The following remarks were given at the Georgia Education Leadership Institute annual conference for superintendents, school board members, principals and other education leaders:

As we meet today in the early weeks of a new school year and reflect on that new beginning that each first day of class brings for both educators and students alike, I'd like for us to discuss ways in which we can have a similar impact on those educational metrics that remain stubbornly fixed or stagnant.

The underlying issues facing our classrooms today - the challenges that often lead to academic failure - cannot be solved by simply throwing more state dollars at the issue. And we know that money alone does not result in improved student performance because over the forty-year period between 1970 and 2010, education spending nationally increased 185 percent in the United States while performance on our national exams remained the same. And that, friends, is why I created the Education Reform Commission - to bring together the brightest stakeholders from all perspectives to study, more comprehensively than we ever have before, the reasons for educational stagnation.

To ensure that we are doing this right, my office not only moved back the deadline for this commission's recommendations so that they could be fairly examined by all those affected, but we also created the Teacher Advisory Committee this year to make sure that the concerns of those who report to you are accounted for. This committee is comprised of 90 educators throughout the state who have experience from kindergarten through high school and across a wide range of subject areas, including the STEM fields, fine arts and special and gifted education.

You've no doubt heard much about the Opportunity School District measure that will be on the ballot this November. The discerning reader will note that those school systems with the most failing schools tend to be the ones who oppose it. I would counter that if they spent half as much time addressing the problems in their systems as they do railing and working against OSD, it wouldn't be necessary.

All we ask is that a school earn a 60 or above on our College and Career Ready Performance Index. A 60... That's a pretty low floor, don't you think? And yet there are schools out there that haven't received close to a 60 in over a decade. Right now, 127 schools across our state are scoring below a 60. These schools span the demographic divides. Some of them are urban... some are rural... some are predominantly minority-attended schools and others are not. So this isn't just a problem for one group of people or subset of our population. It's not confined to any one location or community. It's a problem for all of us.

Let's start talking about the children. Let's make sure that our schools serve their best interests and change them when they don't. Let's end a status quo that does not produce results, despite ever-greater sums of money. Let's listen to the numbers - which have no agenda - instead of to the advocacy groups and resentful partisans who do. Let's put our children first, not the adults who stand to lose from making our system better. Let's explore, together, new opportunities to move the needle on gauges that haven't changed in years.

Every new school day presents a new opportunity for student and teacher alike. Let's seize this opportunity to make our schools better, our children's future brighter, and our long-term economic success as a state more secure. Let's begin today... together...Read More.