2008 State of the Union address: on Education

George W. Bush: $300M for Pell Grants for Kids for non-public schools

We must do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. Thanks to the DC Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our nation’s Capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America’s inner cities. So I will convene a White House summit aimed at strengthening these lifelines of learning. And to open the doors of these schools to more children, I ask you to support a new $300 million program called Pell Grants for Kids. We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential. Together, we’ve expanded the size and reach of these grants. Now let us apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.

George W. Bush: FactCheck: Yes, NCLB has raised test scores

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the president is correct that scores, generally, have gone up since the enactment of No Child Left Behind.

However, Bush omitted some recent backsliding: scores for eighth-grade students are only slightly up from the first recorded year and are not the highest on record. The highest scores for eighth graders in reading were scored in 2002, and they have gone down a bit since then. The same applies to other grades and to other subgroups including African-American and Hispanic students.