[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 34 (Thursday, March 16, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2328-S2335]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. OBAMA:
  S. 2441. A bill to authorize resources for a grant program for local 
educational agencies to create innovation districts; to the Committee 
on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

[[Page S2335]]

  Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill--the 
``Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act''--to establish 
grants to 20 school districts across the country. Through competitive 
grants, these districts would be offered new resources in return for 
systematic reforms and measurable results.
  Today, in my own state, out of every 100 African-American or Latino 
males in the Chicago schools at age 13, only 3 or fewer will continue 
on to earn a degree from a 4-year college. The chances of success for a 
young man of color in many of our urban school districts are the same 
as the chance of a soldier in Napoleon's Grand Army surviving in the 
dismal march to Moscow. That is considered a great historical folly, a 
waste of a generation of young talent. How will we be judged?
  Today, a good education is parceled out to some and denied to others, 
handed down, as a privilege, from generation to generation. A good 
education is denied not only to children of color in our cities, but 
also to children living in poverty in our rural areas.
  Today, 6 million middle and high school students are reading with 
skills far below their grade level. Half of all teenagers are unable to 
understand basic fractions, and half of all 9 year olds are unable to 
perform basic multiplication or division. We now have one of the 
highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized country.
  This is a folly and a failure that hurts us all. As we continue in 
this failure, other nations are moving ahead of us. We know that China 
and India are training more skilled engineers, who are developing new 
technologies and innovating in ways that result from their investments 
in education. We live in a world where few American jobs are secure, 
and we know that to compete successfully, we must better educate our 
students. All our students: urban and rural, black and white, rich and 
poor.
  In fact, America's richest untapped source of talent may be in our 
underserved cities and poor rural areas, among students now trapped in 
inadequate schools. The best strategy for maintaining America's 
economic preeminence is to give more students the knowledge and the 
skills to innovate. To achieve this, our schools, too, must innovate.
  That is why today I am introducing the Innovation Districts for 
School Improvement Act. We need to make sure there is an effective 
teacher in every classroom and an effective principal in every school. 
We need to make sure teachers are not distributed in a way that 
disproportionately places inexperienced and untrained teachers in 
classrooms with students who need the best teachers. We need to help 
young teachers get the training and coaching they need, and make sure 
that experienced teachers have the career opportunities that make use 
of their talents, giving the best ones a chance to train younger 
teachers, and a reason to stay in their schools and take on added 
roles.
  Many schools do this and achieve encouraging results. The Innovation 
Districts for School Improvement Act would apply lessons from these 
successes, with school districts from across the country becoming 
seedbeds for further reform. Innovation Districts will focus on teacher 
recruitment, training, and retention, using successful residency-based 
programs as a model. They would offer performance pay increases to 
high-performing teachers, and financial incentives to teachers willing 
to work in low income schools.
  Innovation Districts would partner with local universities, 
charitable foundations or community institutions to develop, execute, 
and evaluate their reforms. Most importantly, Innovation Districts 
would look at new ways to do things better, identify current practices 
that prevent them from innovating, and show us that if we are willing 
to support and rethink our schools, all our children can learn, all our 
children can compete, and our schools can be the best in the world.
  I hope my colleagues will support this important legislation.
                                 ______