Q: But I wanted to know what you understand the complaints to be about your No Child Left Behind policy, and if you acknowledge those complaints as any weaknesses to the policy? How effective do you think it is in spite of that?

THE PRESIDENT: Good question. I'm glad you brought up No Child Left Behind. The complaint is, that how dare the government cause us to measure -- one of the complaints -- too much testing, you know. I heard that when I was the governor of Texas. Jerry didn't editorialize there, I'm sure. Maybe you did.

You know, how dare you test people who don't speak English as a first language. My answer to those concerns is that, how do you know if you don't test? How can you possibly tell whether a child is learning to read and write if you don't measure? When I was the governor of our state, I was deeply concerned about a system where people would come to me and say, you know what, we're getting kids in college that are not very literate. This kind of, just, social promotion was the culture and the norm.

If I were a newspaper owner, I'd want to make sure people could read. And one way to make sure people read is to measure early whether or not people can pass a test. I've heard people say, all we're doing is teaching the test; you're causing people to teach the test. And my answer to that is, teaching a child to be literate will enable that child to pass the test. There's something fundamental about literacy.

Secondly, people said, we believe in local control of schools, and the No Child Left Behind Act is not local control of schools. I strongly disagree. I believe in local control of schools. The No Child Left Behind Act said we're spending a lot of federal money, particularly on Title I students, show us whether or not the money is being well spent.

We didn't say, here's the curriculum you must use, here are the class sizes you'll have. We didn't say, we're going to design the test on your behalf. I fought off a national test, because I believed a national test would undermine local control of schools. All we said was, measure, and post your scores for everybody to see, and that you've got to be meeting a higher standard. In other words, we're holding people to standards. So I believe the No Child Left Behind Act honors local control of schools.

One of classic debates that takes place at the local level is what curriculum to use. I'm sure some of you have been through the classic reading curriculum debates. They raged hot and heavy in the state of Texas for a while. And you'd have this side would be yelling at that side. And one way to make sure that your curriculum works is to measure. If a child is passing reading by using this curriculum, and another child is not passing reading when they use another curriculum, it provides a useful tool for the local newspaper, for example, to say, we told you so, the curriculum is not working; or we told you so, the curriculum is working.

There's got to be accountability in the public school system. If you do not diagnose a problem, you can never solve the problem. And one of the things about No Child Left Behind which is important is that when we diagnose a reading problem early, there is supplemental service money to help that child be brought up to speed. That's why it's called No Child Left Behind. We believe every child can learn -- every child. And, therefore, this is a program that says we want accountability for the taxpayers' money. We'll provide extra help early on when we find a child who needs extra help. And it's working. That's the other thing that I would tell people.

How do I know? Because we measure. There's an achievement gap in America that is not right. When you measure at the 4th grade, Anglo kids did fine, African American and Latino kids didn't. And that's not fair. And it's not right. And so we've essentially ended social promotion in the early grades, and said we're going to correct problems. And it's working because that gap is narrowing. And the reason I can say that is because we measure.

Interestingly enough, when you kind of compare measurements internationally in math and science or math, we're doing fine in the 4th grade. We're falling off in the 8th grade. And so what I want to do is to apply the same rigor for reading that we did in the early grades to math in junior high, so in the 8th grade we get those scores and kind of lay that foundation for the sciences and the engineering -- the physicists, so we can compete.

I'm a strong believer in No Child Left Behind. My Secretary of Education, my good buddy, Margaret Spellings, who helped me put a similar program in place in the state of Texas is now the Secretary of Education. She's obviously listening to complaints about certain aspects of AYP. But we're not going to undermine the basic tenet that says we believe in high standards, we believe every child can learn, and we're going to measure. And when we see the status quo is unacceptable, we'll challenge the status quo. That's what you need to. And I'm sure you are doing that. It ought to be unacceptable to opinion makers when you find illiteracy. And you ought to demand change -- not only for your own self interest, but for the sake of this country. And so thanks for asking the question.

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