summer vacations usa schools

hello, bulldogs! (applause.) good to see you guys. how’s everybody doing? you all look good. you look good. hey! how’s everybody? well, it is so nice to see you guys.

everybody have a seat, though. have a seat. i know you've been waiting here a while. good thing you all had your phones with you. as the father of two teenage daughters, iknow the whole time you were just like, "and then he said -- girl, i couldn’t believeit." (laughter.) anyway, it’s so good to see you. a couple of people i want to acknowledge.

first of all, i want to thank our secretaryof education, who has done outstanding work, john king is in the house. and then, my great friend and former educationsecretary and multiple winner of the three-on-three contest, as well as at the nba all-star game-- he can ball -- arne duncan. we’ve got your mayor, muriel bowser is here. give her a big round of applause. your representative, eleanor holmes norton. and we are so grateful not only for theirservice to the country, but the amazing work they’re doing with their philanthropic workand america’s promise, colin and alma powell.

so, by now you’ve settled into the new year. right? adjusted to classes. you’re preparing for spirit week. learning how to ballroom dance. i remember having to do that. getting the nerve to text that cute girl orboy in your english class. i don’t remember that; we did not have texts. we had to send little notes.

and then we used to actually have to go upto somebody if we liked them and talk to them. so that may happen to you someday. seniors are looking at colleges, taking tests,filling out all the forms. malia just went through this, so i know howtough this is for you and for the parents. but as i’m winding down my presidency -- iwas so impressed with banneker the last time i was here in 2011 that i wanted to come back-- (applause) -- because you’re an example of a school that’s doing things the rightway. and i believe that if you’re going to beable to do whatever you want to do in your lives –- if you want to become a teacher,or a doctor, or start a business, or develop

the next great app, or be president -- thenyou’ve got to have great education. we live in a global economy. and when you graduate, you’re no longergoing to be competing just with somebody here in d.c. for a great job. you’re competing with somebody on the otherside of the world, in china or in india, because jobs can go wherever they want because ofthe internet and because of technology. and the best jobs are going to go to the peoplewho are the best educated -- whether in india or china, or anywhere in the world. so when i took office almost eight years ago,we knew that our education system was falling

short when it came to preparing young peoplelike you for that reality. our public schools had been the envy of theworld, but the world caught up. and we started getting outpaced when it cameto math and science education. and african american and latino students,in part because of the legacy of discrimination, too often lagged behind our white classmates-- something called the achievement gap that, by one estimate, costs us hundreds of billionsof dollars a year. and we were behind other developed countrieswhen it came to the number of young people who were getting a higher education. so i said, when i first came into office,by 2020 i want us to be number one again.

i want us to be number one across the board. so we got to work, making real changes toimprove the chances for all of our young people, from the time they're born all the way throughuntil they got a career. and the good news is that we’ve made realprogress. so i just wanted to talk to you about theprogress we've made, because you are the reason we've made progress -- some outstanding youngpeople all across the country. we recently learned that america’s highschool graduation rate went up to 83 percent, which is the highest on record. that's good news.

more african american and latino studentsare graduating than ever before. right here in d.c., in just five years, thegraduation rate in the district of columbia public schools went from just 53 percent to69 percent. so d.c.'s graduation rates grew faster thanany other place in the country this year -- this past year. that's something to be really proud of. now, of course, here at banneker, you graduated100 percent of your seniors last year. one hundred percent. it's been a while since i did math, but 100percent is good.

you can't do better than that. so what all these numbers mean is that moreschools across d.c. and across the country are starting to catch up to what you guysare doing here, at this school. now, some of the changes we made were hard,and some of them were controversial. we expected more from our teachers and ourstudents. but the hard work that people have put inacross the country has started to pay off. and i just want to talk to you a little bitabout some of the things that we did. it starts with our youngest learners. high-quality early education is one of thebest investments we can make, which is why

we’ve added over 60,000 children to headstart. we called for high-quality preschool for everyfour-year-old in america. and when i took office, only 38 states offeredaccess to state-funded preschool. today, it’s up to 46. we're trying to get those last holdouts todo the right thing. and, by the way, the district of columbialeads the nation with the highest share of children -- nearly 9 out of 10 -- in high-qualitypreschool. and that's a big achievement. we launched then a competition called raceto the top, which inspired states to set higher,

better standards so that we could out-teachand out-compete other nations, and make sure that we've got high expectations for our students. d.c. was one of the winners of this competition. it upgraded standards, upgraded curriculum,worked to help teachers build their skills. and that, in part, is why d.c. has done sowell. we realized that in today’s world, whenyou all have a computer in your pocket in those phones, then you need to learn not justhow to use a phone, you need to learn computer science. so we’re working with private and philanthropicpartners to bring high schools into the 21st

century and give you a more personalized andreal-world experience. we're bringing in high-speed internet intoschools and libraries, reaching 20 million more students and helping teachers with digitallearning. and coding isn’t, by the way, just for boysin silicon valley, so we’re investing more in getting girls and young women and youngpeople of color and low-income students into science and engineering and technology andmath. and because we know that nothing is more importantthan a great teacher -- and you’ve got some great teachers here, as well as a great principalat banneker -- (applause) -- we have focused on preparing and developing and supportingand rewarding excellent educators.

