[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 37 (Monday, September 17, 2001)]
[Pages 1297-1300]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in a Leadership Forum in Jacksonville, Florida

September 10, 2001

    The President. It's about time he got it right, isn't it? [Laughter] 
Governor. [Laughter] Obviously, we were raised right, because Jeb's 
priority and my priority are the same; that is to make sure every child 
gets a good education in America.
    We understand--we understand--that an educated child is one that is 
much more likely to realize the great American experience. And it is so 
important that we get it right in America. And I'm proud of my brother. 
He's doing a really good job here in Florida, and I appreciate Jeb.
    And Jeb is right. I don't think education ought to be a partisan 
issue. I know reading is not a partisan issue. I mean, getting every 
child to read in America is an American issue, and it ought to be an 
American goal. And it is going to be for this administration.
    Jeb had the honor of introducing members of the State House and the 
State level that are going to make this happen. I traveled today with 
three members of the Florida delegation: the United States Senator, 
Senator Nelson, thank you for coming, sir. A Member of the House--
Stearns and Crenshaw are with us, as well. Thank you all for being here. 
That is Ander Crenshaw.
    And we had a good discussion coming down. I said, ``We're going to 
go to a school that's showing what can happen when people get their 
minds together and focus on a goal.'' And the goal of teaching every 
child to read is an incredibly important goal, and I want to 
congratulate the teachers and the parents who are insisting that no 
child--[applause].
    And I want to thank Diane for having us. Diane told me she just 
moved down from Virginia. It's a wonderful--to me, a wonderful sign of 
her dedication, that she would leave Virginia Tech and to come down and 
put to work her skills, right here on the frontlines of education, a 
principal. So thank you for being here.
    I picked a good man to be the Secretary of Education. I know the 
superintendent of schools here, for Duval County, is here. There he is; 
thank you, Super, for being here. Well, I picked a man who had been the 
superintendent in Houston, Texas. I didn't want somebody who knew the 
theories of education. I wanted somebody who knew the practical aspects 
of education, somebody who had been on the frontlines, somebody who 
shares with me the belief that every child can learn, who is willing to 
challenge what I call the soft bigotry of low expectations--the feeling 
that if you lower the bar, you're going to get lousy results, and that 
we all ought to raise the bar--and that's my friend from Houston, who is 
now the Secretary of Education, Rod Paige. Thanks for coming, Rod.
    Secretary Paige. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
    The President. I want to thank the boys and girls who are here. I 
like to--sometimes when I see elementary school students or, for that 
matter, middle school students and sometimes high school, so I ask the 
question, do you read more than you watch TV?
    Audience member. Yes.
    The President. That's good, the one that said, yes. Make sure you 
tell the truth. [Laughter] And that's an important question to ask, 
because it's so much easier to watch TV and not read. And yet, you learn 
so much more when you read. So all of us as parents have got to work 
hard to teach our children the importance of practicing reading and the 
importance of not watching TV--in all due respect to the camera folks 
back there--[laughter]--because reading is essential. And we've got to 
get it right as a nation. Now, lest I make the Governor feel 
uncomfortable, I'm absolutely against the federalization of public 
education. I believe that the best way to achieve excellence for every 
child is to pass power out of Washington and to trust the local folks.
    And I presume--I presume the good Governor is still doing what he 
said, which is to pass power out of Tallahassee to Jacksonville, because 
one size doesn't fit all, and it's important to empower people at the 
local level to have the--to give them the flexibility necessary to meet 
common goals.
    But the Federal Government can help, and it will help. In the bills 
that I've submitted that passed the House and the Senate, we've got a 
fantastic reading initiative started. First, there's the call for more 
money. And

[[Page 1298]]

we need to put some more resources behind education, and we have in the 
budget--about $900 million a year for reading programs which will help 
local districts develop diagnostic tools necessary to determine whether 
or not children need help.
    You see, one of the fundamental aspects of making sure a child 
learns to read is, first and foremost, to diagnose the issue. How do you 
know if you don't diagnose? How do you know if you don't have the tools 
necessary to say that this young first-grader needs a little extra help 
when it comes to phonics or when it comes to fluency or when it comes to 
comprehension?
    And so the monies will be available for that--the monies that need 
to be available, as well, for teacher training. One of the unfortunate 
aspects that we find in many States is that there are great teachers who 
have got wonderful hearts who don't know how to teach reading, that 
don't know the science of reading. And we've got some of the scientists 
here who understand reading and how it works, and we're going to hear 
from them here in a minute, if we can ever get the President to stop 
talking. [Laughter]
    One of my dreams is to make sure that schools understand and have 
the resources available for schools within schools. My attitude is, if 
it takes teaching reading all day long, do it and get it right before we 
move children through the system. We can't continue to shuffle them 
through.
    The other thing we've done is, we want to provide help for local 
districts. And I've got two things I want to talk about. First, we've 
got a parent guide that Rod's Department is going to put out. It's 
called ``Put Reading First,'' which is a way for parents to take a look, 
to determine whether or not the school districts around your city are 
doing what the scientists tell us need to be done. It's kind of a go-by, 
to make sure that what works is being instituted at the local level. 
There is nothing better, it seems like to me, than to arm parents and 
concerned citizens with the facts so they can ask the relevant questions 
to the school officials.
    And secondly, we're going to have what we call reading leadership 
academies around the country. And there is a lot of new data when it 
comes to what works. There is a lot of data on curriculum development, 
for example. There are a lot of fads, too, that seem to be working their 
way through the system.
    And it seems like, to me, a useful function of the Federal 
Government is to take the good folks out at the NIH, for example, that 
have studied the science of reading and send them around the country to 
meet with local citizens and school board members and superintendents to 
share the data, so that people know precisely what is working and what's 
not working, so that the good folks at the local level can cut through 
all the hot air and the finger pointing and the politics of reading and 
find out what works and then help implement it at the local level. 
Because what we find is, a good curriculum based upon the science of 
reading is necessary to make sure no child gets left behind. And that 
is, after all, the goal and the agenda.
    Now, I believe, and I know Rod believes and brother Jeb believe, and 
I bet you Diane believes, every child can learn. You start with the 
premise that every child can learn to read, not just a handful, not just 
some, not just a few from a demographic group, but everybody. And that 
ought to be the goal of this country. And it starts with having a 
President set an ambitious goal, empowering local people to follow that 
goal, providing the resources necessary and also the sound science and 
the reform to make it work.
    I'm proud of the accountability system Florida has developed. You 
see, this country of ours needs to start asking the question, ``What do 
you know?'' A lot of times when there is no accountability, we guess. We 
wonder out loud, ``Oh, gosh, I wonder if he or she is learning to 
read,'' which means that the question ultimately asked in our system 
like that is, ``How old are you? Because if you're 10, we're supposed to 
put you here, and if you're 12, we're going to move you here.''
    And that has got to change. We need to start asking early, before it 
is too late, ``What do you know?'' And that means accountability 
systems. And not only do we need to know whether or not children can 
read, but if not, we need to correct early. And that's the goal, and 
that's the drive. And I will promise you, America will be a much better 
place when we teach--not if but when we

