President Addresses No Child Left Behind During Visit To Harlem Charter School
I saw President Bush live for the first time yesterday when he spoke at the Harlem Village Academy charter school (one of two fabulous schools founded and run by my good friend Deborah Kenny; see www.villageacademies.org). I even briefly shook his hand when he was working the crowd after the speech (see my pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/WTilson/PresBushAtHarlemVillageAcademy).
I disagree with President Bush on just about everything EXCEPT school reform, so it was a very odd experience to listen to him and actually AGREE with what he was saying!
As the article below notes, he gave Bloomberg and Klein well-deserved praise for their bold reforms in NY (Klein was there, along with Charlie Rangel, which was great to see!), called for lots more charter schools, defended testing as necessary to see how children and schools are doing, and called for Congress to renew NCLB with stronger accountability and more mechanisms to empower parents to make decisions about their childrens' educations, esp. when they're in failing schools.
I videoed his speech and posted it at (forgive the quality -- my camera's focus mechanism was going haywire):
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Bush Presses Schools Plan During Trip to New York
President Bush fought with the Democrats over war financing yesterday morning. But in the afternoon he came to Harlem to seek common cause with the rival party, on its home turf, on his signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 10:06 PM
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