Remarks by President George W. Bush at the "Education Leadership Symposium"

Thank you all. Please be seated. Thank you all for having me.

So I was lying on my couch in Crawford after President Obama had become sworn in, and I said to Laura, “Free at last.” And she said, “You’re free to go empty the garbage and to wash the dishes.” I said, “Wait a minute, you’re talking to the former President.” She said, “Consider it your new domestic policy agenda.” 

I do feel free at last. I am free from politics. I have entered the arena with a set of values. I exited the arena with the same set of values, and I have ended this chapter in my life. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do after the presidency, I decided that we needed to — I wanted to stay involved in policy, and I knew that Laura did as well. I became fascinated with policy as governor and as president. I’m interested in the intellectual underpinnings of important subjects. I also was — the truth of the matter is they never viewed me as an intellect sitting around. I was always the person who tried to actually do something in life. I wanted to take ideas and implement them.

And so the idea of developing — I mean, first of all, you’ve got to have a museum if you’re a former president. Every president has museums, it seems like, but that’s a place to focus on the past. And it’s going to be interesting here on the SMU campus, because they have this magnificent building designed by Robert Stern. It’s going to be a place where people come and look at the inaugural gowns of former first ladies or the pistol that was on Saddam’s presence when he was pulled out of the hole. And it’s going to be an interesting place for people to see the history of the administration, and hopefully learn some of the values that I tried to conduct my presidency by. But we wanted something more than that. We wanted a place where Laura and I could be involved and keep our minds sharp, and use our platforms as former President and former First Lady to affect the debate in the country, and it sounds bold. Kind of a bold idea for an old, retired guy, but I believed it could happen, and it is happening.

And so as Jim [Glassman] mentioned, we’re going to focus on four areas. One is health. Our first fellow is the person that helped design, and more importantly implement and execute PEPFAR, which was the President’s AIDS initiative. And we want to be involved with helping deal with disease and illiteracy and hunger, particularly in the developing world, because a principle by which I have tried to operate my life is: To whom much is given, much is required. I think it’s going to be a fabulous addition to the Bush Institute to continue to live out that call.

Secondly, we’re going to be involved in markets. I believe markets are the fairest way to allocate resources. Markets yield freedom. If you can choose in the marketplace, you’re more likely to demand choice in the public square. And yet obviously markets are under scrutiny, as they should be, after this major financial meltdown. And if we we’re going to be — have a reasonable part of the debate as America goes forward, one of our first initiatives in the market area is to tout the plethora of natural gas as a way to keep the United States moving forward economically, be good stewards of our environment, and not keep sending our money overseas, as we power our economy.

Thirdly, Laura and I are going to be intricately involved in advancing freedom as the great alternative to the ideology of the haters. Now, look, my life was affected deeply by September the 11th. I vowed that I would do all in my power to protect the country. And the ultimate way to protect America in the long run is to promote and offer an alternative ideology to those who kill, to advance their view, and that’s based on freedom.

Jim mentioned the Freedom Initiative. I believe women are going to advance democracy in the Middle East. I know that’s counterintuitive to some way of thinking here in America. A lot of people don’t even think democracy in the Middle East has a chance to survive. I strongly disagree, because I believe in the universality of freedom, and I believe the proponents to change, and the most effective voices to call upon change in the Middle East will be women. So we’ll have a decades-long Women’s Initiative where someone educators and women lawyers and women politicians and entrepreneurs from the United States interface with their counterparts throughout the Middle East, all aiming to try to affect our own security in promoting a better and peaceful world.

And finally, education. I ran for governor because of education. I mean, I was a baseball guy living an idyllic life. Of course, as Laura reminded me, politics was our family business, and so I got hooked on public service early. But I was appalled that our own state of Texas was doing such a lousy job with educating our children, so I decided to do something about it and ran. So education is a fitting area for us to focus on. Laura is a librarian. Hell, most of the people didn’t think I could read books, so they were thrilled when I married a librarian.

Education has been our passion. We needed a place to put the center and museum, and SMU is the perfect fit. I don’t know if — I know the Dallas folks understand SMU and its relevance to education, but SMU is an awesome place, ably led by a great president, Gerald Turner. It’s got a fine faculty, wonderful students, and it is a university on the move. It is constantly challenging the status quo. It is becoming a — it’s earning its rightful place as one of the great universities in our country. I felt in order for these ideas that we’re going to propose, and the action plans that will come out of it from the ideas to be relevant and to have cogency, we needed to be associated with the university. I didn’t want this to be viewed as a political center, like you had to be a Republican to come to a forum like this, or you know, that George W. Bush is such a cool guy that you had to agree with everything he said in order to make this work. Being involved with a great university not only gives an intellectual cache, it puts aside any doubt — I’m hoping — any doubt in people’s minds that this is a political center. It’s not. It’s a place of thought and action, and SMU helps send the signal.

