I come with a not very pleasant task. Because I suppose I really have a combination of of duties. both as a reporter and editor and as a reagent of what is now the fourth largest university system in the country unlike yours, all of our schools are in one system. We have 27 campuses about 146000 students on campus and just over a million students in our extension system. We have spent a great deal of time in the newspaper business and at the University looking at what I think can be properly called the kind of plague in our society. My job it seems to me is to try to outline briefly that plague and then try to suggest some concrete ways that all of us together can eradicated. Students today not all of them, but many of them cannot read and write. The SAT the college entrance exam scores are going down from 65 to 75. They dropped 50 points. the national assessment of educational progress has revealed that 47% of today's 17 year olds do not know that their state has two US senators 47% Last year in my own stayed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison 60% of the sophomores who wanted to go onto their junior year in the school of Journalism could not pass a basic English English usage test. Or let me even bring it closer by law in my state. The state superintendent of Public Instruction is a region. Dr. Barbara Thompson recently sent out to all of us the results of a Statewide survey. It was a professional pole. It was a brat broad random sample of our state. It showed that 50% of the surveys respondents believe the today's high school graduates have skills in Reading Writing and expression as well as mathematics lower than 20 years ago. More important if we are going to pay attention to what the public says 82% of the respondents favored introduction into our schools of minimum educational standards, which are mandatory for all elementary and secondary schools. Or let me shift my own profession in a recent article in the American Press Institute. I saw statistic that astounded me. Do you know that in this country of children ages 2 to 18 the average child spend the $17,500 hours in a classroom. And 18000 hours watching television. 500 hours less in class than they do watching television and they certainly go to school a great chunk of many days. Help me for I go on let me know some disclaimers because I suspect there are some people in the audience were thinking of them already. It is true that the SATs the college boards have about one-third of the minion students in this country taking them. It's also true that the verbal aptitude math aptitude of the class of 75 of the lowest in 20 years. Yet professional Educators notes impartially valid excuses for these declines. Number one. The SATs are no longer required by many colleges and universities and particularly by some of America's Finest schools. Hence. Some of America's Finest students are no longer in that pool. at the same time many many more students and all of you know, this are going to school now than has been true in Prior years. There will be a fall off in the late 70s and 80s, but this hasn't taken place yet in our colleges and elementary schools as a group. It is of course important. It's vital. It's the heart of this country that we educate at least through high school all of our young people. It's also true that if you add many more young people to an educational population as we have. You will get many who do not have skills at the same level as compared to when we had fewer and taking those exams more qualified students. this results in a leveling of the test scores get ladies and Gentlemen, even with the disclaimers in hand. We certainly must own up to the fact that there has been a decline in the skills and that it had a profound effect on Elementary and secondary schools and on our colleges and universities. For example at the University of wisconsin-platteville, which is an average middle-sized campus in our system. They did a study of the 74 and 75 entering freshman classes and I quote the test results from the faculty. They said quote it confirms. Our worst suspicions faculty said the students have quote Fallen Five Below National Norms in every category of writing speed comprehension and vocabulary. And in case you're feeling on touch by this in Minnesota, let me go from a speech to Bob Shaw the head of the mini soda newspaper Association gave in Duluth, and I quote. A four-year project at the University of Texas based on a study of about 1 million persons estimates that there are 23 million adults in the United States today who are functionally illiterate. the Texas report further estimates that about 1/2 the American population is just barely functionally literate. Shell continued the Minnesota Literacy Council is part of a larger Nationwide organization which teaches adults to read. I spoke to the council's vice president and ask her how many people in our country can't read. She said of course, she didn't know for sure but based on their work. They estimate that there are 18.5 million adults 23 years of age and older who cannot read in the United States today. In Minnesota, she told me there are a hundred and seventy-nine thousand functionally illiterate persons considerably greater than the population of Duluth. Shopping tenured by saying that he had asked the official of the Minnesota Literacy Council how many persons with whom she had personally