President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics: The Next Step in Improving the Academic Achievement of Latino Students

Today, more than a dozen new members of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics were announced at the White House and later sworn-in at an official ceremony with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at the Smithsonian Institution Castle. These historic events mark the next step in improving the academic achievement of Latino students and the lives of all Hispanics nationwide.

Hispanic success in education and the labor market is important to America’s economy. At more than 54 million strong – including nearly 4 million in Puerto Rico--Hispanics are both the largest and fastest-growing minority group, yet they have the lowest education attainment levels of any group in the country. In addition, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the public education system, with more than 1 in 5 students in our elementary, middle and high schools; however, it this group that has the lowest education attainment levels overall, according to the report recently released by our office.

This two-day inaugural meeting brings together a group of well-respected individuals from the education, philanthropic, business, nonprofit and high-tech sectors; they also represent various Latino subgroups and regions of the U.S. The primary goal of these meetings is to provide a platform for the Commission to think through the many ways in which it can meet the duties under its charter. They will work in tandem with our office to create a strategy that is bold and innovative and that enables this Nation to meet the President’s 2020 Goal of having the most graduates in the world. 

Through its work, the Commission will provide advice toPresident Obama and EducationSecretary Arne Duncan. In remarks given during our executive order signing ceremony last October, the President introduced Eduardo Padron, president of Miami-Dade College, as the chair of the Commission. As chair, Padron works with White House Initiative Executive Director Juan Sepúlveda and Deputy Director Jose Rico to convene regular Commission meetings, determine its agenda, and direct its work.

In addition, more than 400 people will be attending the Commissioner’s swearing-in ceremony Thursday evening. The program, co-hosted by the Smithsonian Latino Center with unscripted remarks by Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Vice-Chair Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Munoz and Commissioner Chair Eduardo Padron, will be held at the historic Smithsonian Institution Castle and Enid A. Haupt Gardens. The highlight of the program will be U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s congratulatory remarks and the swearing-in of the Commissioners.

I hope you can watch the webcast of the meetings at 1 p.m. ET/Noon CT, today, and 9 a.m. ET/8 a.m. CT, tomorrow at www.WhiteHouse.gov/live. You can also watch the swearing-in ceremony at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/education-department. When you do, let us know what you think:  What should the Commission do to increase the education attainment levels of Latinos?

To keep up with the activities of the White House Initiative, follow them at Ed.gov or on Facebook or whitehouse.gov/hispanic. 

Investing in Infrastructure to Create Jobs and Stimulate the Economy

I’m truly honored to be selected as a “Champion of Change” by the White House, for my roles as a civil engineer and as the 2011 president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

As many of you know, ASCE has published a Report Card for America’s Infrastructure every four years since 1988. Our most recent Report Card, issued in 2009, gave this country’s infrastructure sectors a cumulative grade of “D.”

Our nation’s economy can’t survive without the stable foundation infrastructure provides.

Confronting Challenges to Educators and Students

To prepare children for a global world, our district takes a broad approach to learning. While building foundational skills and concepts, we also move beyond that foundation to develop students’ higher order thinking skills. That is, we design learning experiences and pose questions that push students – even our youngest students – to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create with the knowledge they are gaining. This is what will be needed as we move into the future, citizens who can be critical consumers of ideas and information and who can shape skills and understandings in new ways to solve new problems.

What can others do to support this work? Principals, teachers, families, and students can all collaborate to recognize that this is the vision of learning and take responsibility for growing that vision – setting high expectations for children’s learning with engaging tasks and real-world applications of what they are learning. At the federal level, the most critical leverage point rests in designing high-quality assessment systems that will support schools in their pursuit of deep learning, not narrowly focused skills in isolation. Promoting with greater clarity what is meant in policy by “multiple measures” – multiple ways that schools and students can demonstrate evidence of learning and growth beyond traditional standardized tests – will drive instruction and learning to be deeper and richer.

These were just some of the ideas that I shared a few short weeks ago as an invited guest at the White House “Champions of Change: Winning Our Future” educators roundtable discussion.  The opportunity to be a part of that discussion was remarkable in that it demonstrated to me the efforts that policy makers in this country are making to listen to teachers in the field and the solutions they are seeking to what they know are challenges to educators and students.