K-12 Education Symposium
Willard Inter-Continental Hotel
Washington, D.C.
February 28, 2001
Remarks of Laura Bush to the Hoover Institution
Thank you very much. I appreciate your inviting me to speak to you
today. Lisa, thank you for that kind introduction.
Lisa Graham Keegan is known for her focus on educational improvement
and reform. She originally developed her policies during her
service in Arizona's House of Representatives, where she chaired
the Education Committee and authored much of the reform legislation
she now oversees as her state's Superintendent of Education.
And, best yet - for many of you - Lisa is a Stanford grad!
I am pleased to recognize the Hoover Institution for its valuable
role in the American dialogue and salute your contributions
to public discourse and public policy and your interest in reforming
public education in America.
As you know, education is an abiding interest of my own.
My love of learning, and of being in the classroom, date back to
childhood.
I admired one of my teachers so much that I wanted to be just
like her when I grew up. Her name was Mrs. Gnagy, and she was
my second-grade teacher. Years later I did become a teacher,
and those experiences are some of the most important of my life.
Of course, reading is the foundation for all learning -
good reading skills are needed in every subject area, from math
and science to government and history. And, research shows that
children who are not reading well by the end of the third grade
often have a difficult time catching up and becoming good readers.
President Bush has made education his number one priority. One of his
first official acts as President was to send a package of education
reforms to Congress. He's worried about the quality of some
of our schools in America. He's concerned about the number of
children who fall behind, and often stay behind in school.
Last night, in his address to Congress, President Bush laid out his
commitment to education. He urged the members to pass his budget
that strengthens and reforms education. This budget provides
the Department of Education with the largest percentage spending
increase of any federal department - 11.5 percent
or $4.6 billion - and triples funding for children's
reading programs.
And, he wants to make sure that wherever the money goes
accountability
will follow.
He wants to help schools chart their own course to success through
local control, high standards, accountability, and research-based
reading programs. This is the President's plan. And this is
the President's promise.
I want to help him keep that promise.
Two days ago I visited Cesar Chavez Elementary School in Maryland
to introduce my education initiative called Ready to Read,
Ready to Learn. This initiative supports and complements
President Bush's education reform goals and builds on the work
I began in Texas.
Ready to Read, Ready to Learn is based on three priorities.
First, we must recruit more teachers. I'm going to encourage more people
to bring their talents, energy and enthusiasm to the classroom,
especially in schools that need help the most.
Last week at the P.R. Harris campus here in the District I helped
introduce the DC Teaching Fellows Programs.
While there, I met a new teacher, David Greene. David had been a financial
adviser but changed careers because he wanted to give something
back to his community. He spoke with passion about his students,
who challenge him every day. Clearly, they have changed his
life as much as he's changing theirs.
An august list of applicants are waiting to become DC Teaching
Fellows: a Fulbright Scholar, an education writer and editor,
a business executive, attorneys, and university professors.
The DC Teaching Fellows Program is a partnership between the school
district and
The New Teacher Project, a non-profit group that helps school
districts recruit and train new teachers who are willing to
change careers to work in underserved schools.
The New Teacher project is working with school districts across
the country to establish teaching fellows programs, and I am
glad to lend my support to this effort.
We need more highly qualified professionals to become teachers
- and bring their knowledge and life experiences to our
classrooms.
Another innovative teacher recruiting program is called Teach
For America.
Teach For America was founded by, then Princeton senior, Wendy Kopp,
to recruit our country's best and brightest college students
into a two-year teaching commitment in rural and inner-city
schools.
Since 1989, more than 6,000 Teach For America teachers have taught
nearly a half million children.
I am thrilled to support Teach for America, and look forward to
helping Wendy reach her goal of nearly tripling the number of
new teachers in the program.
By visiting college campuses and schools I hope to encourage our
nation's up and coming leaders to choose teaching as their profession.
