More Resources President's Remarks Teacher's Toolkit

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.--President Bush today highlighted powerful new information that's available to parents under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and introduced a new "toolkit" to help the nation's educators with accurate, easy-to-understand information about the historic education-reform law.

Under the law, parents receive detailed information about their child's progress and the performance of local schools. Regular testing lets parents know how well their children are learning and where they need extra help. The law also requires states and school districts to give parents easy-to-read, detailed report cards on schools and districts, telling them which ones are succeeding and why. Included in these report cards is a wealth of information, such as student achievement data broken out by race, ethnicity, gender, English language proficiency, and migrant, disability or low-income status.

"Testing and report cards provide the information that allows us to diagnose a problem, so we can work together to fix it," Secretary Paige said. "For too long, we've been in the dark when it comes to solving our educational challenges. No Child Left Behind gives teachers and parents the information they need to help the students in danger of being left behind."

Empowering Parents with Information

During today's event, the president highlighted a new, Web-based tool to provide even more useful information to parents, educators and communities. The tool was created under a unique public-private partnership that includes the U.S. Department of Education; the Broad Foundation, a charity whose goal is to dramatically improve K-12 urban public education through better governance, management and labor relations; the National Center for Education Accountability, a nonprofit that promotes higher student achievement through data, research and best practices; and Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services, a provider of data and analysis for the education community.

The partnership provides all 50 states the opportunity to use--at no cost--a special package of data services to immediately assist states and schools with the basic data analysis and reporting requirements of NCLB.

Parents, taxpayers, teachers and policy makers can visit an easy-to-use Web site to search, sort, analyze and compare school performance trends.

The Broad Foundation will match the department's $4.7 million investment to fund this effort. All told, by leveraging public and private investments, the initiative is expected to invest more than $50 million to provide enhanced data analysis and reporting services to state education agencies.

Ten states will be invited to have their data analyzed to be available in January 2004. The remaining states that decide to participate will have their schools analyzed and reported by summer 2004.

Empowering Teachers with Information

No Child Left Behind also ensures that every child will be taught by a highly qualified teacher.

"Recent studies confirm what parents have always known--the quality of a teacher is one of the most important components of how well students learn," Secretary Paige said. "This law protects teachers from being forced to teach what they don't know well and ensures that all students are taught by someone who has the expertise to help them succeed."

All new teachers must be licensed or certified by the state, hold at least a bachelor's degree, and meet rigorous state requirements to demonstrate mastery of subject knowledge. States were required to ensure that new teachers in Title I schools met these requirements starting in the school year after the bill was enacted.

The new toolkit unveiled today provides educators with accurate, straightforward information about No Child Left Behind, as well as helpful information about loan forgiveness, tax credits and liability protection for teachers, links to helpful Web sites, information about data-driven decision-making, and guidance on understanding the federal, state and local roles in the No Child Left Behind law.

The Department of Education will distribute No Child Left Behind toolkits for teachers to various education organizations, education leaders and teachers across the country.

In addition, the kit will be available online at www.ed.gov/teachers/nclbguide/index2.html.

Teachers can order a copy of the toolkit by contacting the Department at: 1-877-4-ED-PUBS (1-877-433-7827), TTY/TDD: 1-877-576-7734; or by fax at: 1-301-470-1244. Requests for the toolkit may be made online at: www.edpubs.org; by e-mail at: edpubs@inet.ed.gov; or by mail at: ED Pubs, P.O. Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794-1398.

President Bush's complete remarks from today's event are available online at www.whitehouse.gov.

For more information about the No Child Left Behind Act, visit http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml.

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