worked? Held High School diplomas for those of you so dedicated to schools in this city consider that her answer was 65% In a recent article in the chronicle for higher education, the theme was even acted more bluntly the article said according to studies one American adult in 5 is functionally illiterate and another large group is incapable of understanding such things as the concept of an equal opportunity employer, but the law against detaining an arrested person without bringing charges. As long as I'm on this, let me explode one related myth. In at least the functionally illiterate group. You should know that many of these people hold prominent jobs. It is not a fact that they are necessarily poor or unemployed. Of course, some are yet many of them do whole jobs of prominence and at the same time they live day in and day out with a grinding fear of being exposed. The fear it has been noted in studies is not unlike that of the alcoholic the fear of being forced to admit that it takes 1 hour to read something that the person next to you can read in a short. Of time. Or perhaps in the quiet of your office. You have to have someone read it to you. Ladies and gentlemen, our young people today are not the only problem. The problem of the ability to read and write in the United States is us. We have seen the enemy he or she is one out of five Americans walking down the street next to you and me. So where do we go from here? Well in my judgment we must admit and accept that the scores have decline. We must accept that one out of five adults is at least functionally illiterate. Before I present what I think is at least a partial specific prescription to this plague that affects Affleck such a mass number of people. Let me note to quick disclaimers one. Simply because I am emphasizing The crucial task of looking at reading and writing. I'm not suggesting that we do away in our schools with efforts to teach students about art or music or culture. These Studies have a vitally important place in our curriculum. This is not an either-or argument. We do not have to trade and understanding of Bach and Beethoven or Picasso or music or culture of Minnesota in order to read and write. Then to we should look at a I watch word in our schools. You all heard it local control. School boards and parents groups and I suspect groups like this all have great discussions about local control. Well, the first point, of course he is the local control is now largely a myth. State Department of Public Instruction DPI in Minnesota, I am told is just like DPI and Wisconsin, it mandates a whole group of things for our schools. And what DPI here in Minnesota doesn't mandate the Office of Education in Washington does we can argue if you wish whether that's a good or bad thing, but there surely is no argument that it's real and I think in my personal view in many cases appropriate because many of our schools simply wouldn't be doing some of the things they should be doing if they were forced to But there is a catch and as a newspaperman, I see that catch despite the erosion of local control. Let me play reporter and simply tell you that you can have impact on your local schools you as an organization. When you raise your Collective Voice or as individuals can have a wheel of an impact not only on your Elementary and secondary schools, but I'm colleges and universities. What does it take? Well, you've got to know what you're talkin about. You've got a document what you're saying. If you do those things then your schools will listen and they'll respond and I think our children will be able to read and write now what is the prescription? I think it has 10 parts first. We got to see to it that our schools Institute a set of Standards. The standard should not be so rigid that we start to say to our teachers. We know better than you what you should be doing what we ought to say to our teachers. Look there maybe six or a dozen or two dozen different ways to achieve the goal of how our children can read and write you know, which one of these ways is best or best for you many of the methods will achieve the goal. We don't know which one is best, but we do know that we want and we demand some basic skills from our students who graduate from grade school and Junior High School and High School. We want them to be able to meet the demands of everyday living to pick up the newspaper and know what it means. We want them to be able to take a driver's exam booklet and explain it. We want them to be able to understand in writing and express themselves on paper about the basic concepts of their government. Second, I believe that our school should not pass. We're not pass and let go entirely students from the fourth 8th or 12th grades unless they can read and write at 11 appropriate for a fourth 8th or 12th grader. Let me be clear. I am not suggesting a mandated Statewide test to determine what a student can read a right and a level appropriate to the view of some bureaucrat in St. Paul. such a test won't work not because there aren't excellent National Achievement tests that can make judgments of this sort because there are but it won't work because such a test is mandated. Because it's required from the top down. The Faculty simply won't accept it if they're forced to do it and the bun Facts of Life are that even though you might be able to force the faculty to administer the test there is no