you all know how hard they work. they stay up late grading your assignments. that's why you got all those marks all overyour papers. they pull sometimes money out of their ownpockets to make that lesson extra special. and i promise you, the teachers here and theteachers around the country, they’re not doing it for the pay -- because teachers,unfortunately, still aren't paid as much as they should be. they’re not doing it for the glory. they’re doing it because they love you,and they believe in you, and they want to

help you succeed. so teachers deserve more than just our gratitude-- they deserve our full support. and we've got to make their lives easier,which is why we enacted a law to fix no child left behind, which gives teachers more flexibilityto spend more time teaching creatively than just spending all their time teaching to atest. give your teachers a big round of applause. they deserve it. so we've made real progress, but here’sthe thing -- and i think all of you know this because you go to this great school-- a high school education these days is not

enough. by 2020, two out of three job openings requiresome form of higher education. now, that doesn’t always mean a four-yearcollege degree, but it does mean -- whether it's a four-year university, or a communitycollege, or some sort of training program -- you’ve got to get a little bit more thanjust what you're getting in high school. it used to be that a high school job mightbe enough because you could go into a factory or even go into an office and just do somerepetitive work, and if you were willing to work hard you could make a decent living. but the problem is repetitive work now isdone by machines.

and that's just going to be more and moretrue. so in order for you to succeed in the marketplace,you’ve got to be able to think creatively; you’ve got to be able to work with a team;you’ve got to be able to work with a machine and figure out how to make it tailored forthe specific requirements of your business and your job. all those things require some more sophisticatedthinking than just sitting there and just doing the same thing over and over again. and that's why you’ve got to have more thanjust a high school education. and if you doubt that, i just want to giveyou some statistics.

compared to a high school diploma, just gettinga degree from a two-year school, going to a community college and getting an associate’sdegree could earn you more than $300,000 over the course of your lifetime. and a four-year degree earns you a milliondollars more than if you just had a high school degree. think about that. a million dollars -- that's real money. so one of the things that we’re trying todo is to make it easier for you to access free money for college -- to figure out howyou can pay for your college without having

a mountain of debt. and the key thing, as you know here at banneker,but i want all the students around the country to do this -- and michelle and i and othershave been really emphasizing this -- is to fill out your fafsa, the free applicationfor federal student aid. how many people -- how many seniors here havealready filled out their fafsa forms? all right. how many seniors here have not filled outtheir fafsa forms? fess up now. you sure?

all right, i just want to make sure now. and, juniors, you can start getting readynow. because what the fafsa does is it puts youin the running for scholarships, grants, loans, work-study jobs, all to help you pay for college. and we've made it simpler than ever. and it's available right now at fafsa.gov-- fafsa.gov. and since this is one of the most importantinvestments of your life, next year's fafsa is also going to direct you to something wecreated, called our college scorecard. now, here's what this is.

it gives you comprehensive information onevery college in america. now, some of you who have started applyingfor colleges, you know about these college rankings, right? it's like, oh, this is the best school. and some of that information is useful; someof it not so much. but unlike traditional rankings that focuson which school has the fanciest dorm or the nicest football stadiums, or is the most expensiveor the most exclusive, what our college scorecard does is it focuses on some of the things thatreally matter for your future. things like how many students actually graduatefrom the school -- because it's not enough

just to enroll in college; you've got to graduatefrom college. how much money do their alumni earn? what percentage of their students can payback their loans? and what we’ve done is we've worked withcompanies like google to put this information right at your fingertips. so for a decision this important, we wantyou to be able to comparison shop to figure out how do you get the best value for yourmoney, just like if you were buying something on amazon. if you were buying a car or you're buyinga phone or you're buying anything, especially

if it's a pretty big purchase, you want toknow ahead of time, is this legit. and what this does is makes you think aboutwhat your options are. now, you've got some great counselors here. obviously, you should work with them. but not every student may be going to a schoollike banneker that has as many good counselors to think about their college education. and using this college scorecard is goingto be helpful for them to do a little comparison shopping. because you don't want to go to the schooljust because it's the closest one, and it

turns out it's more expensive and doesn'tdo as good of a job as if you were willing to maybe travel someplace else, and it turnsout that you could get the financial aid you need to go to a school that's more suitedtoward your needs. so we also reformed, by the way, the studentloan system. when i came into office, you had tens of billionsof dollars that were going to big banks, serving as middlemen for your student loans. we said, well, let's cut out the banks. let's give the money directly to the studentsso they can afford college and we can make the loans cheaper, and we can expand pellgrants.