[[Page 1299]]

teach every child in this great country to read.
    Thank you for having me, Diane. Brother Jeb, thanks very much. Thank 
you all.

[At this point, the program continued.]

    The President. Let me say something about him before he starts--go 
Seminoles! [Laughter] That's overt pandering.
    Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. Be careful, George.
    The President. Just trying to make him feel better.
    He got very much involved--we got involved with the Reading 
Initiative in Texas when I was the Governor, and you know, there's just 
so much debate about curriculum, and it gets pretty--people begin to get 
pretty prejudiced about the case. And so we decided to bring in some 
people that really knew what they were doing. Dr. Torgesen is one of 
them that came down to help a friend named Reid Lyons.
    Reid is out of the National Institutes of Health. These are folks--
when you heard me talking about the science of reading, the scientists 
that are trying to figure out how it works as opposed to what might 
sound good. This is the kind of guy I'm talking about.
    Thank you for coming.

[At this point, the program continued.]

    The President. One point on that--the Bush boys, we can dominate; 
we've got the mikes--[laughter]--is that we've also taken the work that 
has been done to the NIH and have developed a simple go-by for Head 
Start Programs. And the purpose is to help the Head Start Program become 
much better at providing the essential skills for early reading to our 
kids. It's a perfect opportunity to take young kids and to give them 
just the essentials, so that when they finally get here, that as many 
people are at the same place as possible before the accountability 
systems kick in. And that's another one of the initiatives that makes a 
lot of sense, it seems like to me.

[At this point, the program continued.]

    The President. I'm glad you brought that up, because that's another 
place we could use a little help with the Congress. We had a good bill 
out of the House; I hope we can get it up on the Senate floor, to 
discuss on the Senate floor how to empower the folks of compassion in 
America. I mean, we've got some unbelievably generous groups of people 
in America. And a lot of them are found in faith-based programs. And 
this Nation ought not to fear faith. We ought to welcome it, and we 
ought to allow faith-based programs to access taxpayers' money, so long 
as they meet a need. And the need they're going to meet is to help every 
person realize the promise of America. And the two go hand in hand.
    We had a great friend of Rod's and mine out of Houston, one time 
stood up at a conference such as this, and she said--this is when I was 
the Governor--she said, ``Governor, reading is the new civil right.'' 
It's a pretty profound statement when you think about it, because if you 
can't read, imagine what society is going to be like for you. And if 
we're interested in having a society in which everybody gets to access 
the greatness of this country, then the goal has got to be and a goal we 
must meet is for every person to be able to read.
    And it's so important. And I want to thank you all for giving us a 
chance to come and highlight this initiative. It's an opportunity for me 
to say that, at the Federal level, both Republicans and Democrats are 
discussing this important issue. It's a priority of both parties. And 
I'm confident that with the right attitude in Washington--and we did 
need a little attitude adjustment in terms of trying to focus on good 
public policy instead of trying to tear each other down--that we can get 
a good bill out.
    Now, one has passed the House, and one has passed the Senate. Both 
bills have got really good features to them, and it's now time for 
people to act in the Nation's Capital and get the bill to my desk, so 
that people at the local level can start to plan and start to strategize 
and to make things happen in a positive way.
    There's too many of our kids in America who can't read today, maybe 
not in this school, but around the Nation there's just too many. And now 
it's time to wage war on illiteracy for the young and to whip this 
problem early.
    Thanks for having me.

[[Page 1300]]

Note: The President spoke at 3:45 p.m. in the cafeteria at Justina Road 
Elementary School. In his remarks, he referred to Diane Gillespie, 
principal, Justina Road Elementary School; John C. Fryer, Jr., 
superintendent of schools, Duval County Public School District; Joseph 
K. Torgesen, distinguished research professor of psychology and 
education, Florida State University; and G. Reid Lyons, chief, Child 
Development and Behavior Branch, National Institute of Child Health and 
Human Development, National Institutes of Health.