way on Earth that you can force them to meaningfully utilize the results. moreover it is also not really appropriate for us izle citizens to tell a faculty what test they're going to use and how they're going to use it. The faculty are professionals. I believe they are in fine large. They're experts. Well, if we can't mandate a test, what should we ask of our faculty? We should ask them to use their best judgment and decide whatever standard they feel is honest and realistic in order to ensure that a child is reading at 4th a 12th grade level. We should tell them that we don't want them to create a situation where teachers are locked into a Statewide test and end up teaching not for learning the sake what to prepare their students for that test. What estate is another way the faculty might decide that they want to use the results of one of the national Chapman exam that they already perhaps used the Iowa or Metropolitan or Stanford. Or the other hand they may want to drop within the school system or even on a school by school basis a quite simple reading and writing and comprehension test. This test could be short enough that the curriculum could not possibly be forgotten as teachers tried to prepare for it or prepare their students for it and the test to be changed each year. The point is as professionals The Faculty should draw a reasonable standard. and then ladies and gentlemen the real job comes When a student fails to meet The Faculty standards for a fourth grader the faculty in the school administration mustn't allow that child to continue on and think they can do 5th grade work if the school is set up the past them into 5th grade and provide the catch up along the way fine, but make sure they get the work that missed but equally important and from my view maybe more important. There's the third part of my prescription the community and especially the parents and the community must band together and support the decision not to pass a student be on the 4th or 8th or 12th grade if they can't do the work appropriate for that level. It is unacceptable. I think really it's your moral to send the student on the 5th grade who cannot read a ride at a fourth grade level. It's immoral for an officer of The Literacy Council in your state to be able to say that 65% of the students that she works with cool the high school diploma. We cannot any longer cheat our students by making them a 5th grader if they can't do 4th grade work. If a student hasn't learned to read a right then we owe it to them to back up and provide them the skills. They didn't set out not to know how to read and write as a 4th grader. And make no mistake about it as painful as it is for a family not to have their 8th grader go on to 9th grade or their 12th grader graduate. It is a devil of a lot cheaper emotionally and financially that we provide that student with remediation from this skills than it is to let the student go through high school and then try to provide that remediation when they graduate it. The part that the illiterate or functionally illiterate individual will play in society will cost your stayed in mind a great deal more in dollars and pain. When they graduate then it will cost us to provide them whatever support system that they missed academically to get the skills when they're still in school. And I was the 4th part of my prescription. Let me turn to one of the most controversial and yet I suggest basic suggestions. No improvement in basic skills will come about unless you were school systems faculty and administration are each personally involved. hence Why don't you suggest that for the next teacher negotiations? The teachers in your school be paid their salary. And above that be paid on an increasing basis if the school if the skills of their students improve. The more the skills improve the greater the increase in salary. Then isn't it suggestion? Why don't you propose that the administrators in your schools will be paid their salary and further if their students skills improve they'll get a bonus just like the teachers. And if their students kills don't even prove that be dismissed. Or let me State the prescription another way. What would you pay for a master teacher who could really turn on the students and colleagues in his or her school? Why can't we have pay well above the contract? As a businessman in a committed one. I see absolutely nothing wrong and a great deal right with saying that we would pay a school teacher in our school system 30 or $35,000 a year if he or she could really light a fire under the rest of their colleagues and at the same time produce children who had exceptionally increasing skills. This kind of carrot would be a tiny investment with a rate pay off. And I leave part of the prescription which deals with what Public Schools can do. Let me answer. One question that I suspect is coming to some of you. You're saying that's all fine. But what he's suggesting simply can't be done in a tough for inner-city school. Well, I'll answer your question if you're asking it and the answer is hogwash. Any school can improve itself from where it is? A school of course should be measured against itself not some other school. But it is also true that tough inner-city schools can be a first-rate quality. Within reason and there is of course a living. It's not even what we spend on them as much as who we have running them and teaching in