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I would like to start with a story actually about the weather. Several decades ago, the
U.S. government National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, began making weather
data available electronically, downloadable by anybody, for free in computer readable
format. Operational innovators then picked up that data and used it as fuel to power
extraordinary ray of innovations that have improved all of our lives and helped grow
our economy. Today, NOAA data fuels your local weather news cast; it fuels online weather
services like weather.com and weather apps on your smartphone; it fuels apps that service
to help pilots make better decisions about when and where to fly. Op weather data from
NOAA even powers financial process that help farmers, like crop insurance and much more.
Today we’re celebrating the work of a similar initiative now being run in the incredibly
important field of education which all of us here are phenomenally passionate. This
effort is being led by Presidential Innovation Fellow Marina Martin. It’s really the work
of hundreds of folks across the department that’s coming together today, um, many of
whom are here in the room. This initiative is all about making information more open
and available to the public and entrepreneurs like many of you here in the room, uh, an
open fuel for innovation in a machine readable format. An important part of this work is
also to encourage data standards or templates so parents or learners can choose to move
and share their academic information from their schools and tutors to any number of
exciting interactive tools or services or even to other schools to help improve educational
access one outcomes. The entrepreneurs and innovators you’ll see here this morning
and over the course of today are using open data as inputs, like a fuel, to help power
process services that are helping families and students in incredible tangible ways take
on big challenges and tap into big opportunities. It’s going to be an incredibly exciting
morning and I hope you’re as excited as I am. And to kick things off, it’s now my
great pleasure to introduce a truly amazing champion for innovation education, Secretary
Arne Duncan! Please welcome Arne… Well thanks Todd, I’m thrilled to be here.
I’m going to be very brief, I want to get to the great work that all of you guys are
doing. Um I just came off a couple week bus tour across the country, California to here,
sort of back to school, and you see so much that’s inspiring and that gives you reason
to hope. But one of the both inspiring and tougher stops was in Topeka, Kansas and that’s
the site as you know, of Brown vs. Board of Education. And, uh, I visit the school that
was the heart of this this uh, landmark case, talked to members of Linda Brown’s family.
But just to think from 5 decades ago how far we’ve come but frankly how far we still
have to go. You look across this country, you look at our disadvantaged communities,
you look in so many of our African American/Latino neighborhoods; the quality of education that
so many of our children are receiving today is frankly, desperately under par. And for
all of the progress we’ve made, this is not a time to start sitting and rest our laurels
or celebrate where we are. We have dropout rates that’s devastating, we’re 14th in
the world in college graduation rates and so for me, the both the hope and the promise
of that case but the distance we have to go to sort of fulfilling the real dream, the
real promise of that case, um, just creates a huge sense of urgency for me. And you think
about where we are as a country, you know tough economic times, there’s not going
to be some huge infusion of cash coming in, class sizes are larger than they’ve been
in the past; lots of challenges. We need a game changer. We need a game changer, and
I think hopefully the collective power of all of you using data in a very different
way, I really think that might be the game changer we need to help sort of break through
and get those dropout rates down to zero and help make sure that our students are graduating
college and career ready. So I just say all of that to give you sort of a sense of how
much I appreciate the collective commitment here, how we have to think in very different
ways, how we have to behave in very different ways and what’s at stake for our country.
And you guys all look at the stats as I do, when young people today graduate from high
school and go on to college and is successful, they’re basically in a pretty good position
for the rest of their life. When they don’t have the ability to go on to college, they
struggle and if they drop out of high school, they’re basically condemned to poverty and
social failure. So the stakes here are extraordinarily high. So how do we empower students, how do
we empower parents, and how do we empower teachers in very very different? I think collectively,
folks in this room, folks around the country, give us the tools, the resources and the chance
to break through. So whatever we can do to be a great partner, we want to do that. Karen
and our team is working extraordinarily hard; things were not doing, things we can do to
be more collaborative, please push us very very hard because our kids, our country needs
something very different from what we’re providing now. We made lots of progress, lots
of things going the right direction. 45/46 states adopting higher standard, that’s
a huge step in the right direction. How we teach these higher standards is a big big
challenge. We’re starting to turn around 1300 chronically underperforming schools,
that’s a big step in the right direction but still far too many students go to schools
that are dropout factories. So we have to get better, we have to get better faster.
Can we do it together is both sort of the challenge and the opportunity before all of
us today. There’s been some real progress in this way and in lots of different ways
using technology, using data. The learning registry we put out last year, lots of progress,
lots of hard work around that; that’s a significant step in the right direction. Lots
of work around digital badges across the country and in my home. My 8 year old and 10 year
old love, in a couple different formats, seeing how many points they have, what badge they’re
up to, checking their scores literally almost every single night. Having students sort of
take ownership of their own learning is huge and important. Just to quickly announce today
this new My Data Button, that we’re going to put out there so that parents and students
themselves can track where they are, can know, you know, what are their strengths, what are
their weaknesses, how are they progressing. And I think the more young people-rich neighborhood,
poor neighborhood, inner city, urban, suburban- the more students can take ownership for their
own learning and know exactly what their strengths and weaknesses and know exactly what they
need to do, I think that’s so important. We know so many of our children are moving
constantly, military families, families staying one step ahead of the landlord, having the
data tracked electronically rather than paper makes all the sense in the world. It’s very
tough to teach children when you have no idea where they’re coming from or where they’re
at. And so what you guys can do here collectively is hugely important. As is said earlier, please
challenge us to be a good partner; please challenge us to think through with you how
we can become more accessible. We want to put everything on our website so you can work
with it, manipulate it in very different ways. But if 8 and 8 and 10/11 year olds taking
ownership for their learning, if all of our parents, again regardless of socioeconomic
status, have a very clear sense of their children’s strengths and weaknesses and for me, really
importantly, how do we empower teachers and principals in very different ways. Again as
I visit schools all around the country, I don’t think I can ask teachers and principals
to work much harder. They are working extraordinarily hard. The question is can we help them work
smarter, can we get them the resources they need so its not what am I teaching; what are
my children learning? Am I really having an impact on what they’re doing every single
day? So I thank you so much for the hard work, Todd I thank you for your leadership, um,
the amount of talent in this room, the amount of talent around the country, the following
of our challenges makes me very very hopeful about where we can go. But can this be the
game changer; I want us to be that ambitious. Can this be the game changer that our children
and our country needs- I really believe it can. Thank you so much and I hope you have
a great day today.