Remarks at Highland Park Elementary School in Landover, Maryland: week ending Friday, July 11, 2003

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 14, 2003

We cannot let our children down. Now look, Head Start is a great opportunity to provide the foundation for reading. And first, I just want everybody to understand, Head Start does a good job of giving children nutrition and medical care. That has been primarily the focus, and the program needs to be applauded for meeting that goal. And nobody in this room wants Head Start to change that focus. We just want an additional focus to Head Start, and the Head Start focus is teaching the basics for reading and math. That's the new focus, along with health and nutrition.

The Department of Health and Human Services did a report, and here is what it said: "Even though most children in Head Start make some educational progress, most of them still leave the program with skills and knowledge levels that are far below what we expect." Now, in my line of work, if you see a problem, you address it. And I see that as a problem. If we're not meeting expectations, if we're not challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations, let's start right now in America. We want Head Start to set higher ambitions for the million children it serves.

And so I laid out a plan. Every Head Start center must prepare children to succeed by teaching the basics of learning and literacy. That's the cornerstone of the plan. And every Head Start teacher must have the skills necessary to do so.

And so we started last year when we launched the Strategic Teacher Education Program, STEP, to train 3,300 Head Start teachers and supervisors in the C.I.R.C.L.E. program, which is used right here at this school. In other words, it's a go-by. It is a curriculum. It's easy to understand. It's easy to teach. It's easy to implement. It is not a difficult chore for a teacher to take the basic learning from the C.I.R.C.L.E. program developed by the scientists and implement it at the Head Start program in which he or she teaches.

Tonya Riggins, the assistant Head Start supervisor at Highland Park, was one of the teachers in the program. Tonya and thousands of other trained teachers went back to train other teachers at the program. So it's going to--we started with 3,300. Those 3,300 went back to their local communities and talked to teachers with whom they teach how to teach a basic curriculum. It is a--and by the way, as new teachers are added, they too will be given the tools necessary to teach the program.

Now, in order to make sure that the C.I.R.C.L.E. program is--and other curriculums which work--are being used, is working, I believe there needs to be an evaluation program. And after all, if we're spending a lot of taxpayers' money, which we are, it makes sense to determine whether or not these programs are, in fact, laying the foundation for reading.

Now, I fully understand a 4-year-old child is not going to take a standardized test. That would be absurd. That we would--we would be defeating the purpose of accountability before we even began if we said, "Okay, we'll give standardized tests to 4-year-olds." But we can have children assessed by asking simple questions. You know, words go left to right. Are you able to identify certain sounds? Are they developed by--developing the key skills necessary?