We are now live with Condoleezza Rice and former chancellor of new york city Public Schools. They will discuss americas Education System and its impact on security. It is part of a event hosted by the excellence in foundation for education. Right now we are listening to introductory remarks. The first africanamerican woman to hold that post. Shes a former National Security advisor under president george w. Bush. She is also the cofounder of the center for a new generation, which is an innovative afterschool enrichment program, and she is the coauthor of numerous books, including two bestsellers. She is an undergraduate degree from the university of denver, a masters from notre dame, and a phd from the university of denver. Mr. Klein and doctor rice are going to be discussing a report that they have authored, which has been published in march of this year by the council on foreign relations. Among many things, this report notes that while the United States invests more in k12 Public Education than many other developed countries, students are woefully illprepared to compete globally. One tidbit according to the results of the 2000 my program for International Student assessment, a tool that measures performance of 15yearolds in reading and math and science every three years, the United States students ranked working been reading 25th in math and 17th in science. The lack of preparedness poses stress on five National Security funds. Our Economic Growth and competitiveness and physical safety and intellectual property and u. S. Global awareness and cohesion, please join me in welcoming the panelists to discuss this disturbing an important report. [applause] thank you. You can sit next to me. [applause] email welcome to this evening in the broadcast of morning joe. The energy in this room is a real testament of two things. One is how this issue of education reform has been a combination of talent that we see in this room and how it has coalesced around this issue of new technologies. That there really is a sense that the moment has arrived and the other is jeb bush. [applause] im a great believer that two things matter. One is ideas and the other is people. That is the real driver of change. It is the driver of history. This includes the coming together of a person with real talent and drive. This is one of them. So again, the fact that you are all here is the greatest. Condoleezza rice and i come out of the National Security background. When we were youngsters, we used to mess around with iran bomb calculator. And he used to calculate what was known as the circular error probable of the blast effects of nuclear weapons. Here we are today, we have traveled a considerable difference. We have traveled a considerable distance. They didnt say al qaeda or iran or north korea, what he said was the debt and deficit. I think that is exactly right. Above all, this is the future. We are not talking about a physical infrastructure, we are talking about our human infrastructure. Joel klein is someone who has dedicated the most recent date of his multifaceted career to this. When he is in discovering the best restaurants in brooklyn, he is focused on improving the lot of young people in this country. Mostly the other way around. Some going to tell you about the time he has dedicated to this issue. About a year and a half ago, i called a Condoleezza Rice and i said i wanted to do something with me. And i said richard, dont even go there, and i said okay. And so i said before the end of this conversation, you are going to agree to what im going ask to ask you. And she said, no way. I said right. We spent a lot of time on all the traditional foreignpolicy issues. We are focused on being domestic and what we want to do is report on education. We dont want a piece on everyone else has done. What we want to do is look at education through the filter of National Security, and basically asked the question, what is the relationship between the challenges about k12 education and National Security of the United States. In turn turn didnt turn out to be a terribly hard thing. She was there. And they cochaired the task force report. The version of this commission. The whole idea of this group in this background, educators and also those who come together in the seam states and say, they raise the question about what is the relationship between the educational challenges we face in the National Security challenges. To recap this issue, it is always the fact that it reflects the fact that you are here at the risk of being redundant. But what we wanted to do is get people who are interested in Foreign Affairs rather than the chronicle of Higher Education. What they have done, the two of them, they have helped put on this report. Its on cfr. Org. They dont just resolve everything, but they put the issue center stage. Let me just turn to them and deal with the basic questions. Is there a close link . Between the state of k12 education. Thank you very much. Indeed, i was delighted. We were prepared to look at what i call the domestic forces of american strength because without the strength at home, we dont lead abroad. Secondly, i was looking forward to the opportunity to work with joel, who i have gotten to know and who i admire so much for what he did in your city and continues to do. It really was a great task force. I would just make three brief points about this link that i think that we all found between education reform. First of all, the one that is most evident when you hear some of the statistics that are mentioned, Global Competitiveness is at stake. That is generally where people go. Eventually you will lose the innovation rate and you will not be able to educate people for the jobs that are available. Both jobs will go