them. Last year, I walked into an inner city school in Milwaukee. There I've met a 5-foot 5-inch. Human Dynamo. I think she really is a package of nitroglycerin in human form. I will tell you that I've been in that school a few years before. Then it was one of the filthiest toughest scariest schools. I had ever been in. The outside last year when I walk came up to the school. It looked exactly the same. I walked through the doors. It was like literally walking into Shangri-La. Quarters were gorgeous and bright and clean the classes were busy and excited and not particularly quiet. and Sarah Scott Milwaukee native and black principal of that school came up to me in a group of University Regents. She barely said hello Granite. She knew many of us. I think she said that only cuz matters dictated it was necessary and then she got to the point that was obviously on her mind and she said Why don't you what the university dropped from 12 to 9 credits? The number of English units required to get into college. How the heck do you think we can get these kids to do more if you make it so sloppily easy to get into the University. Last year Sarah Scott had 200 students attempt to transfer to her Inner City High School. They were mainly white middle and upper-middle-class students. They wanted in because it is undoubtedly one of the best schools in the city. It is certainly one of the academically toughest it's tough for the industrial Arts students and Industrial Arts curriculum stop for the college students in a college curriculum. The ladies and gentlemen, I tell you. If you can make real quality education in that school in inner-city, Milwaukee and believe me it is real. Then you can make it real anywhere. Before I go on to one other thing which is what we might do for students beyond the elementary and secondary level. point one thing that is particular to some of you I think we have a resource in our community. We're not accusing. I'm referring to parents. simple but forgotten School budgets are tight and they're going to get tighter. At the same time. I report everyday about families today, you know, they're weeping and wailing about the fact that our society's values are falling apart and there's no one paying attention to the family. I think there's a great role for the family and I think one of those roles is right there in the classroom. I think the mothers and fathers should volunteer to be teachers age and I don't mean they should be there to sharpen pencils. Using parents to give students the individualized attention. They need on reading and writing. What about using parents in classrooms with discipline problems to help the teachers have to beat them the students but the help the teachers. Is it likely that students will take quite a different attitude if they see the parents feel school is important enough. For Dad to arrange to work longer hours one day so he can volunteer to be in his daughter's great school classroom the next day. With the student shape up a whole bunch if their mother or father or their friend's mother or father. Was in the back of the class and saying only as a parent can Junior listen to the teacher? And if the school is going to have to hold back a student or parents have a far greater understanding of why that's necessary if they know the teacher and they know the school and they know the problems. Here is a challenge. It seems to me that a group like this or the groups that you represent could really take on you could involve employers to juggle working schedules and allow parents from Australia to go into our school. Well, those are Elementary and secondary schools. What about colleges and universities? He ate part of my prescription and it's the wrong end of the stick. What is University Regent I'm not willing and I doubt that any of you are. To wait for kindergarteners from next fall to become University students before we solve the problem of inadequate college and university preparation. What can we do well? Are Madison Campus in the University of Wisconsin system is the largest we have. It now has a prestigious University committee. The committee has evolved a new skills package. Sounds like every other committee. Doesn't it every other package they shut up. Well, here's their claim. They claim that every student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will become a writer every student. How are they going to do it? The committee on improving the quality of student writing skills a stamp established both by the chancellor and the faculty and said the two thirds of the entering freshmen will be required to take basic or intermediate writing the skill courses and they will be required to pass them before they can go on. No exceptions every student in every major will have to take and pass in their junior or senior year and advanced writing course geared to their subject area. Now that's a change in it. And in the journalism School, the director has said that all courses and I underline all will now judges student on the quality of their writing. Written work at UW-Madison School of Journalism is the director said and I'll quote so Central to communication in the school that students are informed by this statement. The matter what area of the school you are in it is absolutely essential that you convey a message clearly and effectively. Media employers tell us that too many graduates cannot write