Beyond recruiting, I plan to practice what I preach - and teach
a little myself. This October, I plan to volunteer my time in
the classroom during Teach For America Week.
I'm also going to call in the military! Retired members of the military
protected our nation in war and led the world in peace, and
many are well qualified to guide children in school.
We need to help tap this respected pool of talent by supporting
the Troops to Teachers Program.
Many in the Troops to Teachers Program have science, math, and engineering
degrees - disciplines that our children desperately need.
Beyond that, these men and women are tremendous role models
with a sense of duty, honor and country that our children would
do well to emulate.
President Bush wants to boost funding for the Troops to Teachers program
from $3 million to $30 million, to help these skilled professionals
continue to serve their country where they are needed the most
- our classrooms.
On visits to bases around the country I will seek to enlist - make
that re-enlist - more teachers from the ranks of our
armed forces. I am proud to add my voice to the chorus of supporters
of these teacher recruitment programs.
These programs not only look for the best and brightest minds to send
into our classrooms, they also look for the qualities that make
for excellent teachers: an ability to thrive on overcoming challenges,
a drive to achieve results, and a commitment to setting the
highest expectations.
And that's not all. Before these new teachers enter a classroom,
they receive intensive training and guidance from veteran educators.
Once in the classroom, they have access to an extensive support
network - including mentors, university coursework toward certification
and/or a Master's degree, and opportunities to exchange information
with other new teachers.
My second priority will be to spotlight early childhood programs...those
proven to help successfully prepare children for reading and
learning long before they pick up a backpack or board their
first school bus.
For example, at the Margaret Cone Head Start Center in Dallas, teachers
use a curriculum called LEAP or the Language Enrichment Activities
Program. This program is rich in pre-reading and vocabulary
development activities. Strong pre-reading and vocabulary skills
are good predictors of a child's later success in school.
Before LEAP was introduced in 1994, children who left the Cone Center
and entered the local public school scored as low as the 21st
percentile on the national Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Several
years after using the LEAP curriculum, children's achievement
levels soared on average to the 94th percentile nationally.
We should spotlight more successful pre-school programs, like the
Cone Center, which immerse children in an environment that's
rich with pre-reading and vocabulary-boosting activities. And,
we should support the President's "Early Reading First"
program that will fund research-based programs in pre-schools
and Head Start centers.
President Bush and I support the valuable health, nutrition, and social
programs that Head Start provides. We look forward to working
with Head Start and others to create even richer learning experiences
for more children.
Soon, I will join Secretary of Education Rod Paige in launching a
new feature on the Department of Education's web site -
a page called "How Will I Know a Good
Early Reading Program When I See One?"
The web page is designed to help parents know if their schools are
using effective methods to teach children to read. How do
we know what is proven and effective? Reading researchers have
developed a checklist to help parents determine what programs
work.
I hope you don't mind, but I want to give you a sneak preview
of this checklist, because it is an important tool for parents
and schools.
In schools with good early reading programs, teachers show their
enthusiasm for reading. Likewise, they teach children to love
reading through relevant instruction and practice.
"Relevant" instruction will help children:
- learn the names and sounds of letters;
- divide spoken words into individual sounds;
- blend individual sounds into spoken words; and
- read new words - called decoding - by blending sounds together.
When we talk about practicing reading, we mean that children need
practice up to 90 minutes every day with words, sentences, and
stories.
Schools with good reading programs measure reading knowledge at the
beginning of kindergarten and at the end of every school
year. Parents should be part of the measurement process.
Schools should send home children's results with a report of grade level
achievement and a remediation plan, if one is needed. For example,
children should have additional structured instruction each
day if they are falling behind and if they are still behind
at the end of the school year, summer school should be available.
Because I worked as a classroom teacher and a librarian, many of these
concepts seem like common sense.
