U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings

Question and Answer Session with Students

Beijing Normal University

November 16, 2006

(The following may contain unintelligible sections or misunderstood words due to the recording quality.)

MODERATOR:  Thank you very much for your enlightening speech.  I think the speech has really deepened our understanding of the higher education.  And I think many in the role of the higher education (unintelligible) and the speech also make us to know more about American policy of the higher education.  Now, I would like to further to invite our (unintelligible) students to ask questions.  (Unintelligible) please if your question -- I think you can choose anyone yourself.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh, okay.  All right.  Yes, you on the very end.  Yes.

QUESTION:  Thank you.  Good afternoon, Miss Spellings.  My name is Chong Yi.  I'm from the School of Education.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Right.

QUESTION:  As I know, those Chinese students and American students, they are very -- care about the results of their examination.  I wonder if your daughter got a D in her examination, so what would you do?  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Thank you.  Well, first of all, let me say thank you for pursuing a career in education, and I'm happy to report that she has not gotten a D on her examinations, as far as I know.  And it reminded me when I came in and saw you all sitting there that I hope she is at home studying and working as hard as I know you all are here, but I will make sure that students abroad are pulling for her and making sure that she gets good grades, as I am.  Yes, sir.  Right back by the camera over there.  Way in the back.  You.

QUESTION:  Oh.  Good afternoon, Secretary Spellings.  I'm a student from the mathematic department.  First of all, welcome to China.  Welcome to BNU.  I have two questions.  The first one, I heard you come from Houston.  I think you must know Yao Ming.  What do you think of him?  Do you like him?  The second one, now these days -- the second one, these days the States encourage more and more students to learn Chinese.  I'd like to know the reason on the policy.  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Well, thank you for that question.  And yes, I am from Houston and I like everyone from Houston.  They are my fellow citizens and so I will take your greetings back to my fellow Houstonians.  With respect to studying language, that is one of the most important things that can be done today by students.  I like to say that you can buy in any language but you must sell in the language of the buyer.  And that means that we need to learn Mandarin Chinese and you need to learn English.  And that is a very important part of our strategic exchanges.  In fact, just earlier this year, the President, Secretary Rice and I launched a strategic language initiative which is designed to really foster more language exchange.  And frankly, we in the U.S. could learn a lot from our fellow nations around the world.  We do that less well in my country than others do.  We typically start very late in primary or secondary schooling.  And so that is one of the things that we look forward to talking with our colleagues in higher education about so that we can get more language fluency for our students.  And your English is good, by the way.  Yes, sir?

QUESTION:  And thank you, Secretary Spellings, for your wonderful speech.  I'm a sophomore from the College of Resource Science.  And may I ask a question about, in your opinion, what are the ultimate purpose of education?  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  That -- well, that is a profound question that we educators and government leaders talk about and think about a lot.  In fact, in my country, we have an ongoing discussion about whether higher education is a private good, a good for us as individuals, a strengthening for our own lives, or is it more of a public good, something that strengthens society, something that strengthens our governments and strengthens our economies.  And the truth is, it is both of those things.  And those are the purposes of higher education in particular.  The other thing that I think is one of the strongest things, aspects about higher education, it has been an innovation engine in my country in particular, that the ideas and the developments that are seeded first in higher education are the things that have gone on to make our economies flourish and our societies prosper.  And so I can think of no more profound goals or objectives than those things that we offer in education.  Yes, ma'am.  You on the end right there with the brown.

QUESTION:  Good afternoon, dear Secretary.  Welcome to BNU.  And I'm a senior from the College of Chinese Language and Literature and I plan to do my master overseas.  As we know, America has always been the most attractive place for further study because of your outstanding academic atmosphere and huge scholarship.  And my question is, I say but it is rather difficult or quite impossible for students in humanities and sociology to get a scholarship.  So my question is to ask the Secretary of Education, How would you make some specific (unintelligible) or policies to balance the allocation of scholarships in order to attract more students in humanities and sociologies and go to the United States?  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  All right.  Thank you for that.  Well, first let me say don't make assumptions about opportunities in the United States, whether they're about financial access, financial aid, or they're about visa processing or whether they're about your reception when you attend school.  I would strongly urge you to look beyond those potential hurdles.  I would say that programs like the Fulbright Scholars certainly are available to students that study in those fields.  We have some programs at my department.  And, frankly, they seem more these days to be underwriting fields in the humanities and in liberal arts fields as we allocate resources around the world.  So they are available.  But you're right.  They're competitive.  And I think that's why excellence is so important.  Why it's important to choose something that you're passionate about, that you're vigorously pursuing and that you want to work hard to be excellent at.  And those are the students who will end up with financial resources and fellowships.  So having said all that, I will tell you -- and I tell U.S. students this all the time, as well, the new currencies in our global economy are math, science, foreign language, problem-solving skills, creativity, diversity.  Those things that can be found across our curriculum, and particularly in math and science fields.  And I think, you know, this is a world of supply and demand.  And that's why excellence in the liberal arts is so important to pursue.  But we all have to have some grounding these days in other fields.  Yes, way at the back on the end there in the pink.  You, yes.

