It is our job as civic leaders, educators, parents, grandparents, and everyday citizens, to make sur our schools have the tools they need to make sure no child is left behind. We can not waste a single Oregonian. Changes in the nature of families, the number of children in poverty, the increasing diversity of society, the challenges of global economic competition and the accelerating pace of technological innovations have demanded education reform. We have also realized we can't continue to educate and train for low skill jobs that pay low wages. We must combine the notion of readiness for school and for the workforce.
Many educators know how to create good schools.
But it can t occur one school at a time, school by school. We need to achieve a level of common practice everywhere, and the change must be systemic. Unfortunately, with continued state funding cuts, Portland schools have often found themselves forced to focus not on how to raise standards, but how to get by. What you will see today is how one of Portland s schools is using a Foundation grant to help fund programs that help get teachers the training they need to raise standards. And while less than half of the fifth graders here are meeting standards in reading and math, bear in mind that there are some schools that have almost no one meeting the standards.