and now, what we're trying to do is to pushto make two years of community college free for every responsible student all across thecountry. all across the country. and we're starting to work with colleges anduniversities around the country to bring down the cost of college so that at the end offour years of college you're not saddled with a whole bunch of debt -- because nobody shouldbe priced out of a higher education. so bottom line is: higher graduation rates,higher college attendance rates, more money for pell grants and work to make sure thatthe interest rate on student loans haven't gone up; working to expand early childhoodeducation and preschool; continuing to watch

and work with states as they try to implementreforms to make k-12 better; holding colleges more accountable for giving information sothat students can make good decisions. we've made a lot of progress. we have made a lot of progress in terms ofmaking sure that young people across the country get the kind of great education that you'regetting here at banneker. and i am really proud of what we've accomplished. i'm proud of what the district of columbiahas accomplished. but i just want to be honest with you: we'vestill got more work to do. so as i go, i'm giving you kind of a finalreport card, transcript on what more we’ve

got to get done. there are still too many states that are cuttingback on public education. and part of the reason tuition is going upis because states aren’t putting as much money into state education, universities,community colleges as they used to. that’s why, if you’re 18, by the way,you’ve got to vote to make sure that the folks who represent you actually deliver. we’ve still got too many states that havenot really worked in a serious way to raise standards and improve performance. in too many school districts, we still haveschools that, despite the heroic efforts of

a lot of great teachers, are not fully preparingour kids for success because they just don’t have the resources to do it or the structureto do it. we’ve still got too many high schools wherea third of their students do not earn their diplomas on time. for too many students in america, zip codestill determines how far they’ll go. and that’s not acceptable. some of you probably have friends or familywho are just as smart or talented or as capable as you, but they didn’t have the same supportor the right opportunities or didn’t get in the right school, and so now don’t havethe same shot at success.

am i right? because i know that’s true in our family. michelle and i, we’ve got cousins and friendswho we’ve known since they were shorties, little kids -- (laughter) -- and they -- weknow how smart they are because they were just as smart as we were, but just the luckof the draw was they didn’t get the same chance as we did. and that’s not right. so that’s why i started something calledmy brother’s keeper initiative, because what we want to do is help more young people,especially kids of color, get mentorships

and the resources and the guidance they needto succeed. and i’m going to stay involved with thateven after i’m done being president. because we all have a part to play in makingsure every single child has every single opportunity to achieve his or her dreams. that’s what banneker is all about. that’s what you can see in somebody likeifunaya. i mean, that’s an incredible young ladywho’s going to succeed because she has an incredible school in addition to an incrediblefamily. and so we’re so proud of her.

there’s another person i want to just callout -- amari mcduffie. where’s amari? there she is right there, right in front. so, hey, amari. i’m going to talk about you for a second. so amari was born with a heart and a lungcondition. and sometimes she had to miss a lot of schoolbecause of her illness. and you know, banneker is a pretty rigorousschool, so she was worried about staying on top of her work.

but everybody in this family rallied aroundher and made sure she was keeping up. her history teacher, mr. goldfarb -- where’smr. goldfarb? is he here or did he cut assembly? so mr. goldfarb came to visit her when amariwas in the hospital for weeks, brought a card from the whole class. and so amari, she was talking about the supporteverybody here gave her, and she said, “i believed in myself because my teachers believedin me.” and that’s the kind of community that wewant in every school -- where you’re looking out for each other and you’re taking careof one another.

and so now amari plans to be a doctor so shecan help kids who had illnesses like hers. and that’s what’s possible -- (applause)-- that's what's possible when we’re all committed to each other’s success; whenwe understand that no matter what you look like, where you come from, what faith youare, whether you’re a boy or a girl -- that you should have great opportunities to succeed. and that requires you to put effort into it. michelle and i talk a lot because we travelaround the world and sometimes we forget that there are places around the world where peoplehave so little but the kids are so hungry for an education.

and they don’t even have an actual roofover their head in some of their schools. and so even if you’re really poor in thiscountry, you can succeed if you want to invest in the teachers and the community, and everybodyraises standards and believes in each other. and that’s what we want all of america tobelieve, in every kid -- because there’s magic in each and every one of you. and we just have to help you unleash it andnurture it and realize it. and, by the way, it’s because of young peoplelike you that i leave the presidency never more optimistic than i am right now, becausei’ve met so many young people around the country whose energy, and excitement, andhow you treat each other, with respect.

that gives me a lot of confidence, a lot offaith for our country. so i know you guys are going to keep on workinghard. you’re going to keep making our communitiesproud. if us adults do our part and we stay focusedon making sure every school is as great as this one, and that every young person hasthose same opportunities, and everybody has a teacher like mr. goldfarb looking out forthem, i’ve got no doubt that we're going to continue to build a country where everybodyhas the chance to make of their lives what they will. and that’s what america is all about.

proud of you, bulldogs. thank you. god bless you. god bless the united states of america. fill out those fafsa forms!