Bush Pitches Incentive Pay For Teachers

Proposals Outlined in Talk At a D.C. Charter School

Bijan Smith, 13, left, shows President Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings a computer project in the multidisciplinary lab at Friendship-Woodridge in the District. (By Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)

President Bush visited a high-performing charter school in Northeast Washington yesterday to call for changes to the No Child Left Behind education law that he said would help teachers raise student performance and give more choice to parents whose children attend failing schools.

Bush said Friendship-Woodridge Elementary and Middle School, which serves 550 students, meets the high academic standards that are demanded by the federal education law. The law, scheduled to be reauthorized by Congress next year, has been hotly debated. Critics charge that it focuses too much on test-taking and does not provide enough funding to address the underlying social and academic factors that affect the quality of education.

"I know people say that we test too much, but how can you solve a problem until you measure?" Bush said in the school's gymnasium to an audience of schoolchildren and officials in suits. "Measuring is the gateway to success."

Against a backdrop of No Child Left Behind posters featuring smiling children waving American flags, Bush proposed that teachers who raise student scores or decide to teach in hard-to-serve urban or rural school districts be paid bonuses under a new incentive fund for teachers. High schools, which now graduate 75 percent of their freshmen on time, would offer more rigorous courses through a new Advanced Placement training program for 70,000 teachers, Bush said.

Students smiled and pointed at the buzz of activity in school hallways as security officers and explosives-sniffing dogs milled about during Bush's visit. Bush toured a "smart lab," a classroom where middle school students made music on an Apple computer and demonstrated robotic vehicles that started and stopped at the sound of a handclap. He encouraged students to study and asked about their college plans.

The charter school, which is publicly funded, opened in 1998 and serves students in pre-K and up to eighth grade. The school, in the 2900 block of Carlton Avenue NE, is 99 percent African American, and 81 percent of its students are considered low-income. Bush said he chose Friendship-Woodridge for a visit because it had met the academic benchmarks on standardized tests for the past three years.

On the latest test, the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment, Friendship-Woodridge was among just four of 37 charter schools under the authority of the D.C. Public Charter School Board to make the grade. Many parents place importance on the scores, but D.C. school leaders say the results do not fully reflect how much a student may have improved.

Ross Wiener, policy analyst at the Education Trust, a national nonprofit that advocates for public education, praised Bush's ideas on teacher training. But he said the speech was focused on schools that are doing well and offered little guidance on how to help struggling schools turn around.

"That's what's on a lot of people's minds right now," Wiener said in a telephone interview.

Student reviews of Bush's speech were overwhelmingly positive. The president won over even Shawntese Gunner, 10, of Northeast. She said before his speech that she liked him "just a little bit" and was surprised to hear that he was visiting her school. She said she's a fifth-grader in Mr. Lakis's class. Andrew Lakis said his class calls itself the "307 A-Team," a reference to the class's room number and to the idea that all students can make A grades.

Shawntese gave the president's speech an A. "He explained that no child should be left behind," she said. "I like him a lot now."