In terms of education, SMU has got an unbelievably interesting and innovative education school, the Simmons School, ably lead by Dean Chard. He is a reformer. I will — since this is off the record, I’ll be blunt with you. Most education schools do nothing to challenge the status quo. They just sit there and crank out the same stuff over and over again, and it’s not working. SMU has leadership, including Reid Lyon, who I got to know during our time as governor, and is willing to challenge the status quo, is willing to think anew. Trust me when I tell you that’s a rarity.

So we’re honored to be able to have joint fellows with the SMU education school, and for the students who go to SMU, it is — you’re lucky to have a leadership like you do here. You really are, and that’s spoken with some — spoken with some experience. Glassman is the right guy to lead the Institute. He’s an intellectually sound person. He’s not viewed as a precinct worker. You know, he’s not — he doesn’t spend a lot of time turning out the vote in his previous existence. He writes, he thinks, he articulates, and he can attract bright minds, and we’re honored that Jim has joined us, as well as Stacy Cinatl. She is the number two person at the Institute. She compliments Jim well. She’s able to help implement programs after ideas have been started and germinated. 

Secondly, the mission suits my personality, and I think suits the people whose — oh, [Sandy] Kress, of course. I forgot Kress. I’ll get to you in a minute — suits our personality, and that is that, you know, I really did want to take good ideas and turn them into action. There’s nothing — first of all, ideas mattered to me and my team. It was interesting to read somebody’s paper about how to reform social security or a paper justifying this behavior or not, but you know, I get frustrated when I think about time and effort spent on just writing papers. So we want to take ideas — and Glassman is serious about saying we want your ideas — and figure out how to turn them into action, to use this platform of a former President and a former First Lady to actually work for change. That’s really the purpose of this meeting and the purpose of the Institute for the next long years. 

Education is a great first start, and this is the inaugural event of the Bush Institute. We’ve been thinking about things and talking about ideas, but this is it. So you’re here for the kickoff, and again, we thank you. It is fitting that this be the first event. No Child Left Behind was the first piece of legislation I signed. People forget. I mean, time tends to eradicate memories, but there was a lot of people working on this piece of legislation. And I saw the other day a picture of me signing the bill, and Ted Kennedy was prominently standing behind me. He was instrumental in helping get this piece of legislation passed. It was a communal effort to say we’re tired of mediocrity in our schools. No Child Left Behind said we’re going to use accountability and results as the beginning of education reform. You see, I don’t see how you can solve a problem unless you diagnose it. And we weren’t diagnosing problems. We were just hoping for the best, and as Governor of Texas, I was appalled at the number of students who would be heading into college, and they couldn’t even read. Something was like amiss. I called it the soft bigotry of low expectations.

I happen to believe No Child Left Behind is a piece of Civil Rights legislation, because generally the kids who got shuffled through were the so-called “hard to educate.” It was easy to quit on the “hard to educate.” That would be your inner city African-American or your child whose parents don’t speak English as a first language, and if you don’t measure, you’d just get moved through. Then all of a sudden we wake up as a society and say what went wrong? So No Child Left Behind is the beginning. It’s just the first step, and by the way, it’s under assault from people in both political parties. People don’t like to be measured in life. It’s inconvenient. It’s like a pain, particularly if you’re not succeeding, or people say there’s no role for government in measuring. My attitude is what the hell are you talking about? We’re spending billions of dollars. Shouldn’t we at least understand whether or not the money we’re spending is being used the way we want it spent? And the only way to do it is to measure. So one of the things we’re going to do is defend the principle of No Child Left Behind accountability. It doesn’t have to be called No Child Left Behind. Call it whatever you want, but it’s going to be we demand results-oriented education, and if you’re not achieving results, we then want you to change. We, society, demand that you change.

Now, one of the things that we have learned — and so we get — here’s the education fellows, Jim Guthrie and Sandy Kress. So it’s one thing to be able to, you know, passionately or blow hard about the principles behind it. We’d better get some intellectual heavyweights here at SMU to make the case. I mean, [Jim] Hunt, they look at Hunt and me and say old, retired governor and president, you know, guys out there that should be doing shuffleboard. Instead, they’re trying to make themselves relevant. So we hired Guthrie, Jim Guthrie. What’s interesting about Jim Guthrie is the Vanderbilt Education School is ranked number one in the nation. So we want to know why. It turns out Jim Guthrie had a lot to do with it. So we’re going to be the number one institute and education school in the country, and first thing is — I don’t know if pirate is the right word — you entice somebody to join us, and thankfully Jim Guthrie came. You’ll see, I mean, this guy has got a good brain and great credibility, and we’re very fortunate to have him associated with us, and the country is fortunate that he cares enough about education that he spends a lot of time thinking about it and how to change the status quo.

And then Sandy Kress is a pal of mine. I first ran into him when he was the Democratic Party Chairman here in Dallas, and yet we shared this passion about educational excellence. So he’s going to be part of an implementation program, which is what he’s famous for. So we’re fortunate to have those two here.