elsewhere, Global Growth and competitiveness. That is the most obvious wink. We are not preparing people for the workplace. We are not going to be the worlds most innovative economy. Second, in some ways, more surprising for me, it was brought to us by the former chief of secretary of the army, who talked about the problems in our Education System and the relationship to the armed forces. The inability of some 70 of americans actually qualified for service in the armed forces ought to be a red flag for anyone. Now, yes, there are other reasons for that. Incarceration, obesity, but a fair amount of it is that the people cant pass the basic skills test to get into the military. So just imagine a country a developed country, a powerful country in the world. And we cant get the basic tasks. Analyzing data secretary of state is realizing how few people how how they learn foreign languages, the fact that we dont have people who are prepared to go into the Intelligence Agency and we are lobbying ourselves appellate in literally the National Security infrastructure of the country. So most importantly, it is a tragedy that people will not be prepared for a good job and will therefore have nowhere else to go. It is a tragedy that people cant serve in the Armed Forces Armed forces or the Foreign Services or the Intelligence Agency. The United States of america is held together by a Great National creed. Not by ethnicity or by blood. Not by religion. Our National Creed is an aspirational narrative that it doesnt matter where you came from, matters where youre going. You can come from humble circumstances and you can do great things. The only way that that is true is if you have access to highquality education. If it ever becomes a case as increasingly as it is now, as ive said many times, but i can look at your zip code and i can tell whether he will get a good education, and the social fabric of this country has no chance to pull together. And we will be pitted one against the other. Those that are capable and those who are not. Those who are employable and those who are not. And i can assure you that you might not be able to control your circumstances, but you can control your response to your circumstances. And that will no longer be the way that americans think about themselves or about each other. And that is a way to agreement and entitlement. So to me, the real problem for us in National Security is not competitiveness abroad, it is not just our institutions and National Security, but this Great National narrative, this cohesion that has made us the country that we are. [applause] let me just say that the words she said are some of the most important word this country has to here. One of the things that bothers me enormously is we just went for a president ial race and we didnt hear those words. We heard it in your speech and in a few other places. But those words were not part of our national debate. Yet, when you think about the fact that the glue that holds this country together called the American Dream is likely to become, if we dont change course rapidly, the american memory, it is a powerful notion, and i give Condoleezza Rice a credit because i had known her very casually. One meeting she said, you dont understand. You think this is an education and even an economic issue. This is americas National Security issue. And she had the foresight to bring the council here. And i thought that was important because most of the people in this room, they wouldnt be here. But we are an echo chamber and we talk to each other and we feel smug about the fact that we understand that. But we are not remotely transforming the country. I found a luncheon discussion today important. We dont have the time to really nibble around the edges. As we speak right now in america for the first time, we are raising a generation that is going to be less well educated than their parents were at a time when we need to raise a generation that is much more well educated and where we can predict the educational outcomes based on zip codes that correlate with race and ethnicity. In which there is no other issue that is more important. We want to resolve that issue. Today, in cities like new york and chicago and detroit, and also elsewhere, kids are being condemned to a life that is going to be very humbling and frustrating. Because i know for a fact that those children are not going to be able to read, they are not going to be able to compete, they are not going to make it up from a miraculous way. So having this twist of focusing on National Security may leave this country to understand if we dont get off the path we are on, we are on a path to a very different kind of america. We need to give a great deal of credit to secretary rice. [applause] you know, lets talk for a minute about what it would take to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be. One way to think about it is the basic skills. One thing we have decided is that also there is a larger context. One is when i taught at the kennedy school, i was stunned that the nonamerican students do a lot more about the basics of american basics history than the americans. That is one thing that caught me off guard. The other was when i spent time with a young man who graduated in Computer Sciences and asked what he studied the young computer issues. I was shocked that he could graduate from this Amazing University and he hadnt had one economics course or history course. It led us to say, okay, we are going to start producing at the council and core courses that high schools and colleges can use to try to close this gap between what it is children know and what it is they need to know in order to be ready for this world. Theyll like it or not is going to fundamentally affect their