But in many cases, parents simply don't have access to this kind
of information. They don't know what should take place in school
every day to ensure that their children learn to read on grade
level, and continue reading on grade level. Parents and caregivers
need this vital information at their fingertips. I'm thrilled
that the Department of Education will provide it very soon.
My third priority will be to give parents, teachers and caregivers
the right kinds of information about learning and development
- factual information based on years of research and sound science.
For example, we know that a toddler's vocabulary is closely related
to how much time an adult spends reading and talking with him.
Babies need a steady dose of rich language interaction that
only an adult can give.
Just 15 years ago, scientists thought the structure of the brain
was solely genetically determined. The brain also uses experience
to establish the higher-functioning neural connections. Simply
stated, experiences between adults and infants strengthen neural
connections in babies' brains.
Television is no substitute for a parent. It doesn't help develop language
skills; it's simply background noise. Children need to hear
language directly from an adult. And, one of the best ways to
do that is to read to babies and toddlers early and often.
We need to spotlight programs that help parents introduce young
children to the world of books and language at home. For example,
pediatricians in Boston actually began to "prescribe"
books to their young patients through a project they later called
Reach Out and Read.
Reach Out and Read works. Research shows that Reach Out and Read-type
activities increase family literacy orientation by 40 percent.
Now because of hundreds of Reach Out and Read programs throughout
the country, children leave their pediatrician's office with
a new book of their own, and parents leave with ideas on how
to help their children develop greater language skills.
Dr. Perri Klass, medical director and president of Reach Out and
Read, wants to further expand this vital program in communities
across the country. I look forward to helping her do so.
Education reform depends on accountability. Education success depends
on early reading. And America's future depends on our teachers.
These are my priorities.
We sometimes make excuses for why our children don't succeed. Some
rationalize a child's lack of achievement by his family situation,
his economic status, his language background, or his learning
difficulties. The President calls this "the soft bigotry
of low expectations."
One new friend of ours came from a background in which it would
have been easy to make excuses for failure, but instead she
was brought up to meet great expectations.
She was born in Puerto Rico, and when she was a child, she and her
family left the Island for the mainland. She did not speak one
word of English. Her mother could barely read or write her own
name.
But for her family, these were not limitations; they were merely
challenges on the road to success. Adela learned English. She
studied hard in school. She went to college. And one day, she
became a teacher, and then she became a principal.
We first met this principal, Adela Acosta, at the President's education
roundtable on his first day of work at the White House.
There, she told us her story, and she humbly used herself as an example
that every child can learn.
She said, "I always felt like I wasn't an achiever in school;
I always felt that I was a bad student."
But she wanted to succeed more than anything else, and it is her
hunger to learn and desire to achieve that she remembers most
from childhood. During a recent visit, her mother shared the
report cards Adela had brought home as a young girl. Adela looked
over the cards, and she was shocked to see that she had never
missed a day of school. She hadn't remembered the perfect attendance
records.
Her mother said in response, "Of course you didn't miss a day!
School is very important."
Adela's mother may not have been able to help her daughter with homework.
But she could make sure Adela went to school every day. By doing
so she guaranteed her daughter the opportunities she never had...the
chance to learn to read and write...the chance to succeed in life.
If we sell our children short, we sell our future short.
Adella is now the principal at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in Hyattsviille,
Maryland.
She welcomed me into her school with the words, "Mi escuela
es su escuela...my school is your school."
I can't think of a better motto for education reform...My school
is your school. Education reform isn't about turf battles.
It's about working together for a common cause...our children.
I hope you will help us carry out our mission for better education
in the United States...with every child at hand, and every success
at heart.
After all, children are one quarter of our population and 100 percent
of our future.
Many of you have much to contribute to the public discourse on education.
We would do well to listen to one another.
Last night the President spelled out his plan for education reform.
We hope you will join us in our mission to ensure that no child
is left behind.
We must do more than say that all children can learn. Like Adela
Acosta, we must believe it
and we must make it happen.
Thank you for inviting me today.
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