[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 133 (Thursday, November 18, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11449-S11453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
1989 EDUCATION SUMMIT
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, right after the election, on November
3, 2004, I went to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The
purpose of the occasion was a discussion of the 1989 Education Summit.
It had been 15 years since the President of the United States and the
Nation's Governors--all of our chief executives--gathered in
Charlottesville, VA, to establish the first ever national education
goals for our country.
It is astonishing to me that 15 years have gone by since then, and it
was to most other governors who were there. It was important to look
back on what had happened in 1989, to see how it happened, and to think
about what happened since then.
The summit at the University of Virginia had gone remarkably well.
President George H.W. Bush had convened it. Terry Bransted, the
Governor of Iowa, was chairman of the National Governors Association
that year. He had appointed the Governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton,
whose library is opening today, and Carroll Campbell of South Carolina
as the lead Governors. Working with the President's representatives,
they came up with those first national education goals. There had been
a long prelude to all of this activity in 1989. I was a part of that
prelude, and I saw a lot of it happen.
In 1978, when I was elected Governor and Bill Clinton was elected
Governor of Arkansas, and Dick Riley of South Carolina, and our
colleague, Bob Graham, who was Governor of Florida, we were all faced
with the same issues. Our States were behind; the world was changing,
and we needed a better education system, particularly at the elementary
and secondary level. So that by 1983, when the report of the U.S.
Department of Education, called ``A Nation at Risk,'' came out saying
we were greatly at risk because of the mediocrity of the education
system, it was into that environment that it came.
The Governors in 1985 and 1986 all worked for a year on education. I
was chairman of the NGA that year, and Bill Clinton was the vice
chairman. It was the first time in the history of the governors
organization that we all focused for a year on one subject. Then, by
1989, we had a President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, who
became the first of three consecutive Presidents to say he wanted to be
an education President. The goals that the governors adopted with the
President in 1989 were very straightforward.
No. 1, all children in America will start school ready to learn.
No. 2, high school graduates will increase to 90 percent.
No. 3, American students will leave the fourth, eighth, and twelfth
grades having demonstrated competency in math, science, English,
history, and geography.
No. 4, America would be first in the world in math and science.
No. 5, adult Americans would be literate.
No. 6, every school would be free of drugs and violence.
Those were the goals. You might say after a decade of unprecedented
school reform and concern, America backed into its goals for reform.
That was 15 years ago. A lot has happened since then.
When I became Education Secretary in 1991, we created something
called America 2000, which was to try to move America community by
community toward those national education goals. Governor Clinton
became President Clinton, and he changed the name to Goals 2000 and
tried his brand of moving us in that direction.
Now we have another President, the son of the man for whom I worked,
who has, through No Child Left Behind, working in a bipartisan way,
tried to set from Washington accountability standards that will help
make sure that all children are learning. I rise to talk about this
today only for this reason: That the national summit of governors and
the President, on its 15th anniversary, should not go by without
mentioning it on this floor.
There has never been anything like it before. One of the most
important
[[Page S11450]]
parts of it was that members of Congress were not involved. A lot of
members of Congress--it was a Democratic legislature at that time--were
not very happy about that. But I think that was the correct decision
because, in my view, elementary and secondary education is a national
concern, central to almost everything important that we do, but it is
not necessarily a Federal Government concern.
The fact that the governors and the President, the chief executives
of our country, met together to establish these goals and begin to move
us toward those goals was, I think, the correct way to do that.
I would like to salute the University of Virginia's Miller Center for
holding this celebration. It included former Education Secretary Dick
Riley, Rod Paige, the current Education Secretary, and I was there as
well. It also included John Sununu, a former Governor of New Hampshire,
who was at the education summit and who was Chief of Staff at the White
House at the time it was organized, and Jerry Baliles, the former
Governor of Virginia, who was Governor of Virginia at the time the
education summit was held.
I thought Governor Baliles' remarks were especially interesting and
useful. He talked about the political context of the times and how the
governors were able to do this without interference from Congressmen
and Senators in Washington, DC. He talked about the competitiveness of
our country and the world, and how we are driven to realize that better
schools meant better jobs and that most of our standard of living
depends upon the research, the inventions, and technology that we have
at our great system of colleges and universities in the world. And, he
talked about where we had come in the last 15 years.
I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record, following my remarks,
the full remarks of the Honorable Gerald L. Baliles, the former
Governor of Virginia, which he made at the Miller Center of Public
Affairs and the Curry School of Education in Charlottesville on
November 4, 2004.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I think it is worthwhile, in addition
to this, to give a little credit to former President George H.W. Bush.
I still believe that when the dust settles and history books are
written, President Bush's leadership in education will be among his
most significant and lasting contributions.
