Text 4169, 420 rader
Skriven 2007-03-02 23:31:18 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0703028) for Fri, 2007 Mar 2
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President Bush Discusses No Child Left Behind Reauthorization
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For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary March 2, 2007

President Bush Discusses No Child Left Behind Reauthorization Silver Street
Elementary School New Albany, Indiana

˙˙Presidential Remarks
˙˙Audio

˙˙˙˙˙ Fact Sheet: The No Child Left Behind Act: Preparing Our Nation's
Students to Succeed ˙˙˙˙˙ In Focus: Education

2:38 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please be seated. (Applause.) A little bossy
today, aren't I? (Laughter.) Thrilled to be here in New Albany. Thanks for
coming out to say hello. I want to talk about schools and the federal role
in schools relative to local governments -- is what we're here to talk
about.

I'm glad to be here in the home of the Stars, the Silver Street Stars.
(Applause.) I brought a lot of cameras and limousines. (Laughter.) Kind of
fits in with the theme, doesn't it -- Silver Street Stars. I understand the
school is 90 years old. You've seen a lot of decent people come here to
teach, I'll bet you -- a lot of people who said, I want to put my community
first, and became teachers and principals and caring citizens of the state.
And so I'm real proud to be with you.

I'm here because I think it's important for a President to herald success
and to talk about what's possible, particularly when it comes to schools.
My only regret is that my wife hasn't joined me today. She's, by far, the
best deal in our family. (Applause.) Just like in Mitch's family I want you
to know. I know the Danielses well and I can certify that the person from
New Albany is, by far, the best part of his family, too. (Laughter.)

I'm real proud of Mitch. I know him -- he worked in my administration. I
called him out of the private sector when I first got sworn in. I said,
would you come and work for the country? And he did. He was the watchdog
for the people's money -- it's what's called the OMB. And he did a fine job
there, really, and I miss him a lot. I love his sense of humor. I knew he'd
make a fine governor. He asked me about governor; I said, listen, it's the
greatest job in America -- next to President. But it's a great --
(laughter.) And he's an innovative, smart, capable, honest guy, and I'm
proud to be with him.

I know he cares a lot about schools, too. And so when I talk about
education, I can talk confidently about the schools here in Indiana,
because you've got a Governor who will prioritize education. I used to say
to people, public education is to a state what national defense is to the
federal government. It ought to be the number one priority. And I know
Mitch is making it so. (Applause.)

I want to thank Tony Duffy. Duffy has done a find job of dealing with a
impossibly large entourage. (Laughter.) I really appreciate your spirit. It
turns out that if you were to correlate education in a school with
educational entrepreneurship at the principal level, the two go
hand-in-hand. In other words, you have to have a good principal in order to
be able to challenge failure when you find it, mediocrity when you see it,
and praise excellence when it's evident. And you've got a good principal
here. I can't thank you enough, Tony.

I want to thank all the teachers, as well, who teach here. Teaching is a
hard job, it's a really hard job, and it's never really appreciated enough
in some circles. And I just want the teachers to understand full well that
I know the community here thanks you from the bottom of their heart, and
the parents thank you. And for the parents who are here, I appreciate you
paying attention to your school. It turns out parental involvement is an
essential part of having excellence in the school system. So when parents
pay attention, it not only gives confidence to the teachers, it also
enables the school to listen to the needs of those who matter most, and
those are the parents and the children.

I appreciate very much Congressman Baron Hill joining us today. The
Congressman flew down on the airplane. As you know, we're not from the same
political party, but we both care about education. And it's nice of you to
come. You'll meet a friend of mine who is with us, Mike and Keta --
appreciate you all coming.

Now is not the time to be involved with politics when we're talking about
the education of our children. This is an issue that needs to rise above
politics and needs to focus on what's right, because getting the schools
right in America will make sure that this country remains competitive and
hopeful and optimistic. So I'm proud you traveled with me, and it's good to
see you both again. Thanks for coming.

Mayor Jim Garner and Debbie are with us. Mr. Mayor, thank you for being
here, sir. Proud to be in your city. I appreciate the reception that we
received from the citizens. People respect the presidency, and sometimes
they like the President. (Laughter.) I appreciate the fact that people came
out to wave.

I want to thank Dr. Reed, who is the Indiana Superintendent of Public
Instruction. Thank you for coming, Dr. Reed. There you are. I appreciate
Mr. Don Sakel, who is the President of the School Board. Don, where are
you? There you are, yes. I saw him coming in. I said, you've probably got
the toughest job in America, being on the school board. For those of you
who know school politics, you know what I'm talking about. But I appreciate
the school board and the board of trustees, people who serve the local
community by serving on the school board, making sure that local control of
schools remains an essential part of the school system in this state and
around the country. Dr. Dennis Brooks, who is the superintendent of the New
Albany and Floyd County school system is with us; and community leaders,
thanks.

