Former Secretary Reville speaking at the Worcester Educational Collaborative

"this room is living testimony to the value of persistence"
"the miracles that we ask schools to work with children every day"
"seems to me that...they're the same issues that we talked about thirty years ago...the jobs that we ask schools to do is too big for schools to do...it's about partnerships"

"putting education at the top of the list"
"the health and well-being of these communities...will depend directly on the quality of public education...do it because it is in your self-interest"
your workers, your customers, populate the community in which you want your workers to live
a strong school system that attracts and holds...provides a good education to all, "and all means all"
"what I take away (from my time in the system)"
five years as Secretary of Ed
"building a better system of education that serves not just some of our children well, but all of our children well"
1993 ed reform act "said for the first time that sets those same high standards for all of our children that we set for some of our children"
"got the goals right...what we didn't do as well was build a system that was as ambitious as our goals"
built the capacity of the system "but still it wasn't enough"
"we got some pretty good things done...in this period of time...still lead the nation on student achievement...or on a variety of other measures"
NAEP, lead the nation
TIMS, alone, at or near the top
"a lot about which to be really proud"
look beneath those statistics: set out to eliminate correlation between zip code and education achievement
"still an iron law correlation between education attainment and income level of mother with student achievement and attainment"
what are we missing? What did we get wrong? Is there something conceptionally in the way that we framed the problem?
"We've really got the problem wrong...we've been working within the confines of a system that we've inherited from another era"
early twentieth century: growing new industrial economy: "to batch process education"
at the beginning of the twentieth century, high school graduation rate barely ten percent
educational systems around the world catching up; employment market change--automation
inflammatory rhetoric of Nation at Risk
"didn't have an educational system to match the needs of our employment system"
"high skill, high knowledge jobs"
an educational system that would produce everybody at the high end of the bell curve of achievement
"had to build a new kind of system to get there...but kept optimizing the existing system"
"standards in and of themselves aren't sufficient"
"choice by itself wasn't enough"
"hundred yard dash of elementary school" kids starting at different places...and expect them to finish together"and then we act surprised if we don't"
"it's like opening a hospital and saying we're going to give you the same treatment and the same length of stay regardless of your ailment because it's more convenient for us"
to get and hold a job, to act as informed citizens, to be lifelong learners...we haven't build a system to do that
six hours a day, 180 days a year, 20% of their waking hours from K-12
"we don't have enough time"
"we don't meet them where they are and give them what they need"
some children in kindergarten have three times the vocabulary of others
students stay in their entering cohorts and don't move
"we've got to think bigger...schools alone aren't enough to do the job"

"ethically important for us to give each new generation what they need to reach their full potential"
"I don't have all of the answers...some...more time...early education...need to build a stronger teaching profession, Finland, Singapore...we see much more respect for the teaching profession...how we use data and technology"
"we can't accept that limited school paradim"
"need a new engine...need to build a new engine"
close two other gaps:
1. close the gap in terms of health and well-being
"got to attack many of those issues, many of them associated with poverty"
"focus these systems around the student and the client"
should not ask the teacher to solve the problem of the student who goes homeless over the weekend...who can that teacher call? "Teachers already have enough to do, thank you very much, with the expectations we have set for them"
2. closing enrichment gap: 80% of time outside of school
stimulated, supported, educational opportunities
music lessons and summer camps and recreational chances "not just school"
"guess what? They add up"
"every bit as important to the growth of achievement gaps in school as anything that happens in school"
have to create something of an even playing field

"have to invent a 21st century engine of youth and childhood development"
integrate all systems
"not rhetoric, not bleeding heart liberals, this is our future"