The Teaching of Laura Bush

She knows a lot about how to keep America strong: It's the children, stupid!

Get a Jump on Learning

When the planes started falling from the sky, Laura Bush was in a car on her way to Capitol Hill. It was just before 9 a.m. on September 11, and the First Lady had agreed to testify on early childhood education before a Senate subcommittee. During the drive from the White House to the Hill -- it usually takes no more than 10 minutes -- "before" ended and "after" began. Or, as she put it later, "We all knew normal would never again be what we knew it to be on September 10."

Since that day Mrs. Bush has attended memorial services, visited school classrooms and given feel-good speeches at such a pace that Us magazine dubbed her America's "Comforter-in-Chief."

Don't think for a minute, though, that she is only a patter of backs and a holder of hands. Even in short visits Mrs. Bush shows a watchful intelligence, a combination of smarts and reserve that should not be underestimated. Though she seldom lets loose in public, she has a wicked sense of humor. In one story she recounts how, when he was citizen George W. Bush, the President used to put the lights on the family Christmas tree. It was not his favorite task -- and he was apparently not that good at it either. "We think," she says, "that he ran for governor just to get out of putting lights on the tree."

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Mrs. Bush, 55, has no overt political ambitions, but she serves an enormous strategic role. The delight she takes in reading to grade-school children helps soften the image of the Administration. And in November, she became the first Presidential wife to deliver the weekly White House radio address. She spoke about the brutality with which the Taliban treated Afghan women, and drew plaudits all around.

The First Lady is fiercely, protectively devoted to her family. Loyalty and history count with her, and she stays in touch with a tight circle of women, many of them friends since she was Laura Welch of Midland, Texas, daughter of Harold, a real estate developer, and Jenna, who worked as her husband's secretary. Her one passionate public cause is reading. Trained as a teacher and a librarian, from the bully pulpit of the White House she can now help shape U.S. education policy, in her way. Our conversation began on the topic of kids and classrooms.

RD: You've been involved in early education for --
Bush: For years.

RD: At what age should public school start?
Bush: At kindergarten. I think Head Start is very important, and parents' picking really good day-care centers for their children, if their children go to day care, is important. It's crucial, really, to a child's success later. It's no surprise that research proves that how much a child has been read to before they start school determines how successful they'll be, especially in the first years.

RD: Should there be curriculum for these early childhood centers?
Bush: Yes. One of the things that the President wants in his education plan is for Head Start to have an academic goal along with social and nutritional and health-related goals.

There is a Head Start center in Dallas called the Margaret Cone Center that the Texas Instruments Foundation adopted about 15 years ago. This is a neighborhood with the highest poverty, the lowest education rate, the most single-parent households. For two years Texas Instruments provided every health and nutrition benefit they could. Year-round day care. Three meals a day. Social workers.

Even after that, when the children started kindergarten they still tested in the bottom one percentile on the Iowa test of basic skills.

The T.I. Foundation knew they had to add something else. A reading professor at SMU, Nell Carvell, developed what she called LEAP, Language Enrichment Activities Program. It's not a curriculum that asks little three- and four-year-olds to sit at a desk. They play all day. But she added pre-reading skills -- storytelling, story listening, talking about letters, talking about sounds. The children starting kindergarten tested in the 74th to 75th percentile on the Iowa test. They now have 10 or 11 years of research.

This school, the Margaret Cone Center, was African American. But now they have the Jerry Junkins Center that's Hispanic American, and they're working to see what the results would be adding this curriculum with children who didn't have English as their first language.

RD: Let's follow up on the English as a second language idea and the controversy over bilingual education.
Bush: I think bilingual education is great if we know it helps children learn to speak and read in English. The goal for children in America is to learn to read and speak English.

For children who are lucky enough to be bilingual the goal is to become biliterate, to learn to read and speak well in English, but also to take advantage of their heritage. It's a huge advantage. There are so few Americans who are actually biliterate, especially compared to Europeans.

RD: More than one million students are being schooled at home. Do you think homeschooling is a good idea?
Bush: I do. Parents are willing and disciplined enough to make sure their child gets a great education. And in most cases the parents I've met who homeschool their children are very, very disciplined. I think it's a fine idea if people want to do it.

RD: All the way through?
Bush: Sure, if they want to.

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