U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige speaks out on testing, vouchers, education funding, and unions.

Americans have deemed education a top national priority. So what's Secretary of Education Rod Paige's vision for the future? Before being appointed to the post by President Bush in January, Paige was superintendent of the Houston, Texas school district. This summer, NEA Today's Dave Winans interviewed Paige in Los Angeles, before the secretary delivered the keynote address at NEA's Conference on Bargaining and Instructional Issues.

What role do you see yourself playing as Secretary of Education?
The big goal of this department can be wrapped up in two words: access and excellence. That means assuring access to quality education, primarily to those who face barriers to this access, and excellence for all.

What is the federal government's role in turning around low-performing schools and closing the achievement gap?
Few people have had the courage to stand up on the federal level and talk about the achievement gap. President Bush has, and I think we should give him credit for that. When he talks about the achievement gap, the kids who are on the bottom side of that achievement gap are primarily the ones that he is insisting on helping.

Now, we would not know we had an achievement gap unless we paid attention to test data. There are many people who would say, "Let's don't even test." If we didn't, we would not know that we have an achievement gap-and everybody could smile and think everything was fine. But this President said: "No, we are going to test. We are going to make the gaps clear, because once you make these gaps visible, action has to come."

More on testing later. But first, what concretely must we do to close the achievement gap?
What has to be done may involve spending, or may not. And this is not new with Rod Paige or George W. Bush. We already know everything we need to know to go in and fix the problems of these kids that need fixing. In fact, we have not done it, but it's not because we don't know how. We have not had this as a priority.

It's about leadership?
It's about accepting responsibility. Responsibility-that's the other side of the accountability coin. It means we take it upon ourselves to be responsible for closing this gap. NEA President Bob Chase has got it right-he is right down the center with this.
We should supply technical assistance, resources, and encouragement, ask for results, and measure and even sanction what is necessary and warrant when it is necessary. But the person at the point of action who is going to get it done-that is who it's going to take.

By the way, this is not new to us. We have known this for a long time. Probably the difference is that for President Bush, the difference is intolerable.

Let's describe the achievement gap this way: It's inexcusable, it's intolerable, and it's un-American.

Well, there won't be any arguments from most folks on the scene. But what about the reality of funding?
I want to be sure I am clear here: Funding absolutely is needed. I want to champion that. The President understands that there needs to be increased funding. That is why this department was funded, in terms of a percentage increase, greater than any other domestic department.

President Bush understands that, but he opposes the fact that funds are not at all linked to results. So it is not that we don't need funds. We are champions of increased funds, but funds tied to reform, to results.

What are your thoughts on funding for Title I and IDEA?
Teachers have to work with kids with many different learning styles and many different disabilities, plus class sizes that are way up there . . . I don't have to be sold on that. I saw it firsthand. But in the back of my head I keep thinking: The funding is increasing. It continues to increase.

What amount of increase is going to be necessary before this line moves?
Besides, why is it that we can see kids prospering and flying like eagles in places where we don't have [increased funding]? Let us shout together for funding reform rather than just funding. Our rhetoric has to be different. We've got to rephrase this argument differently.

What rhetoric is hurting us?
The total emphasis on nothing but funding, funding, funding and not having any words in the dialogue, any comments that point back at us what we can do better, what we have to change.

The argument seems to be that we can continue to do what we're doing without any modification or reform, and the whole situation can be improved by just giving us more money.

What do you think about education unions?
Let me tell you honestly that I had a negative relationship with unions to begin with. OK, I saw them as the problem. That changed about 60 percent into my tenure as superintendent.

The union leader I dealt with in Houston was a very aggressive union person-in the AFL-CIO's greatest traditions, understand. She and I began to focus on our similarities, as opposed to our differences. We found points where the two of us could stand side by side and talk about changing things and making stuff better.