So there is a bill coming up for reauthorization called the No Child Left
Behind Act. I happen to think it's if not the, one of the most substantial
pieces of legislation I will have had the honor to sign -- I've signed a
lot. I want to describe to you the philosophy behind the act and why I
strongly believe it needs to be reauthorized by the United States Congress.

I first became directly involved with public schools from a public policy
perspective as the governor of Texas, and I was deeply concerned about
systems that quit early on a child and just moved them through. In other
words, I was concerned about a system where people would walk in the
classroom and say, these children are hard to educate, therefore, let's
just move them through the system. It may not have happened in Indiana, but
it happened in Texas. And it was unacceptable, because guess who generally
got shuffled through the system. The poor, the newly arrived, the minority
student. And I knew that unless we confronted a system which gave up on
children early, that my state would not be a hopeful place.

And so I decided to do something about it. And I took that spirit to
Washington, D.C. Now, look, I fully understand some are nervous when they
hear a President talking about federal education -- you start thinking to
yourself the government is going to tell you what to do here at the local
level. Quite the contrary, in this piece of legislation. I strongly believe
in local control of schools. I believe it's essential to align authority
and responsibility. And by insisting upon local control of schools, you put
the power where it should be -- closest to the people.

On the other hand, I know full well that to make sure a system doesn't
lapse into kind of the safety of mediocrity that you've got to measure.
See, in my state we said we want to know whether or not a child can read or
write early, before that child gets moved through the system. And so I
insisted upon accountability.

And the spirit of the No Child Left Behind Act is the same. It says if you
spend money, you should insist upon results. Now, I recognize the federal
government only spends about 7 percent of the total education budgets
around the country, and, frankly, that's the way I think it should be. In
other words, if local people are responsible or the state is responsible,
that's where the primary funding ought to come. But I also strongly
subscribe to the idea of the federal government providing extra money for
what's called Title I students, for example, students who go to this school
-- money that I think bolsters education for students in the community.

But I also believe that in return for you spending that money -- it's your
money, after all -- it makes sense for government to say, is it working?
Are we meeting objectives? Are we achieving the results necessary for all
of us to say that the school systems are working nationwide? And so step
one of the No Child Left Behind Act was to say you've got to measure.

We didn't design a federal test because I believe a federal test undermines
local control of schools. As a matter of fact, Mitch and Baron and I were
talking in the car about how Indiana has had a longstanding accountability
system, and that's good. It ought to be your accountability system; after
all, it's your schools. But I do believe you need to measure, and I know
you need to set high standards and keep raising those standards.

In life, if you lower the bar you get lousy results. If you keep raising
that bar, it's amazing what can happen. I call it challenging the soft
bigotry of low expectations. And that's an important part of the No Child
Left Behind Act. We expect people to set high standards and measure to
determine whether or not those standards are being met.

Now, one of the interesting debates in the school system is curriculum. I
imagine you've had a few of those tussles here; we had a lot of them in the
state of Texas. Reading curriculum, for example, there was a longstanding
debate over which type of system works better. And it can get pretty
heated. One way to cut through all the noise, however, is to measure. If
the children are learning to read given a basic curriculum, then you know
you picked the right way to teach, the right set of instructions. If your
children aren't meeting standards, then an accountability system gives you
the opportunity to change. And school systems, in my judgment, need to be
flexible. That's why local control of schools makes sense. When something
isn't working, you need to correct. But what the accountability systems
enable you to do is determine if it's working at all.

I think it's very important for there to be transparency. In other words,
when you have scores -- I don't know if you do this, Mitch, or not, but I
would strongly suggest that you post them for everybody to see across the
state of Indiana. It's kind of hard to tell how you're doing relative to
your neighbor unless there's full accountability -- in other words, unless
everybody can see the results. A lot of times people think their school is
doing just great -- the principal, in all due respect, says, we're doing
just fine, don't worry about it -- to the community. But you may not be.
And it's important for people to fully understand how your school is doing
relative to other schools, so that if you need to correct, you're able to
do so. See, if you have high standards, then you want to aim to those
standards and make sure that you're doing well relative to other schools
that are setting high standards.

Finally, what we need is to make sure that we individualize, as best as
possible, the school system. That's what happens here at Silver Street. In
other words, when you use your accountability system properly, you can
tailor it to each individual student. That's why the act is called the No
Child Left Behind Act. It doesn't say "all children shouldn't be left
behind," it says, "no child." In other words, you can individualize
curriculum based upon accountability. And this school does that.

Testing data has helped teachers tailor instruction. Here's what your
principal said. He said, "We drill down in the data." In other words, they
take the data and drill down -- I presume you meant analyze a lot. Yes,
excuse me. I'm from Crawford, Texas, too, so I know. (Laughter.) They
analyze, they drill down in the data and figure out what the best practices
are that we need to be using in the classroom. In other words, they use the
data not as a way to punish, but as a way to improve.

