Madison—Today Governor Walker delivered the weekly radio address that is titled “Turning Ideas into Action.”

Transcript below:

Hi, this is Scott Walker.

I’m talking with school board members this week from all across Wisconsin. They love their districts and they love their schools. Most of all, they love their students.

I know how they feel as I have two sons who go to a public school in Wauwatosa. We love their school too.

Now, I want to insure that every kid in this state has access to a great education.

To do that we teamed up with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers. He and I put together a diverse group of parents, teachers, education advocates and community leaders to work on improving reading skills through our Read to Lead plan.

We also joined Dr. Evers and equally diverse groups to focus on educator effectiveness and on school and school district accountability. We spent most of the past year building consensus on education reform.

Our reforms will focus on setting high standards, ensuring transparency and measuring what matters to ensure that all students are ready for college or a career. Our system will rate all schools, be they public, charter, or choice, on multiple measures of student growth and proficiency. This legislation will empower parents to make educational decisions based on quantifiable performance data on schools and it will help fight complacency by encouraging high performing schools to excel while underperforming ones are being encouraged to improve.

With this in mind, I am endorsing these reforms to help Wisconsin students and encouraging the legislature to take action to deliver these items to my desk.

The state has partnered with the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association to produce and distribute brief radio address once a week.  Audio files and a written transcript of this radio address can be accessed on http://www.wi-broadcasters.org and http://walker.wi.gov/section.asp?linkid=1761&locid=177.  To download an mp3 file you can visit, right click the radio address link and click “save link as.”