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"In visiting Texas schools and school districts, one cannot help but be struck by the enormous differences in the opportunities and intellectual challenges that schools provide our children. We cannot, as a matter of fairness, allow the accident of where a child attends school to limit the academic opportunities that child can pursue.

"We must send a clear, unequivocal message to our children that hard work does pay off, and that part of this payoff is the unfettered opportunity to continue one's education and to pursue one's dreams."

Director's Notes

The University and public education

Universities have, as part of their public service mission, an obligation to help strengthen public education. Fulfilling this obligation must not only be the work of the university administration but also of its faculty.

Thus, in creating the Dana Center, my colleagues and I wrestled with the question of how we could best harness the resources of UT Austin—an institution committed to developing new knowledge—in the service of children.

Our answer was to build a center that supports leaders at every level of the Texas education system. The Dana Center conducts research, offers continuing education to teachers and administrators, and creates resources to help the professionals responsible for the education of our children. Our purpose is to help more children successfully master a rigorous curriculum.

Respecting local control

Those who work to strengthen Texas education come to understand early that Texans differ passionately in how they want their schools to operate and how they want their children to be educated. The Dana Center is respectful of the tradition of local governance of schools and of the responsibilities that come with that governance. Thus, we work in ways that support local communities' visions of education.

Universities are among the oldest institutions in society. As such, they have the obligation to look past the short-term processes through which competing political and social interests get resolved, to the long-term health of the institutions—most particularly, schools—upon which civic life and the education of our children depend.

It is this commitment to the future, and in particular, to the future of our diverse population, that makes our home at The University so natural.

Academic opportunities for all children

Today, more of our children are going to college than ever before, but even greater numbers of children—especially children from groups historically underrepresented in higher education—will need access to college in the future.

The Texas legislature is now focused on raising standards for high school achievement and thereby increasing the number and diversity of students who graduate from high school prepared for postsecondary education.

But, however difficult raising academic standards might be, it is far easier than the challenge schools face in building their capacity to help all children meet these standards. Our vision for the future includes bringing to bear the enormous power and reach of technology in the preparation and continuing education of our teaching force and of the school leaders who support them.

We will intensify our research and policy efforts to provide education leaders with examples of how others have solved problems, tools for measuring the effects of their actions, and ways of envisioning what might be possible for Texas children.

We will also work to strengthen the links between higher education and local school systems, so that all Texas children can receive an education that will prepare them for success in college and beyond.

Working with experienced and emerging leaders at all levels of the Texas education system, we can build schools that will prepare every child for constructive engagement in the Texas of tomorrow.