The spirit of the No Child Left Behind Act says we will spend money, we
will use accountability to drill down, to make sure no child gets left
behind. You know, one way you can really use this, particularly in your
early grades, is for literacy. Science doesn't matter if the child can't
read. It's really hard to be good in math if you don't have the capacity to
read the problems in the first place. And so I know this school is focused
on literacy, as it should be, as a step toward educational excellence in
all subjects.

I appreciate very much the fact that this school uses the accountability to
focus on teaching techniques. Sometimes, probably not in this school, but
sometimes teachers have got the right heart, but they don't have the
techniques necessary to deliver the results that are expected. And so you
can use your accountability system, if you're wise, to make sure that the
techniques are analyzed and the compassion in the classroom is backed with
the skills necessary to be able to achieve objectives.

Here's what the principal also says -- and this is an important part of
excellence -- "We never give up. There are no excuses." Sometimes if you
don't measure, you can find all kinds of excuses. And it's just not in
schools, it's life. The easy position sometimes is the default -- saying,
well, I just didn't have what was necessary to get the job done, or
something like that. This is a no excuses school. That means high
standards. Low standards are a place where people find excuses; high
standards, there is no excuse, and there's a focus on what's right for each
child.

And that's why I'm here at Silver Street. I appreciate so very much that
this school has met state standards for progress under No Child Left Behind
every year since 2002. Isn't that interesting? (Applause.) Isn't it
interesting to be able to say that? You can't say something that draws
applause unless you measure. Without a measurement system the President
would be saying, well, we anticipate that we are doing well. We certainly
hope that we're meeting state standards. Under this system you can say, we
know we're meeting state standards. And that should give the parents who
pay attention to this school a great comfort, and give the teachers who
teach here great pride.

The No Child Left Behind Act is working across the country. So when members
of Congress think about reauthorization -- by the way, I'm here to -- I'm
not only speaking to you, I'm lobbying. I'm lobbying Congress. I'm setting
the stage for Congress to join me in the reauthorization of this important
piece of legislation.

The test scores across the country are heartening. There's still a lot of
work to be done, don't get me wrong. But there's improvement. One of my
issues is that there's an achievement gap in America; certain students are
doing better than other students. White students are doing better than
African American students, or Latino students. And that's not -- that's
simply not acceptable. It's not acceptable to the country. It's not -- it
forebodes not a positive future, so long as that achievement gap exists.
The gap is closing. It's heartening news.

Fourth graders are reading better. They've made more progress in five years
than the previous 28 years combined. In other words, we're able to measure
whether or not all children -- and by the way, we disaggregate results --
that is a fancy, sophisticated word meaning that we're able to focus on
demographic groups. And the progress has been substantial. You just heard
that it's easy to quantify how well we're doing because there's
measurement.

In math, 9-year-olds and 13-year-olds earned the highest scores in the
history of the test. I hear some people say, oh, we don't like tests. I
didn't like them either. But it's really important to make sure that we're
achieving standards. And so reauthorizing this good piece of legislation is
one of my top priorities. And my claim is, it's working. We can change
parts of it for the better, but don't change the core of a piece of good
legislation that's making a significant difference in the lives of a lot of
children. (Applause.)

We're living in a competitive world. Whether people like it or not, the
reality is we live in a world where our students are going to have to
compete for jobs with students in China or India or elsewhere. And if this
country wants to remain the economic leader in the world, we've got to make
sure we have a workforce capable of filling the jobs of the 21st century.
And it's a real challenge for us. It's a challenge we're going to meet, by
the way. There's no doubt in my mind we can meet it.

But it really starts with elementary school. It really starts here, in
schools like this. It's important to get it right early, to make sure that
children have got that foundation necessary to become the scientists and
the engineers and the leaders for tomorrow. No Child Left Behind Act is a
central part of the competitiveness initiative, to make sure that America
remains on the leading edge of change and is the economic leader of the
world.

We can do some other things around. One thing we need to do is to make sure
that we align our high school graduation requirements with college
readiness standards, which is precisely what the state of Indiana has done.
We want to make sure that a high school diploma means something. I happen
to believe that we ought to take the same accountability that we've got in
elementary and junior highs, and get it to high school, just to make sure;
to be able to say with certainty the high school diploma that somebody gets
really means something, that it's working.

I fully believe that we need to advance -- that we need to spread advanced
placement courses around the country. Advanced placement is a fabulous
program. (Applause.) It's a way to set high standards, isn't it? We need to
train teachers in AP, and help students afford the AP exam. (Applause.) AP
is a good way to -- we've got an AP teacher back there.

