November 26, 2006

On the morning of Oct. 5, President Bush and his education secretary, Margaret Spellings, paid a visit, along with camera crews from CNN and Fox News, to Friendship-Woodridge Elementary and Middle Campus, a charter public school in Washington. The president dropped in on two classrooms, where he asked the students, almost all of whom were African-American and poor, if they were planning to go to college. Every hand went up. ''See, that's a good sign,'' the president told the students when they assembled later in the gym. ''Going to college is an important goal for the future of the United States of America.'' He singled out one student, a black eighth grader named Asia Goode, who came to Woodridge four years earlier reading ''well below grade level.'' But things had changed for Asia, according to the president. ''Her teachers stayed after school to tutor her, and she caught up,'' he said. ''Asia is now an honors student. She loves reading, and she sings in the school choir.''