President Bush Discusses No Child Left Behind Reauthorizatio

March 2, 2007,2:38 P.M. EST,THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please be seated. (Applause.) A little bossy¹ 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.,align²¹="right" border="0" /> I'm glad to be here in the home of the Stars, the Silver Street Stars. (Applause.) I brought a lot of cameras and limousines². (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 herald³ 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 certify⁴ 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 sector⁵ 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 innovative⁶, 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 defense⁷ 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 dealing⁸ 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 excellence⁹ 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 parental¹⁰ 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.,Congressman¹¹ Baron¹² Hill, at left, as they pose for a photo with students and teachers Teri Sanders and Tammy Persinger in the fifth grade U.S. History class at the Silver Street Elementary School in New Albany, Ind., Friday, March 2, 2007. White House photo by Eric Draper" src="/upimg/allimg/20070303/1334291.jpg" width="254" align="right" border="0" /> 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 remains¹³ 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 Garner¹⁴ 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 presidency¹⁵, 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 Superintendent¹⁶ 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 Brooks¹⁷, 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 shuffled¹⁸ 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 decided¹⁹ to do something about it. And I took that spirit to Washington, D.C. Now, look, I fully²⁰ 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 lapse²² 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, frankly²³, 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 subscribe²⁴ 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 bolsters²⁵ 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 bigotry²⁶ 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 tussles²⁷ 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 judgment²⁸, 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 analyze²⁹ 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 analyzed³⁰ and the compassion³¹ 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 workforce³² 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.