clearly that evening even spelling and grammar is poor. Hence. Your writing will not only be judged across the curriculum. But to and including final examinations under pressure. And if you can't write it baby, it doesn't matter what you say end of his quote. Why is the standard only applied to the journalism School? Why couldn't it be applied not to be Hemingway but to be clear to every student in every school. And in case you think the standard is unfair. I should tell you that not in college, but in high school, I was lucky enough to be able to go to a high school. That would be certainly called then old fashioned. They were basically medieval. They had a very simple standard. Maybe you can use it as a backdrop when you get into this subject. If you're talkin with high school students your owner others or teachers the High School faculty said in those days if I wrote a paper for any course anywhere the curriculum and made more than five spelling errors at the fifth spelling error the paper failed. if I wrote a paper for any course or a final examination and put together one incomplete sentence the instructor do a line across the paper at that point. in the paper failed this was true for all written work including 3-hour written examinations. Now I'm not suggesting that you Institute such a strict standard in your schools tomorrow, but I am suggesting that when people complain about standards, you might tell them that there are some out there that we could suggest and it may make implementing something between where they are and out there a little easier. Let me offer a 9 suggestion. It may sound self-serving. It is probably my verbal editorial for the evening. But I think it really is important to all of us. In the areas of Wisconsin, where are four daily newspapers serve and we are in the four sections of the state. We provide as many newspapers for as many days as any teacher has students in his or her classroom if that teacher wants to teacher unit on the newspaper. If a teacher has 20 students and wants 20 papers a day for a month that got them. We also provide speakers from the newspaper or if our staff doesn't have time. We ask people who are visiting firemen like from The Wire services and others coming through to be the speakers. Do your schools have a newspaper in the classroom program? A large measure your students are going to have to learn to evaluate their society by reading their newspaper when they get out of school. Are you training them how to do it? Are you training your teachers how to teach the newspaper? And I don't mean just journalism teachers. I mean English teachers and Civics teachers at both the grade school and high school level. At the University of Wisconsin. We have a program to train teachers and then we send them back to the schools. So they in turn an in-service bases contain their colleagues. The newspaper is really the basic textbook of all of us. Beyond school at least and despite all of its imperfections and I hasten to add there are many It still keeps us informed in a fairway about our society as there's no other media in terms of depth and breadth. It also continues to make people more literate. Are you using it? Your faculty training the children to understand and assess and utilize. What is their Lifeline to what their society is doing when they get out of school? finally There is the silent and overlooked and swept under the rug and not talked about group. But what about the illiterate adults? We're responsible for public education in this city and this state. Surely that responsibility includes tackling the plague as it impacts on that group. And if you don't think it needs tackling answer for yourself the question of how you feel when you consider that one out of five people that walk into a polling Booth decide this city and this state's future and they may have absolutely no idea of what it is. They're voting about What does that mean for the future of Minneapolis, Minnesota? Why can't you lead? What are the big cities in the country and have the great resources of what is my favorite big city? And certainly an excellent Elementary and secondary school system. really Mountain accountable program to reach the functionally illiterate adults In that program you should offer in a kind of non-threatening helpful way the ketchup and Remediation that these adults need and frankly in my judgment that they deserve. And in case you can't sell this is all that effort on any other basis to your faculty and staff. Let me point out that with falling School populations that are coming in the next five to eight years unless your educators are fulfilling a meaningful societal need the cutscene faculty and school employment and budgets will be catastrophic. On the positive side. It's been my experience in working with some of these programs in our state that you will find no more enthusiastic group about learning to read and write in adults were approached sensitively and with understanding and concern ladies and gentlemen John and Jenny cannot read and write. Try me and Jane are symbolic. Not only of students Age 5 to 18 their symbolic of one and five adults as we walk out of this hotel tonight. At all age levels. This is a plague which faces us all. And it is a plague that we can eradicate. It is a tragic story. But we have a chance to make the ending joyous. The challenges before you and me. I wish you well.