I think the most critical need in America today is to have leadership that first of all understands what you have to do to change schools and make them work well for every student. And second, who understands how you get this done. Governors who understand how you politically pull it off. How did you get that through the legislature? What do you have to do? What kind of partnerships do you have to create with business to help you? What kind of bipartisan approaches are necessary? Do you have to combine more money with higher standards?

2. What were some of the major educational initiatives you pursued as Governor?

I ran a campaign (in 1996) saying that we want to make sure that every child in our state starts to school that first day healthy and ready to learn. Then we put through our Smart-Start program. I think it’s the best one in the country. It focuses on kids from the day they’re born until they start to school, putting a lot of money in to help them have quality care, to help their parents know how to help them more, have good health care. I ran a campaign saying that we wanted to take our state, which had slipped to 43rd in teacher pay, we wanted to take it to the national average, which is about 20th or 21st, in just four years. And to do that, you have to raise standards, you have to have better teaching, and you have to pay teachers well so the best ones will come in and stay in the classroom.

3. How did you counter the argument that raising teacher pay would be too expensive?

Now when I made that promise in a campaign in 1996 the press rushed in and said, “Oh, Governor. We figured this thing out and do you realize that would cost a billion dollars to do that?” I said, “Yes, I know that. And it’s worth every penny of it.” And as I went around the state campaigning, everywhere I went I told people that if they elected me, we were going to raise teacher pay, we were going to raise standards for teachers, and we were going to raise teacher pay to the national average in four years. And people liked it, they wanted it done, and they voted for me, and we did it.

4. What is your view of standardized testing, and how can the information gleaned from tests help improve student achievement?

I know that there are a lot of different thoughts about testing in schools. But to me it’s a pretty simple thing. We need to make sure that our students are learning. And we need to make sure that all students are learning. People who think that certain students can’t learn because of their race or their family’s income or their background are just wrong. They can learn if we help them enough. As an example, [in] North Carolina this year, in the tightest budget year in a decade, the 39 lowest performing schools were provided extra money so they could reduce class size to one teacher for 15 students. Money was provided to add five extra days of learning time for those students and for the teachers to teach them those five days. Now that’s going to help. But I really believe it’s not a matter of punishing students. It’s a matter of helping them. It’s a matter of pushing us, all of us, to see that we’re doing the right things for our students. So I applaud the standards effort. I want us to do it right. And I particularly want us to make sure we commit, that we morally and financially commit, to help every student who is behind so they’ll learn what they need to know to move on, to graduate, to have a good life.

5. Why is it critical to involve the business community in change efforts?

The business community hires people. Folks care more about a good job for themselves and their families than anything else. And they generally are willing to pitch in and help, talk to the legislature, talk to the county commissioners, or the city council and say, this is what you need to do in order for us to have jobs in your community, in order for us to compete in the international marketplace. And we urge you to do this and we will help you. And we’ll talk to these government officials and urge them to do it.

6. How do you measure the success of reform efforts in North Carolina?

We’ve made tremendous progress in North Carolina, including raising our math test scores more in the 1990s than any state in America, getting the top ranking on teacher quality by Education Week’s “Quality Counts” this year, because, and many things happened, but one of the essential things was that as Governor, I felt this was the most important thing. I worked with many people to put together an approach to make it happen, and I put my mind and heart and efforts and energy and everything into it, day in and day out, during all my 16 years as Governor.

7. How can political leaders create bipartisan support for educational change?

You often have parties that are competing against each other, trying to one-up each other, that sort of thing. But we should make every effort to get good people, you’ve got some extremists on the right and the left who maybe aren’t going to buy in, but most people really care about their children. They care about their schools. They care about public schools. And I think we have an enormous opportunity in America to get Democrats and Republicans and Independents to join together to make enormous progress. And I think that’s the approach we ought to take. The Governor obviously has to lead it. He has to find a lot of other leaders to work with him or her. And if we’ll do it that way and make it our number one priority -- number one -- I think we can do it in every state in this country.