QUESTION:  Okay.  Thank you.  Good afternoon, Mrs. Spellings.  And I'm a girl from the College of Education Administration.  And I really enjoyed your lecture just now and you mentioned three words: accessible, affordable and accountable.  I really appreciate that.  I find that in America you have different states.  And in different states you have different education policies.  So that means in this state, maybe higher education is affordable or accessible for everyone, but it doesn't mean the same in another state.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Uh-huh.

QUESTION:  Just like China, we have the regional disparity between the western part and the eastern part.  So as the Secretary of the Department of Education, would you take some countermeasures to keep this in balance?  Thank you very much.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Well, we consider that kind of diversity and that kind of variety one of the great strengths of American higher education.  In fact, it's represented in the delegation that I've brought with me from some of our elite private research institutions to our community colleges who offer two-year degrees and partner closely with public schools and with four-year institutions.  But we really have the full spectrum.  They have a variety of relationships with their state legislatures, their state governments, and with their local governments. 

And we believe that that's an important part of making the higher education as unique and as high quality as it is today.  One of the things that isn't the most important role that the federal government can and does and will continue to play is student-based, need-based financial aid to students.  And that levels out the playing field on financial disparities in many, many ways.  We have a Pell Grant that is available -- that's what we call it -- that's available to poor students; that is about $4,000 a year, a maximum of $4,000 a year, whether you live in Illinois or in Texas.  And those resources from the federal level help to equalize some of the financial issues that we find around the country.  But we want to provide affordability while maintaining the diversity and the uniqueness of our higher-education system.  Yes, sir.  You with the great jacket.

QUESTION:  Good afternoon, Mr.  (Unintelligible) and Mrs. Spellings.  I'm a student from Department of International Affairs.  We're honored for having a chance to talk with you.  And I want to ask you a question.  Before I got here, I have inquired some information about you on the Internet.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh, no.

QUESTION:  And you have worked out an act called No Child Left Behind.  And it is really popular in American educational area, but Chinese students are not very familiar with it.  So can you give us an introduction about No Child Left Behind?  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  I would love to.  I was afraid you were going to ask me about an upcoming appearance I'm making on a game show next week.  But yeah, I'd be glad to talk about the policy that we do at the Department of Education called No Child Left Behind.  And really, it is the most profound thing we've done in primary education reform at the federal level since the 40-year commitment, vigorous commitment from the federal level to education.  And essentially what it says is we are going to make sure every single student achieves on grade level and we're going to hold ourselves accountable as a country by giving ourselves a deadline. 

We said we would educate every child and that we would do it by 2014.  And the way we're doing this is measuring, testing every child in grades three through eight in their skills of reading and math and making sure that schools are accountable for the achievement of every single student and every single group of students.  And we allow parents to have that information so they know the quality of their schools.  And when their schools don't perform, we allow them to get extra help for their students, inside or outside the public schools, supplemental services or tutoring, extra help for students, so that the problem is diagnosed quickly by the assessment and remediated and intervened so that students don't fall behind. 

One of the things that I think happens sometimes in our education system is we just move students through the system based on their age and not on their capacity to master the work.  And that is what is at issue with No Child Left Behind.  I'm happy to report that in the five years that it has been the law of our land, in reading with our nine-year-old students, we've made more progress on our education report card nationally in the last five years than in the previous twenty-eight years of our report card.  We had a trend line that was just flat and all of a sudden it started to turn around, because what gets measured, it's done and gets attended to. 

And it's imperative that we make sure that our students have necessary reading and math skills.  If they don't, we won't have students who will be able to participate successfully in our higher-education students, and we owe them that.  So that's essentially the core principle of No Child Left Behind.  The next level of reform in my country will be to improve or secondary schools, our high schools, and make sure that more rigorous courses are available to all students and that we have high-quality teaching going on in our high schools.  And so my work is not done yet.  Yes, sir?

