Bush: Society must challenge low expectations in schools

Speaking about his administration’s No Child Left Behind education reform law at an elementary school in Nashville Sept. 8, President Bush said, “This society of ours must challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Every child has the potential to learn, the president said, and no child should be singled out as one not worth the time and effort of quality teaching.

“See, if you believe certain children can’t learn, then the tendency is just to shuffle them through the system,” Bush said. “If you don’t believe every child has worth, then the system tends just to give up on the child and move them through. And then at the end of high school, people can’t read, and we’ve created a social problem.”

Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in January 2002, giving public schools ground- breaking educational reform based on four main principles: stronger accountability for results, more freedom for states and communities, encouragement for proven education methods and more choices for parents.

President Bush visited Kirkpatrick Elementary School in Nashville because he saw it as “an example of what is possible for parents and for educators to make sure that not a single child gets left behind.”

The elementary school’s principal was recognized nationally last year when she and her staff went door-to-door to boost participation in tutoring from an initial 25 students to 148, according to Nashville’s The Tennessean newspaper.

Referring to the law’s emphasis on accountability, Bush said the No Child Left Behind Act “basically says we believe in high expectations, and we believe it so strongly we want to measure to see if those expectations are being met.”

In return for federal money, state and local officials must ensure that their schools measure up to the standards specified by the law.

To his critics who say the No Child Left Behind Act leads to testing students too much, Bush said his attitude is to believe that “in order to diagnose a problem, you must measure it in the first place. You cannot solve a problem until you measure it in the first place.”   (BP)