His tour of duty was interrupted by the voters in 1992, so he was not
able to finish the job. But his America 2000 community effort had a
variety of initiatives which set the agenda for American education in
the 1990s. They included a new set of national standards in core
curriculum subjects, including science, history, English, geography,
arts, civics, and foreign languages. It included a national voluntary
examination system geared to those new standards. They included new
generation, thousands of start-from-scratch, ``break-the-mold
schools.'' We call them today charter schools, but then there were only
perhaps ten such charter schools. It included giving teachers more
autonomy and flexibility in their classrooms by waiving federal rules
and regulations, something Congress eventually did more of later. It
also included a GI bill for children, to give middle and low-income
families $1,000 scholarships to spend at any lawfully operated school
of their choice, thereby giving those parents more of the same choices
that wealthy parents already had.
That was an excellent agenda in the early 1990s. It is still a good
agenda today. The summit on education, the national education goals
created in 1989, need to be remembered, and so does the leadership of
President George W. Bush on education.
I yield the floor.
Exhibit 1
The Remarks of The Honorable Gerald L. Baliles, Former Governor of
Virginia and Partner, Hunton & Williams, before the Miller Center of
Public Affairs and The Curry School of Education, The University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, November 4, 2004
the 1989 education summit: a reevaluation
At the beginning of the 1992 Vice Presidential debate, Ross
Perot's running mate, Admiral Stockdale, opened the debate by
looking into the camera and saying, ``Who am I and why am I
here?''
Today, I am here because 15 years ago I, along with the
rest of the nation's governors, met with the first President
Bush and his cabinet for an unprecedented Education Summit
here at the University of Virginia.
I am a strong believer in the importance of context; in the
notion that to truly understand an event or a series of
events, one must understand the times in which those events
occurred. And that is my role here today.
The agenda is filled with Education Secretaries, educators
and others who have played a critical role in how the results
of the Summit were implemented. They have been on the front
lines of education in the fifteen years since the Summit,
while I retired from public office just three and-a-half
months after the Summit's conclusion. I look forward to their
assessments of the progress made and the challenges that
confront us.
1 believe that former New Hampshire Governor and White
House Chief of Staff John Sununu and I are the only ones here
who actually attended the Summit, and all of its meetings, as
principal participants. So it is that the Miller Center has
asked me to provide some context, to discuss what was going
on at the time, why the meeting was held, what battles were
going on behind the scenes, and what our expectations were
for the Summit.
I am delighted to be here today to share the program with
Governor Warner, Secretary Paige and so many others who have
advanced the cause of education in our country.
I just mentioned John Sununu. 1 served as Vice Chair of the
National Governors Association under John and then succeeded
him as Chairman. Not long after that, John joined President
Bush in Washington as his Chief of Staff. One of the best
things about that 1989 summit was the opportunity to see and
work with John again, and I am delighted he is here today for
this retrospective event.
It is also a pleasure to be here with my former colleagues
Dick Riley and Lamar Alexander. I remember well my first
National Governors' Association Meeting, in August, 1986,
hosted by Governor Dick Riley at Hilton Head, South Carolina
and chaired by a Tennessee Governor named Lamar Alexander.
The major theme of the meeting was education; the NGA had
done a great deal of work on education reform during Governor
Alexander's chairmanship and the results were being released.
Lamar Alexander and Dick Riley, through their work as
Governors and later as U.S. Secretaries of Education, have
done more than any two people I can think of to advance the
cause of quality education in the United States over the past
quarter century. We all owe them a tremendous debt.
Now to the task at hand.
You might recall that the 1989 Summit was greeted with
equal measures of anticipation and cynicism, hope and
skepticism. Many noted at the time that Americans
periodically make brave and impressive noises about
education, but that we frequently fail to achieve the
necessary breakthroughs to give education the priority it
merits.
No question, some expected the Charlottesville Summit to be
little more than a variation on disappointing earlier
efforts. But others--and I counted myself among them--
believed that something different and important could happen
here, something which might foretell a favorable turning
point in our national commitment to education.
The day before leaving Richmond to come to Charlottesville
for the Summit, I made the following observation at a press
conference: ``While it seems unlikely to me that fundamental
solutions to the problems of education will emerge out of a
meeting that will last little more than 24 hours, the Summit
could well be the start of a significant national effort.''
Fifteen years later, I believe the Summit was not only the
start of a significant national effort, but in many ways was
a seminal event; nationalizing the importance of educational
policy, sharpening the focus on results, and making executive
political leadership more important.
To understand why, and to understand the context in which
the Summit was held, I want to focus on three factors in
particular:
First, I want to focus on the political context of the
time. Much of the media and public reaction to the Summit
centered around political questions--especially in the days
leading up to the Summit. How much of the Summit was designed
to cater to the President's political needs? How did Congress
view the Summit? What did the Governors expect? What tensions
existed between the different levels of government? Those
questions were being posed at the time, and it is important
to examine them.
Second, I want to look at the substantive context of the
time. There was consensus across the political spectrum in
1989 that the United States faced a challenge, almost a
crisis, of international competitiveness. While people of
various political stripes disagreed sharply on specific
remedies, it had become conventional wisdom that, by a
variety of international measures, including educational
achievement, the United States was not as competitive as most
of its trading partners and competitors in the global
economy, and was falling further behind. This may be
difficult to comprehend today, but the fact is that the
competitiveness issue
[[Page S11451]]
permeated most political debates of that time, and much of
the educational reform effort in the Nation was fueled by
competitiveness concerns.
