Bush Praises Klein, Mayor On City Schools
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
President Bush met with Mayor Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, in New York yesterday morning to congratulate them on progress in the city’s schools.
It was the second time in six months that Mr. Bush, who was in town to address the U.N. General Assembly, has called on Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein to praise them for their efforts to reorganize the city’s education system. The president praised Mr. Bloomberg for “moving aside bureaucracy.”
“The city tackled the challenges of underperforming schools in such a way that it’s become a model for urban schools. This achievement is a hopeful sign for other school districts across America,” Mr. Bush said during a news conference with first lady Laura Bush and the education secretary, Margaret Spellings. “New York City can do it, you can do it,” he said.
Earlier in the morning, the president met with the principal and a group of fourth- and fifth-graders from P.S. 76 in the Bronx, who joined him for the news conference in a plush room in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
The president’s visit comes a week after the city’s school district won a prestigious national education award, the Broad Prize, and a day after state scores on national reading and English tests were released. New York State showed some declines and some improvements, including a narrowing of the gap in performance between minority and white students.
The city’s recent progress in closing that gap was part of the reason it was awarded the Broad Prize. Mr. Bush suggested that other school districts “e-mail” the New York City Department of Education to find out how it was done.
The last time Mr. Bush met with the mayor and the chancellor, in April, he spoke at a charter school in Harlem.
The president used the second half of the news conference yesterday to reiterate his call for the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is under consideration for reauthorization in Congress this year. He voiced support for several major changes to the law, including more flexibility for school districts and incentive payments for teachers who raise achievement in low-performing schools.