As I listened to her, I understood that down in her core she was a champion for children. And I assumed that she, standing next to me, began to accept that I understood that the working conditions of adults have to be looked out for, too. We're never going to be cousins, understand? But we can be members of the same team.

Many of our members feel their lives are almost dictated by test scores. What are your thoughts on standardized tests?
Conceptually, I have to agree that there are things that are not measured by standardized tests. Anyone who has good training knows that.

When a school or district goes out and says they are going to measure teacher and student progress all by how the students do on a standardized test, unless the curriculum is aligned to the test, you've got a problem here.

OK, so we are talking about first saying: This is what we want a child to accomplish, this is what we want a child to know, this is what we want a child to be able to do.

How do we know whether the child is actually learning this or not?
If somebody says, "Well, we can do portfolios," what I am hearing is: Fuzzy it up, so that we can have some wiggle room here. So the answer is NO-we are going to have clear, crisp tests. These tests say this kid has accomplished or not accomplished the fundamental objectives and the fundamentals of what the course is about.

Now, once we test this kid, we can see the distance between what we want this kid to learn and what he has actually learned.

What are we going to do with that?
We take that information and bring it back and involve teaching.
If the testing is crisp enough, it could be precise enough to tell you not just that a kid has flunked eighth grade math or eighth grade algebra, but which of the objectives of the eighth grade algebra the kid did not get. The only way to find this out is through crisp, clear testing.

What is the Bush administration currently proposing as far as annual testing?
First, every kid should be tested every year at the end of the year, in every course. Now that is not what the [Administration proposal] says, it's what I think.

What the [proposal] says is that there's testing every year in grades 3 through 8 in math and reading. We understand this does not make the world safe for democracy. But what it does is give us some objective data with which to make decisions.

At the school they are going to make pedagogical decisions. They'll ask, "Are our teaching materials right? Are our teaching strategies right? Are we giving the kids the right experiences? We know because we just got this information back from testing."
At the federal level we are going to be making certain decisions, too, based on this information. Are the dollars we send to the schools being used properly? Is this a wise investment? Should we use this information for pedagogical purposes or accountability purposes, both formatively and summatively?

I understand that in Houston you used vouchers to relieve overcrowding. What are your thoughts on these "publicly funded scholarships"?

OK, let's take it from a conceptual point. The state of Texas has in its constitution, as do most other states, language that says every child is due a free and appropriate education. That's it.

Now, to get that, somebody has devised a structure we call public education.

But "free and appropriate" is a concept. No one has dictated that it should be organized like we have it-school districts, schools, school boards, and all.

The whole point is that every child should have an education, and this education should be appropriate, and this education should be funded and paid for by the state. So there is no crisp line here between public and private.

Let's go back over this-public libraries, public highways, public hospitals, public health service, public schools. There is only one term I could find that flows through all of this, and that is access. It means that the public has access to these activities and venues, and the schools are the same way.

So it doesn't make any difference how they are operated. If a public person has access to a private school paid for by public dollars, that is in total fulfillment of free and appropriate education. So our question should be which one of these methodologies best provides an education for the child.

What are your thoughts on incentive pay for teachers or schools?
I would like to start with the fact that teachers are underpaid. And I think they will remain underpaid as long as the structure we use to pay teachers does not distinguish between high performers and low performers or substandard performers. I can't find any place or any big enterprise based on people- such as public schools-where salaries would be respectable enough under this kind of structure.

What's the one thing you would like to tell America's educators as the "top superintendent"?
I would like to tell them that we may have come to this place on different ships, but we're in the same boat. There's no reason to duke it out here. Let's switch the focus away from our differences, which are clear and obvious, and shift that focus to working together to make life better for our children.

Because when we make life better for children, we make life better for ourselves. And we will gain the respect of the public, and the public will be more willing to invest dollars in us.

For more information from both Secretary Paige's office and the Department of Education, go to www. ed.gov. And for NEA's policies on issues raised in this interview, go to www.nea.org/lac.