    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2007, Book I)]
    [March 2, 2007]
    [Pages 213-219]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Silver Street Elementary School in New Albany, Indiana
    March 2, 2007

        Thank you all. Please be seated. A little bossy today, aren't I?
    Yes. [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. 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, 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 hauled 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 that
    way.
        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, and 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

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    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;
    he's 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.'' [Laughter] 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, DC. 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,

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    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 and 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 systems 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 are not 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, 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

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    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, that's good. 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, by 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. [Applause] Isn't that interesting?
    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. This is--I'm lobbying
    Congress. [Laughter] 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. Now, 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

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    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 5
    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. [Laughter] 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. Now, 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.
        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. And 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 elementaries 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. It's a way to set high standards, isn't it? And we
    need to train teachers in AP and help students afford the AP exam. AP is
    a good way to--[applause]--we've got an AP teacher back there.
        Math and science are really important subjects. I can remember--math
    and science probably doesn't, like, 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 a child to the benefits
    of math or

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    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. And 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. Its 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. Now, 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.
        We've got a--one of the problems we have--well, 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,
    which I think is 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. Now, 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, DC, 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

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    we did? We put forth what's called opportunity scholarships for families
    of the poorer 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--it's vital for the country, in
    my judgment. It's 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.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:38 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to
    Gov. Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., of Indiana, and his wife Cheri Herman
    Daniels; former Rep. Michael E. Sodrel and his wife Keta; Mayor James E.
    Garner, Sr., of New Albany, IN; and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington,
    DC.