Strong schools with clear and high standards of achievement and discipline are essential to our children and our society. These standards of excellence are important to help instill the excitement, knowledge and basic values, such as hard work, that will set our children on the right track. Unfortunately, we currently give far too many of our students a watered-down curriculum inadequate to prepare them for the challenges of the global society and information age. For too many of our children, we create a tyranny of low expectations. A watered-down and boring curriculum and low expectations are the surest way of turning a child eager to learn into an angry, high school dropout who can't read.
Every child can learn.
We know that every child in America can meet higher standards, if we have the courage and the vision to set the standards, to teach up to them, and to test whether children have learned what we have taught them. Every state and every school must establish meaningful standards for what students should master in the core subjects. Only with a standard measure of excellence can parents hold schools accountable for improved performance, teachers and principals improve curriculum and instruction, and students have a guide for charting their own progress. To help make sure they do, we are going to provide states and local schools the opportunity to participate in rigorous national tests based on these widely accepted standards for reading and math. By 1999, every state should test every student in the 4th and 8th grades to make sure these standards are met.