 So these are my boys. These are my sons. Jake, Jerny and Sam. 13, 17, 16. And no, Sam has not cut his hair in three years. I want to tell you about my summer with my boys. My summer starts in about February or March. I want my boys to have a really great summer where they explore their interests and they learn some skills for their future. So I do my research. I spend hours online. I'm talking to parents in the community, to friends, to my boys. And finally I find some really great programs. My boys had a terrific summer. Sam learned how to remix music and is becoming a DJ. Jerny was in a design program and created a line of shoes. Jake was in a program and learned anime. But here's what we know. That my boys had the summer that only about one in five kids in the United States have. Here's also what we know. That more than 60% of kids in our high schools report being disengaged in class. We have a 20% dropout rate. It's higher in certain populations. And there are now almost 7 million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working. It amounts to almost a $5 trillion loss in opportunity. And it translates into a skills gap. We know that more than 40% of companies report having jobs for which they cannot find qualified workers. We also know that our companies are now spending more money on training than our employers, than are our universities and our federal government combined. Now I've been an education and professional educator for a really long time. I spent a year as an academic researcher following a group of Latino students through high school. I watched their ups and downs. I watched them struggle. And we got to the last week of class. It was graduation week and I was sitting with about 40 of them. And I asked them, how many of you are going to college? They all raised their hand. I am, I am, I'm going to college. But I've been with them for a year. So I asked them, how many of you have applied? Two. Two young people raised their hand. It was heartbreaking. These are really great kids. Really hard workers, really smart. But they didn't know how to make the transition from high school to college. They didn't know how to get from point A to point B. At the MacArthur Foundation, we spent ten years and almost $200 million in trying to understand and reimagine what learning can look like in the 21st century. We learned what works, what doesn't work, and the role that digital media and technology can play. And we figured a few things out. A few things about what it takes to engage young people in learning. First, it's their peers. It turns out that young people need to spend time with their peers in order to figure out who they are. They need time to hang out together and to learn together. They need to be, and it turns out that what they are most motivated to learn is what they care about. Passions are crucial. And kids' passions differ widely. They really need time to engage and to go deep. And third, when we connect peers with passion, with an opportunity to engage in something real that matters in the world, it could be their work world. It could be making their community better. We see young people engaged in powerful learning and preparing for their future. So it's peers plus passion plus purpose that lays a powerful foundation for learning. But here's the other thing that we know, that these three things almost never come together for young people, particularly for the young people that we care the most about. So I'm really proud to announce and excited to announce a new approach to learning. It's called LRNG. LRNG creates new learning opportunities for young people. That brings them together with their peers to do the things that they care the most about and helps them find the information and the connectors that they need in order to continue learning and to move on to paths for success. LRNG taps into all of the learning opportunities that exist across the city. Libraries, after school programs, museums, businesses across the city, in school, out of school and online. And it brings them together into a seamless network that is open and inviting for young people and transforms how they access and participate in learning and their paths to success. Because here's the thing, we know that learning doesn't just happen in a particular building at a particular time of day and in a particular way. At LRNG, we like to say that learning is a lifestyle and it happens everywhere all of the time. Here's how we connect learning. These are badges. Do folks know Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts? Even the military, you could say, have badges. In the digital age, though, badges carry enormous amounts of information. They carry information about who the learner is. They carry information about the institution that issued the badges. They carry information about what the young person did in order to achieve that badge. And they're even time limited. Badges can expire. They're shareable. You can put a badge up on LinkedIn, you can put a badge up on Facebook, on a resume, even on some certifications and on diplomas. But here's the really important thing about badges. Badges can guide a young person and can be connected into learning paths. They can help a young person move from point A to point B. And we do that at LRNG through playlists. You guys know Spotify? Music, right? So think about Spotify. It starts with what a young person is interested in, or helps them discover what they might be interested in. And then based on where they live and their level of competency, it recommends a whole set of learning opportunities. Could be about coding, could be about design, and connects them to peers and mentors in their community. As it guides young people through those learning opportunities, young people have the opportunity to demonstrate their competence and earn badges that can then unlock new opportunities, right? It could unlock a special program. In the case of some companies, it can unlock an internship or a possible job. We've been piloting this work for the last year in four cities, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh. We've learned a lot. We've learned a lot about how to build an infrastructure that networks learning across the city and across our communities. We have more than 100,000 young people earning badges in these cities. We've created LRNG because we're ready to scale. By 2018, we'll have more than a million youth involved and be working across 70 communities. But we can't do it alone. LRNG is a collaboration. These are some of our enthusiastic and generous partners. And we welcome more. We welcome all of you to join us in building a networked ecosystem of learning across your cities. And this is where I'm going to end. I'm going to end with this young man. Do you know him? Do you recognize him? Amen, Mohammed. Amen, Mohammed is 14. And last month, he brought something he'd made to school, something he was really proud of and he wanted to show his teacher. It was a homemade clock. His teacher went nuts. His principal went nuts. The administration went nuts. They thought Ahmed was a potential terrorist. This is Ahmed in handcuffs. But here's the thing about Ahmed. He reminds me of my sons. He may remind you of yours. Ahmed was punished for exactly the behavior that we want to encourage. When the Texas police chief said, you can't bring those kinds of things to school, we say you can't leave them out of school because school is everywhere. Curiosity, creativity, engagement, they are everywhere. We want all of our kids to be makers, creators and inventors. It's why we created LRNG. Because we want all kids to have the opportunity to turn learning into a lifestyle and to live a bright and boundless future. Thank you.