QUESTION:  Thank you for your very informative speech.  I'm professor over college, over education administration and other (unintelligible).  But I wish I could be as great as you are, even though I have only one (unintelligible).  Well, you talked a lot about higher education.  But I want to come back to the basic education, elementary and the secondary education (unintelligible) for the act No Child Left Behind you mentioned just now. 

After the act or the law was issued, there are a lot of inspiring results you have also mentioned.  And there were a lot of resistance and criticism from the various (unintelligible), from experts by experts, something like the Utah last year (unintelligible).  (Unintelligible) Utah issued the law that is criticized by federal law of No Child Left Behind.  He felt that (unintelligible) educational state level and then some other expert also criticized the law as (unintelligible).  And I think one of the experts' name was (Unintelligible) who criticized if the No Child Left Behind Act would be around in the years when (unintelligible) was in school, he would be still remained in seventh grade.  I think that is a joke.  Anyway, a lot of criticism from the federal government and also from the academic world.  I think there are some tensions between the federal government and the state government.  How do you think about the tension between the central or the federal government and the state government in the sense of a policy making?  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Uh-huh.  Thank you.  Well, yes.  There, of course -- any time you're trying to do something that is bold and vigorous and challenging, there'll be criticism.  But we know in our country that when only half of our minority students are getting out of high school on time and many, many of our young students are unable to read proficiently, to do their school work, that we have a problem.  And we start to strip the layers away and look at the problem and people are uncomfortable with that, especially the grown-ups. 

And the federal role in education in the United States is really a contract, a compact with the states that says if you take federal resources -- and we invest about 8 or 10 percent of the funding for education, comes from the federal level -- we say show us some results.  And so those decisions had been made at the state level to participate in this federal program called No Child Left Behind.  And I'm happy to report that at the moment, every single state in my country is in good standing with the federal Department of Education because they are implementing and are true to No Child Left Behind.  They have put the policies in place.  But I don't dispute that, you know, when high numbers of failure are revealed, especially for our underserved populations, adults are uncomfortable with that.  But that's the point. 

We will not challenge this, what the President calls a "soft bigotry" of low expectations until we reveal it.  And when we reveal it, we start to get help.  We start to get intervention.  We start to get resources around those needs.  Now, with respect to those policies going forward, I'm thrilled that the Democrats in the Congress, who now are the leaders of the Congress, are very much supportive of those policies and have been since the enactment of No Child Left Behind.  We have many discussions about levels of funding and some of the tactical issues.  But they have stayed true to the principles of No Child Left Behind, and I'm confident that they will, because there is much public support for this notion that school children can and will achieve on grade level.  I travel a lot and I have yet to meet a parent that says, Count me out.  I don't want my child to achieve.  And this has been unmasked by No Child Left Behind.
 
MODERATOR:  I think due to time limited, we'd like to welcome the last question and remind you again that you can choose from the middle area.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh.

QUESTION:  (Unintelligible).

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh, okay.  Well, why don't you pick?  Someone from the media?

QUESTION:  (Unintelligible).

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh, from the middle.  Okay.  I'm so sorry.  Yes.  You in the white with the glasses.  Right there.  I picked a couple of middles.

QUESTION:  (Unintelligible).  First of all I would like to express my thanks to you and your delegation for your efforts on China/U.S. education exchange.  And I am a student.  My major is  Information Technology.  I would like to ask you a question.  I think online education is developing very quickly this year.  What is your opinion about the future of online education?  Thank you.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Well, by allied education you mean adult education?

QUESTION:  Online.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh, online.

QUESTION:  Online.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Online education.  Well, I think it is -- it's one of the major breakthroughs that are going to be the ways that we establish fuller access for all of our citizens.  I don't think we fully figured that out yet, at least in my country in the primary and secondary levels.  It's been a tool in some classrooms but if we're going to provide high-quality learning to lifelong learners, we're going to have to use technology more effectively. 

And we're working on that in my country.  We need to have technology that is more self-paced, that has immediate feedback and so forth.  One of the things that we're experimenting with in many of the states is assessment that is directly done instantaneously through online methods.  And so I think this field, while we've invested a lot of money, is really still in its infancy on the big breakthroughs of lifelong access to education.  Thank you.  And you know, thank you for studying in the math science fields.  I bet you'll have some recruiters here afterwards.

MODERATOR:  Thank you very much for your answering our questions.  Now, I would like to present to you a token of our appreciation for your speech.  (Unintelligible).

SECRETARY SPELLINGS:  Oh, thank you.  Oh, wow.

Transcribed by: slw/ms