Michael Feinberg is here. Right, I know him. He’s a face I’ll never forget. When I was governor, I went to one of his schools, KIPP Academy in Houston. I think it was the first one, Michael. He was just getting started, so he was in the social entrepreneur stage. Actually, he’s still a — I mean, an educational entrepreneur, still one. It struck me about how his vitality and his imagination was going to change children’s lives of the so-called “hard to educate,” and it was my first real lesson of why leadership was so important in the school. I mean, the truth of the matter is, you can have great teachers and a good curriculum, but if you don’t have good leadership at the school level or the district level, our society will not meet the objectives we need to stay competitive and hopeful. So one of the — a first initiative that you’re here to talk about today is how to make sure good leaders are prepared and schooled and ready to take on the challenge. So Feinberg, thank you for kind of educating me, along with Latinos that you had in your school that were like — I can’t remember what it was. Whatever it was, I left the school flying because I was so enthusiastic about what I saw.

So there’s a lot of good ideas on how to attract leaders and hire leaders and prepare leaders. The problem is that a lot of these ideas haven’t been properly tested. So one of the things we’re going to do here is conduct research on how to promote school leadership. We conducted leadership on how to teach reading, and thanks to people like Read Alliance, that’s becoming less of an art and more of a science. I think people now understand the reading curricula that works. Remember the dates of the reading debates that just consumed so much energy in Texas? I mean, sides were divided up, and if you were on this side, you were no good, and if you were on that side, something is wrong with you, but that debate has been changed because of good research. We intend to provide that kind of rigor to how to encourage people to lead effectively. And then we are going to implement that plan, implement the ideas.

One way to do that is to support leaders who are already in the field. Listen to them and support them, people who have actually done it. There’s a lot of people in America doing great stuff. There really are. Obviously, there are some bastions of mediocrity that need to be challenged, but there’s some great educators in our state, and in our country. And so the Institute is going to take ideas from them and then encourage them as well and empower them.

We’ve got two of them here with us today, Wanda Bamberg, right out of Aldine Independent School District. That’s out of Houston. Wanda, we’re honored you’re here. She wins the 2009 Broad Prize for the Best Urban School District in America. Governor Hunt is part of the jury. He assures me that there is, (1) a lot of competition; (2) the standards were rigorous. So in other words, Broad Prize is not to be taken lightly. It is a huge honor, but it’s an honor for her leadership capabilities. Obviously, she’s got a lot of people in her district willing to support her. What’s interesting about her district, of course, is this district is full of — it’s not like upper middle-class suburban kids. Her district is a district of the so-called “impossible to educate” or “too hard to educate” or “man, why me, why did I get stuck with these kind of kids to educate” kids? In fact, she has proved that every child can learn and requires starting with an attitude of high standards and demanding change if the standards aren’t being met. So Wanda, we’re honored you’re here. Thank you for coming.

And by the way, the jury didn’t have to guess as to whether or not her school district was succeeding. After all, there are measurement tools that were able to determine that she deserved the award. Terry Grier is here with us as well. He is the superintendent of HISD, Houston Independent School District. Now, that is a large, unwieldy district. There are a lot of schools in the district, a lot of teachers, a lot of pressure, a lot of noise, a lot of politics, and yet he has won achieving excellence or helping the districts achieve excellence. One of the interesting things that he has proposed and a fascinating idea is that he approved a policy to use student academic progress as a significant measure of evaluation of teachers. Now, that seems like a really simple idea, doesn’t it? So you correlate teacher performance with whether or not the children are measuring to standards, and yet the advancement of that idea is pretty revolutionary. So Dr. Grier, we thank you.

Joel Klein is a person that Laura and I got to know. He’s the head of the New York Independent School District. He, like Grier, is a — doesn’t want just to hold a job to draw whatever meager salary you get paid. He wants to hold a job to affect change. Joel Klein says this. He says, “In Houston, parents should commend the insistent and persistent Grier for his effort to close the racial and ethnic achievement gap by ensuring that every child is taught by an effective teacher.” And so we’re honored that you all are here, and we thank you for the example you set. And I know that the Jims and Sandy are anxious to hear, as is everybody else here, hear your story. 

Finally, when I was governor, I had the privilege of meeting a lot of other governors, and I found a soul mate in Jim Hunt. Now, listen, we disagreed on which state had the best barbecue, or who could effectively play basketball. Fortunately, that wasn’t much of a subject, because it wasn’t much of a contest. But Jim Hunt impressed me and Laura, because he was one of the first reform governors, and being a reform governor really means you’ve got to take on vested interests and be willing to challenge them in a smart way just so that you can be effective in getting legislation passed, and he was that.

Jim Hunt really was an inspiration for younger governors like me. He has got a great track record of accountability. He has got the James B. Hunt, former — we love naming things after ourselves — the James B. Hunt Institute, which is going to be a partner of ours in working to effect change. James Hunt, like me, just didn’t want to be put out to pasture, and you know, play golf. What we wanted to do — well, that’s kind of fun. What we wanted to do, what we really wanted to do was to be able to use that which we learned in public service to continue to be — affect change in a positive way. So Jim, Laura and I are honored you’re with us.

Thank you for coming. Please come and share some thoughts.