Math and science are really important subjects. I can remember -- math and
science probably doesn't have cachet, it's not cool, but it's important to
emphasize math and science. And one way to do that is to take math and
science professionals and encourage them to go into classrooms. I went to a
school with Margaret Spellings, who happens to be the Secretary of
Education, a dear friend of mine and doing a fine job -- and we went to a
school in Maryland, and there was a scientist from NASA explaining the
beauties of science.

Parents sometimes have trouble explaining the beauties of science. I
certainly did when I was trying to work on those science projects.
(Laughter.) But when you get a professional, somebody who knows what
they're talking about, they can really enlighten the child to the benefits
of math or science focus. And so we've got a program to work with Congress
to get more of those professionals in classrooms. We call them adjunct
professors. I hope the Congress funds that program. So there's one way, for
example, to build on the No Child Left Behind Act, focus on high schools
and math and science.

Secondly, one of the things that we've got is -- in our budget is to
understand that when a school struggles, that there ought to be extra
federal money to help the struggling school. I look forward to working with
Congress to fully fund that. We've got incentive -- a teacher incentive
fund, grant programs to encourage teachers to go to schools that need extra
help with the teachers. I think it makes sense to give school districts
grant money, or states to give grant money, to say, here's a district that
needs focus, test scores probably aren't as good as they should be; if
there needs to be additional qualified teachers there, we'll provide
incentives for the teachers to go.

Thirdly, I strongly believe that there needs to be consequences when
there's failure. And, oh, by the way, Baron and I talked about this, and
Mitch and I talked about the accountability systems. They ought to be
flexible, we understand that. Flexibility does not mean watering down
standards. In other words, when we talk about accommodating special needs
students in terms of the accountability system, which I understand is an
issue, and so does Margaret Spellings, who is working with Congress on this
issue, we cannot use that flexibility to water down accountability.

And so we -- Margaret briefed the governors and told Mitch and all the
other governors we'll work with them, just so long as we maintain those
high standards. And I believe we can make sure that we accommodate school
needs without watering down this important piece of legislation. Watering
down No Child Left Behind Act would be doing thousands of children a
disservice, and we can't let it happen. (Applause.)

We've got a -- one of the problems we have -- one of the good things in the
bill was that when a child is in a school and has fallen behind -- a Title
I child -- there's going to be extra money for tutoring. I think it's a
great idea. In other words, you find a young child early in his or her
career, school career, and they can't read, there's extra money. One of the
problems we've had is for -- is to make sure we get the test scores out in
a timely basis to school districts who, therefore, can then get the
information on a timely basis to their parents, to make sure that the extra
tutorial money is available for their child.

Sometimes the best intentions get stuck in getting the information to
students. And so Margaret is going to work hard with Congress to make sure
that parents whose child is not meeting standards and who is eligible for
this extra money gets notified early enough to be able to take that money
wherever the parent may want their child to receive tutorial help. See, I'm
a person who believes that parents know best when it comes to the interests
of their child. And, therefore, when we find a school that is persistently
in failure, parents must be given different options. There has to be a
consequence; something has to happen if schools refuse to change and a
child stays trapped in mediocrity. And one such consequence is to give
parents the ability to send their child to a different school -- public or
private, as far as I'm concerned.

Another option, and something I strongly support, is for there to be
competitive grant programs for opportunity scholarships. You know, in
Washington, D.C. we've got a terrible problem there in the public school
system because it's not meeting standards. They're just simply not getting
the job done in too many instances. And so I work with the Mayor, a
Democrat Mayor -- a Democratic Mayor -- who, by the way, believes what I
believe, that when you find failure you can't accept it. And so you know
what we did? We put forth what's called opportunity scholarships for
families of the poor students, so their family, if the school isn't meeting
needs, can afford to go to a different kind of school. What matters is the
child getting the education. That's what matters most. And my attitude is
if there's persistent failure, it makes sense to liberate the parents so
their child can have a better chance.

So here's some reforms I look forward to working with Congress on. This is
a piece of legislation that is vital for the country, in my judgment. It is
working and I think we ought to make sure it stays in law. And I'm looking
forward to working with both Republicans and Democrats to get it done. I've
reached out to the bill sponsors in 2001, Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts,
Congressman Miller of California, Congressman Boehner of Ohio, and Senator
Gregg of New Hampshire. These four gentlemen worked with the White House
the last time to get the bill done; we're in consultations now to get it
reauthorized.

I'm pleased to report we're all headed in the same direction. In Washington
when you get everybody like that headed in the same direction, sometimes
you can get some things done. Believe it or not, it is possible to put
aside the sharp elbows of partisan politics and focus on what's right for
the country. And in my strong opinion, the reauthorization of No Child Left
Behind is right for the country. And that's what I've come to New Albany to
tell you. God bless. (Applause.)

END 3:06 P.M. EST
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