August 17, 2004

A student of these issues...

Don't miss Ronald Kressler's piece on Bush and education:

...Barnett "Sandy" Kress, a lawyer and former Democratic member of the Dallas school board, told me how, when he was only thinking about running for governor, Bush became interested in why so many kids couldn't read and what could be done about it. Bush asked Kress dozens of questions: What are the best ways to teach reading? What are other states doing? Taking notes on a legal pad, Bush wanted to know who had studied the issue. Kress mentioned six experts in the field.

"People think he shoots from the hip or that he's not smart," Kress said. "It baffles me.... He was an incredible student of these issues. He had a voracious appetite for information. He looked into the problem and researched it.... I gave him six names. He called them all. They were as stunned as I was."...

When Bush ran for Governor of Texas he promised to focus on a few issues. He did. Education was one of them. He pushed that relentlessly, and got real results....
...Based on Lyons's advice, Bush developed a way to restore phonics to reading instruction in Texas. The results were dramatic. In 1995, 23 percent of third graders could not read. By 2003, that figure had improved to ten percent, according to state testing figures compiled by Kress, who became Bush's unpaid education adviser. After additional help for kids who failed, only two percent could not read. The greatest beneficiaries of restoring phonics to reading instruction — which includes work on comprehension, spelling, and actual reading — were minorities...
When Bush ran for president he promised to focus on a few issues. He did. Education was one of them. (Here's more)

You people who say "The Bush Administration lies all the time, etc etc," are fools. LIARS! We've never had a President so straightforward. All the "Bush lied" stuff is just an excuse to avoid thinking and changing during a time of change. You don't want to think about how Democrat polices are destroying the lives of poor and minority children by the millions. You are like the Russians and Germans who didn't want to know about concentration camps...

Posted by John Weidner at August 17, 2004 8:15 AM
Weblog by John Weidner