smith i will open it up to the audience. you at roosevelt high school, a high school that wasn't just low performing for the city of the portland, one of the lowest performing schools in the state. not one that tinkering was going to make a difference. walk me through what that school was like before and what you guys did and the results again just one year, a long way to go and pretty remarkable progress in one year to go. walk me through the process how you got to here from there. >> so roosevelt high school as you said was identified as one of the lowest performing in the state and roosevelt had been a school that was organized as three small schools on a single campus, and we used the s.i.g. opportunity to mobilize the strategies to bring it back together as a unified campus which actually built energy and as you called out in your opening remarks, the school this

year had a 14 point gain in graduation rate, double-digit gains in achievement both in reading and in math, and a 28 percentage point decrease in discipline referrals and the big one i call out is an increase in 5% of students who were choosing to attend their neighborhood school which is roosevelt. one of the previous things was a downward spiral of students choosing to transfer out, and we have an energy going on there right now where students are opting back in and choosing their neighborhood school which is really exciting. what i would say key factors as you called out, leadership. we have a dynamic principle who is an instructional leader. she is understands partnership and how to engage partners in the school. she is an inspirational and galvanizing leader, charlene williams, i want to do a callout to her. she totally built an energy in that place that has been

remarkable. secondly, there was local ownership in both what model was chosen, the transformational model that the school chose to undertake and we had teacher, administrator and district participation in choosing the model and in building the plan and identifying what strategies were going to be used and writing the grant as well as on going implementation. there is a deep relentless focus on instruction, so part of the strategy is instructional coaching and deep investment in finding time for teachers to collaborate. as part of this, roosevelt piloted a new teacher evacuation tool which at this point we actually implemented across the district, so that's a story unto itself, but it transformed our relationship with our teachers yus union and how we work together with the teacher's union as well. that's remarkable and the last thing i call out is partnership and it has been huge. this has been partnership with our faith community, with the

business community, with universities who are helping to build a college culture at roosevelt and students really believing they're aspiring to go to college and this is what's going to happen and non-profit partners who are helping us work on how we use out of school time effectively to support student success in the classroom, so a combination of all of those things. it is a different place than it was, and students, you feel a student energy there that is palpable and really exciting and roosevelt on the rise. >> two final questions. this change is really, really hard. sounds fantastic, but it is not easy. how hard was it? how much resistance was there? walk me through that piece and secondly, looking back, huge amount of progress. sth more than you anticipated, less than you anticipated? what was your expectation coming into this if you can think back a year ago? >> it was not a foregone conclusion that we would even apply for the grants, so just even the fact of the school

community deciding, yes, we were going to go forward and apply for the grant was a deep conversation with our union and teachers and the administration at the school of whether this was an opportunity or whether it was going to be jumping through hoops, and we did a pretty amazing process at the front end where the union leadership and i went and sat with the small group of teachers who explored what it meant to apply for the grant and evaluated the different options, but we had the entire staff sitting while we sat in a fish bowl and figured out what was the opportunity and what were the challenges and what was the go forward strategy and the union and i said you figure out what you want, we'll leave and remove the barriers, and that's what we did. i would say that's a huge piece of the success is that school owning the strategies and feeling like they're driving what the work is that's going, not being prescribed from some place else. >> what was your expectation for change going in. >> i didn't believe it was going to be the kind we have seen.

it has been transformational change. i hope we're on a path we continue to see the same kind of change. >> open it up to the audience. five minutes left. any questions for any of the panelist? do we have mics? do we have another one? start right here. another mic here. two up front. >> hi. i am brenda martin and i have a question. i am curious to find out what stereo types you were confronted with at your school and in the community and how that affected expectations and also like you to look at your curriculum and tell me if you think it embraced your culture and how that affected your participation in the schools. >> well, me stereo types, i really didn't pay attention to things like that because now my school is -- i am just trying to get an education mainly, but the curriculum, it was pretty easy

but it could be tough at times and things i didn't know but the teachers made it easy for me. they stayed by my side until i really understood what i was supposed to. >> that stereo type piece is major for me. it can be emotionally debilitating, it really can, especially when you are participating in system wide meetings or just talking to colleagues across the system knowing that you work at the school that's considered the bottom of the barrel, knowing you're working at a school where people feel you're working with a bunch of rejects. it is not a good feeling. it got to a point where we felt, okay, that's what you think of us. let us show you what we can do, and i feel that we have done that. with regard to our cliurriculumt is indeed rigorous. it is indeed challenging. we found that with having the higher academic standards our

students feel that when they complete their courses of study or even individual courses, they feel that they have earned it and that they really have taken new skills and strategies away that they can use in the future. it has been embraced. >> thank you. >> hi. i am kamzy mcadams and i have to say twitter and e-mail is bursting with pride over both of you up here. we're so proud from d.c. to have you sitting up here. my question is about what next. you're getting ready to graduate and you have obviously figured things out that are working so what next so that we can take what you learn and really tell your story to other kids and make sure that other students not just in d.c. and across the nation can lift themselves up and learn from what you have

done? what do you think you want to do next to help us do that? >> well, i know for sure i am going off to school, and i am not sure, i mean, school first, college hopefully i will be going to north carolina central, and then after that i would like to come back and speak again about my story and my rough trials through high school and things like that. i love to talk. >> my good friend. >> i am with america's promise alliance. i would like to ask a question to the portland representative. you referenced community support. there are many people in the audience today who represent non-profit organizations at the community level. what's the most effective way for the local non-profits to

reach out and be supportive of these students and these schools that really need our help? >> so at roosevelt specifically it has taken a number of different forms, so we have got a non-profit that does what is the step-up program where they're needing, providing like advocacy and tutoring and it is directly connected to the teachers and students and the work that's going on in the classroom so there is a deep relationship in how they're supporting student success in the classroom. we have sun community schools that are present at roosevelt campus that are wrapping family and wrap around and family engagement supports. we have a family engagement coordinator who is organizing with community-based organizations, culturally specific community organizations, family nights engaging families with the school. we have a church, south lake church, that wrapped its arms hugely around this school and building an energy on