Thursday, December 27, 2007

Parting words from Beto Gonzalez

It is with gratitude and appreciation that I tender my resignation as acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), effective July 3, 2006. It have been an honor and a privilege to serve you and the nation over times gone by two years both in this size and in prior positions at the U. S. Department of Labor. I plan to verbs my work in the pasture of education, as very well as refocus my energy on my loved ones.


My service within this command has be incredibly rewarding and enriching. As a young man who grew up as a child of migrant cattle farm workers, my early enthusiasm was spent migrating respectively year from California to Nebraska, following the seasonal crops. My family traveled to areas of plant labor continuing up to my college graduation. During these years, effective rearing programs and caring principals, teacher, and coaches played a vital role surrounded by my academic nouns, eventually leading me to the completion of several degree and credentials in lessons. Overcoming the challenges of my impulsive years inspired me to pursue a career contained by public service and to dedicate my working duration to ensuring that every student, including those next to limited English proficiency and other barrier to educational deed, would have access to a first-rate, rigorous educational experience.


Guided by the President's delirium and Secretary Spelling's leadership, I be given the opportunity to pursue the following goals during my service in OVAE: to revolutionize the transition of secondary students into postsecondary coaching, to improve mature literacy, to upgrade the accountability systems for vocational and adult coaching, to better coordinate the provision of educational services to rural school and communities, and to bring the message of No Child Left Behind to Hispanic and other non-native speaking students. I am pleased to report that considerable progress has be made in respectively of these areas.


To improve postsecondary transition, this bureau has continued to implement the State Scholars Initiative. This initiative in a minute supports student's completion of a rigorous core curriculum in twenty-two states and 376 districts across the nation. OVAE have also continued work to develop rigorous programs of study, through the College and Careers Transition Initiative (CCTI), combing academic and systematic coursework, which is bridging the gap between dignified schools and community colleges throughout the nation.


Considerable progress have been made within responding to the administration's concerns more or less the quality of accountability background for vocational and adult tuition programs. For both programs, national and regional data level institutes have be held and OVAE staff have worked extensively next to states to improve the reliability, reasonableness, and completeness of vocational and adult teaching data.


During my service, trainer quality have become a central tenant of full-grown education. The department has used the national accomplishments resources to not only provide training for teacher in evidence-based reading instruction, but also to lay the groundwork for lecturer training in math instruction. In addition, OVAE supplies controlled assistance in professional nouns to twenty-four states with emerging populations who are erudition English as a second language.


In 2005, this bureau established the Center for Rural Education and rejuvenated the Secretary's Rural Education Task Force. These efforts own enabled the department to disseminate information regarding research and state-of-the-art instructional practice to school and communities in rural America and, at one and the same time, bring renewed attention to the problems and issues of students and teachers surrounded by rural schools.


Finally, during my service, I own been competent to bring the administration's message of No Child Left Behind to the Hispanic and other non-native speaking communities. This have occurred both through my travels to school and communities across the nation, as well as through the medium.


While much work lies ahead for vocational and adult childhood, I am encouraged by progress that we enjoy made over the past few years. I desire you all the best surrounded by your future endeavors surrounded by ensuring that no youth or grown is left down.

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