life. What is your sense for . Because you come from an educational background. Condoleezza rice comes from another background. What is your view to fix the problem . Well, i come from a National Security background but i also see the product of the educational system, if you will, it gives me perspective on what it is we need to try to achieve and obviously, we need to see the best. But i will tell you two things. Number one, if you have low expectations of even the best students, they will live down to them. [applause] so i come at this with the belief that the most important things, the most weird thing is that whatever you are teaching them, you have to have very high standards. Frankly, i am not much for the selfesteem movement. [laughter] [applause] i am a musician myself and i think that the arts are important and how many of these little performances have we been to where it is just running all over the stage, it will be better if they know something. [laughter] so my first an important point is high standards whatever you teach them. Also, i do believe that the common core, which we talked about in the report, has a chance to give his grounding not just in the substance of knowledge, the ways of acquiring knowledge that students need to have now. I believe in stem. I would like to be able to have them write well. That is an undervalued skill, particularly these days. [applause] i think it would be very useful if some Civics Education were included. But the most important thing is whatever we are going to do, we need to do it in a common way. The country, and i mean the United States of america, has to have a sense of what all kids are going through as far as a skill level, which is like a common core is a good idea. It does not mean that we dont have local control of education and the space is obviously the place where this is going to get done. It does mean in a highly competitive and highly mobile labor pool, alabama and california and texas and vermont have some sense that their kids have a common basis of knowledge. So since they came up with the National Governors association, i would hope that we could have more discussion. I agree. Michael gold is really doing a lot of work in the united kingdom. He got all excited. In the k12 system, it goes to the heart of it. There is this deep belief that we need to develop acute selfesteem so we can perform. We need to do is tell people we need to do that to have selfesteem. Because we get that right, that will be great. They are not easy to achieve, but if i could wave a wand i would make k12 teachers americas heroes. They would be the profession that we all aspire to, they would be places like japan where they call their teachers sensei and you can feel the difference between we view those in america and those in other countries. We have decided to unionize rather than professionalize. When you do that, but you end up with is creating this in k12. A lot of people disagree. I think that choice is critical. It is that fundamental backbone of the report. No one in this room would voluntarily agree to send their child to school in dc. No one in this room would send their kid randomly to a school in washington dc. He would move and go to a private school. But you would not just a that i am im down with that. On the other hand, whose kids go to the schools in new york . They were called other peoples children. As long as we send other peoples children to schools that we wont send their own children into, shame on us. The way out of that is choice. [applause] you think about k12 versus postsecondary, we have a lot of problem with postsecondary. People from all over the world come to america to look at her postsecondary schools. Nobody looks at her k12 systems. They are not a monopoly provider. We are going to continue to hobble along. The third thing i think is a word about it for the first time when i was trying to take a broken system and create an effective system. We have to empower teachers and engage our students and change the whole process. Neither do those things is important. [applause] we are looking at the whole question of education and security. What is your sense of the proper place for Language Training . Will point out to be introduced and what degree should it be a priority . Where should it be . Where should it fit . I am a proponent because learning languages earlier is easier. If youve ever tried to learning language of 35, you know what i mean. It is easier if youre younger. Its like music. I would hope that we, well, firsti would like to make sure that they can read and write in english. Too many of our children can do that. But one question is whether there is some way to spread the task of some of the things that are kids need to learn. We may not be able to do everything in the schools. I have been very active with the boys and girls club, and we have started called the center for generations in redwood city. And it is a highquality afterschool and Summer Program for kids three hours after school. They get language languages there and they get some of the things that may fit into the school day. As chul reminded me, we have the shortest learning day and shortest learning year in the developed world. I doubt that were going to be able to extend the learning day in most places, you know, i learned to speak french, but i landed at age nine. But not in the schools. I learned it because my father, who is was a presbyterian minister, decided with my mother that all educated children should speak french. And so on tuesdays and thursdays and saturdays, we were dragged down to the church to take french who was the french teacher from high school. So there may be some ways to add it to the curriculum outside of the school system. One thing i