Education

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning.

In recent days, we have seen shocking acts of violence in schools across our Nation. Laura and I are praying for the victims and their families, and we extend our sympathies to them and to the communities that have been devastated by these attacks.

I have asked Secretary of Education Spellings and Attorney General Gonzales to host a conference on school safety this Tuesday. We will bring together teachers, parents, students, administrators, law enforcement officials, and other experts to discuss the best ways to keep violence out of our schools. Our goal is clear: Children and teachers should never fear for their safety when they enter a classroom.

As we work to keep our classrooms safe, we must also ensure that the children studying there get a good education. I believe every child can learn. So when I came to Washington, I worked with Republicans and Democrats to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and I was proud to sign it into law. The theory behind this law is straightforward: We expect every school in America to teach every student to read, write, add, and subtract.

We are measuring progress, and giving parents the information they need to hold their schools accountable. Local schools remain under local control. The federal government is asking for demonstrated results in exchange for the money we send from Washington. Thanks to this good law, we are leaving behind the days when schools just shuffled children from grade to grade, whether they learned anything or not.

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Mathew McGonagle, 36, of Contoocook, who recently resigned as assistant principal at Rundlett Middle school in Concord, pled guilty to one count of felonious sexual assault and two counts of misdemeanor sexual assault in Belknap Superior Court yesterday. The charges followed a lengthy investigation by the Belknap County Sheriff’s Office and Belknap County Attorney’s Office undertaken after a young woman reported that McGonagle sexually assaulted her during the 1999-2000 school year when she was a student at Gilford Middle School.

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There is a war raging all around us.  It is a global war.  It is a war that the United States cannot afford to lose.  No one has died in this war, and no one is likely to.  But there are casualties.  Their injuries are not physical; they are mental.  And the suffering is life-long.  I’m not referring to the Global War on Terror or the War on Drugs.  I’m talking about the Math War.

While the United States is, militarily, the world’s only superpower, we are, mathematically, merely a second-rate power, and losing ground every year.  In the Math War, the superpowers are Singapore, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belgium.  In assessment after assessment, those countries prove that their weapons – in this case, mathematically-competent 4^th, 8^th, and 12^th graders – are more accurate and advanced than our own.  Their strategies are more focused.  Their national resolve is stronger.

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