Remarks at Butterfield Junior High School in Van Buren, Arkansas

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 17, 2004

I'm here today to talk about making sure our schools work. A little over 2 years ago, I signed into law an historic, bipartisan act of Congress called the No Child Left Behind Act. And the theory of this law was straightforward, and here's what it said. It said the Federal Government is spending more money on education, but for the first time, we're asking for results. That's a change. In the past, we used to send checks from Washington. And by the way, Washington should not be primary funder of schools in America. That's up to the States and the local people.

But we had targeted money, particularly for poorer students. And we helped to send the cheeks, and we just hoped something good happened. That was the old way, "Here's your money, and maybe something positive will happen." Now we're sending the checks, and we're asking the question, "Are the children learning to read and write and add and subtract?" That's not that tough a question, is it? It seems like it makes sense for taxpayers' money--in return for taxpayers' money, to determine whether or not we're meeting some basic goals. If you don't ask the question, you never find out the answer. If you don't say, "We're sending you more money. Now please show us whether or not a child can read." If you don't ask, you'll never know until it's too late--until it's too late.

As well we better figure out who needs help early, before it's too late. I mean, one of the reasons you ask the question, "Can you read of write and add and subtract," is you want to diagnose early. You can't solve a problem unless you diagnose it. The importance of the No Child Left Behind Act is to find out who needs help.

And so we've left behind an old attitude. See, I think some schools--there was this attitude that certain students can't learn. And so this--"Might as well shuffle them on from grade to grade." It's easy to shuffle the so-called--what they call hard-to-educate students through the system. It's easy to quit on families who might live in inner-cities or rural areas. It's easy to quit on kids whose parents don't speak English as a first language. It's easy, but it is not fair. And that's not how we do things in the United States of America.

I believe every child can learn. That's what I believe, and so do the people here at this school. So we've raised the standards for every public school. We're challenging what I call the soft bigotry of low expectations. We're--we require testing in the basics and holding schools accountable for results. An accountability system is how you determine whether or not what you're doing in the classrooms is working.

Under the new law, when children are falling behind, the schools that need the most attention get extra help, extra money so the children can catch up. Let me repeat what I just said. Under the new law, when we discover that children are falling behind, that are not meeting standards, those schools get extra help, extra money to make sure that people are brought up to the standards.