Bill Clinton: “That's wonderful. That's great. Give her a hand. [Applause] You were great. If we were giving a read score, she would be…”

“That's wonderful. That's great. Give her a hand. [Applause] You were great. If we were giving a read score, she would be double advanced, you know. [Laughter] Thank you. Now, here's the way the question would work for a fourth grader: ``Based upon the passage you just read, how would you describe Charlotte to a friend?'' And then these are three possible answers, and you see how they would be graded, based on what I just said. A basic proficiency would be, ``Charlotte keeps her promise.'' That's basic standards. A proficient answer would be, ``Charlotte works hard to keep her promise,'' describing that she hasn't kept it yet, she's working to keep it. And then, an advanced understanding would just explain in one sentence what the whole paragraph was about. ``She plans to keep her promise to save Wilbur's life''--what the promise is--``by tricking Zuckerman''--how she plans to keep it--all three things. But you can see if you give--and obviously there are various variations, but the test would be--the answers would be aggregated in three categories like that, so that you would have some sense of how the children were reading. Now, let's look at chart four, which will show how our fourth graders are doing. Again, this is the National Assessment of Education Progress. This is the reading version of the math test that I just quoted that West Virginia was third in the country in improvement on. Given to a representative sample of fourth graders in America, 40 percent did not do as well as saying, ``Charlotte keeps her promise''-- could not say that's what this was about. Now, you know, some of these young people may not have English as a first language, but a lot of them do and still are not reading at an advanced enough level. That is why it is so important that we provide in every community an army of trained reading tutors to help support the parents and support the literacy efforts under way and support the schools. Thirty percent cleared the first hurdle: ``This is about Charlotte keeping a promise.'' Twenty-three percent were more proficient; they knew it was her plan, she was outlining her plan. Only 7 percent of the fourth graders went as far as saying, ``She plans to keep her promise to save the life by tricking the man.'' You see? So it shows you that ideally we would like 100 percent at advanced, but at least we need 100 percent at basic or above. And so the idea of giving the exam would not be to identify failures but to show schools and school districts how well children are reading based on what they understand so that everybody would reach a certain understanding. That way their performance in all subsequent grades would improve. A lot of children have the mental capacity to do very well in school and fall further and further behind because they didn't get the comprehension they needed early on. Now, I want to show you one other chart, and we'll come back to this at the end of the program. This is a sample eighth grade math test, so ask yourself this question--no answer forthcoming now: A car has a fuel tank that holds 15 gallons of fuel. The car consumes 5 gallons of fuel for every 100 miles. A trip of 250 miles was started with a full tank of fuel. How much fuel remained in the tank at the end of the trip? And there are four answers: 2\1/2\ gallons, 12\1/2\ gallons, 17\1/2\ gallons, 5 gallons. We'll come back to that at the end of the show. That's designed to hold viewer interest out there. [Laughter] So that's basically what these standards tests are designed to do. I wanted to come here and talk about that because West Virginia has not only proved that you can have a big increase in teachers' salaries, which is wonderful; one of the best student-teacher ratios in America, which is wonderful; the most aggressive plan to put computers in elementary schools in the country, which is terrific and helps to reinforce standards learning; but you're also showing that you can raise standards and today, with the Governor's statement, that you want to do more. So with that, I'd like to hear from about any of these educational matters you would like to discuss, questions you'd like to ask, statements you'd like to make, and we'll go back to our leader here, Mr. Kittle. Thank you. Mr. Kittle. We're ready now to do the townhall meeting, so we're ready to open for questions for the President.”