Remarks in a discussion on education in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania: September 22, 2004

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 27, 2004

[Sharen Finzimer ready brief remarks.]

The President. AYP means annual yearly progress. In other words, it is Government-speak for we're measuring to determine whether or not the children are heading toward excellence. Why--besides your brilliance, why?

[Ms. Finzimer made further remarks.]

The President. Let me stop you right there. Notice she said "research-based." In other words, what that means is, people have actually looked at what works and have incorporated what works into the textbooks. That's what we want. We want curriculum that actually achieves our objectives. Remember the old reading debates--there was--sometimes people had this notion about what might work, and we never knew whether it was or not until we started to measure. That's how you can say "research-based" textbooks.

Keep going.

[Ms. Finzimer made further remarks.]

The President. Interventions means, when they find the child beginning to slip behind what is expected, there's extra money to help. That's what this program is all about. When we say no child left behind, that's exactly what we mean, no child left behind. In other words, she's able to use technologies and to follow the progress of a child on a regular basis, which is a change from the past. The past used to be, they'd kind of just move them through. Now they're analyzing each child's progress and working to correct, if the child has a problem, working to correct his or her problem. I think that's what you're saying. And that's what you're doing, and it's working. It's making a difference.

Tell me about your Saturday school.

[Ms. Finzimer made further remarks.]

The President. You can understand why her school is doing well, right? She has a passion. And when she talks about Title I students, that's where our Federal Government has increased funding quite substantially, since I've been the President of the United States, nearly 50-percent increase in the funds for Title I, all aimed at making sure no child is left behind. You can't be a great principal unless you've got great teachers. We don't have one of your teachers here, but I know they're great teachers.

But we do have Megan Schmidt with us, a teacher. What subject?

Megan Schmidt. Mr. President, I teach English and creative writing at North Penn High School.

The President. Thanks for teaching. Tell us what you've learned.

[Ms. Schmidt made further remarks.]

The President. Let me pick up on one thing that Megan said. It makes the parents aware. It's a amazing--when Laura and I were honored to serve our State, we were traveling around, and people would say, "Gosh, my school is doing great. At least I think my school is doing great." And all of a sudden, when we started to put out the accountability measures, people would say, "Well, maybe it's not doing quite as great," when the test scores didn't measure up to the school in the community next door or another school in the same community. Accountability, allowing people to see results, really does encourage parental involvement. Sometimes educators don't particularly care the way the parent has been involved, like, "How come you didn't tell us earlier? What are you doing about it?" But nevertheless, it does encourage patents to get involved, doesn't it?