Finally, I want to look at the debate over the Federal role
in education. In 1989, the very idea of a Federal role in
education was still an open question. Today, we largely argue
over what form the Federal role should take and how much it
will cost. Very few will question the Federal role. We do not
challenge the need for national standards or a national
approach to educational policy. Back then, things were quite
different, and the Summit played a major role--perhaps THE
major role--in settling the basic question of whether there
should be a Federal role in education.
I want to focus on those three factors of politics,
competitiveness and the Federal educational role because they
really laid the foundation for much of what has followed,
both at the State and Federal levels. And, yes, that includes
Virginia's ``Standards of Learning'' and the Federal ``No
Child Left Behind'' legislation.
politics
Let's begin with the political dimension.
It is well known that during the 1988 campaign, the then-
Vice President Bush had proclaimed that he'd like to be known
as the ``Education President.'' There was a belief, I think,
that this would not only allow him to compete for voters the
Democratic nominee was taking for granted, but that it would
also allow the Vice President to set himself apart from
President Reagan whose rhetoric and budgets, especially in
the early years, demonstrated opposition to Federal
involvement in education.
If that was President Bush's strategy, it worked. His
opponent in 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis,
took the education issue somewhat for granted and the Vice
President was able to use it to his advantage. For those who
feared a replay of Reagan-era proposals to eliminate the
Department of Education, the new President's words assuaged
their worries.
When President Bush talked of a ``kinder, gentler''
administration, many believed that he was talking about
education. Yet, when President Bush went on to observe, in
his inaugural address, that the U.S. Government had ``more
will than wallet'' in the face of mounting needs AND mounting
deficits, many worried that he would walk away from his
commitment to education.
Indeed, the first several months of the Bush administration
saw little or no action in the education area. This was
understandable. A new administration was getting organized,
momentous things were beginning to happen in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union, and pro democracy demonstrators spent
the spring of that year camped out in Tianamen Square in
Beijing.
In addition, hostages were being taken in the Middle East.
The budget deficit was increasing rapidly. There were many
serious international priorities. That nothing was happening
on education should not have been a surprise, though the fact
did give rise to some grumbling and increased pressure on the
Bush Administration to do something.
When President Bush came to Chicago in August, 1989 to
address the annual meeting of the National Governors
Association, there was much to talk about--in fact, the major
story in the news the day he visited concerned the death of a
U.S. hostage taken in the Middle East.
Indeed, the President broke the news of the hostage's death
to the public at the beginning of his speech to the
Governors. But during the course of his remarks, he announced
that he would meet with the Governors in a ``Summit''
sometime that fall to discuss education. It would be only the
third time a President would meet in a specially-called,
Summit-type, meeting with Governors, and the first time that
the subject would be education. The exact time and place had
not then been determined, nor had the University of Virginia
been selected as the site of the Summit.
Naturally, there were pundits who believed that the meeting
would be nothing more than a photo opportunity; a chance for
the President to quiet criticism of himself for not spending
as much time on education as some people wanted. It was
summertime, Congress was out of session, and after the
National Governors' Association meeting there was little hard
news for the press to focus on, at least in the domestic
arena. So, people were free to speculate about the
President's motives for holding the Summit, and about the
agenda for the meeting.
About two weeks after the President had proposed the
meeting, the White House announced that the Summit would be
held here at the University of Virginia, and that it would be
held at the end of September, about a month later. The fact
that we now had a specific set of dates, and a location, only
raised the intensity of the debate, as well as the political
temperature.
To begin with, Congress was unhappy about being excluded
from the discussion. Up until 1989, Federal education policy
was primarily a congressional concern. Presidents might
express opinions but otherwise were reduced mostly to signing
bills passed by Congress. Here was a President who had
proposed to alter that balance, who made it clear that the
Summit was limited to himself and the 50 State Governors
and the Governors of the territories.
Congressional leaders, particularly the chairmen of the
education committees, were outraged--and not just at the
President. Relations between Congress and the Governors were
a little frayed at the time, particularly between Democratic
Governors and Democratic members of Congress.
At that Chicago NGA meeting that I chaired, 49 of the 50
Governors signed a letter to congressional leaders asking for
a moratorium on new Medicaid mandates. Continued expansion of
Medicaid was exacting a major toll on State budgets around
the country, and the Governors were asking for a brief
moratorium on new mandates in order to find ways to fully
fund what was already in the pipeline.
Congressional leaders were incensed. Congressman Henry
Waxman, who chaired the subcommittee in charge of Medicaid,
wrote to all Democratic Governors accusing them of a variety
of sins for their position in support of a moratorium on new
Medicaid mandates. Things were especially tense between the
gubernatorial wing of the Democratic party and the
congressional wing (in those days, Democrats controlled both
houses of Congress).
So, there was the fear that congressional prerogatives were
being stripped away and anger at Governors, particularly
Democratic Governors, for being complicit in upsetting this
balance.
Congressional leaders found an ally in the then-Governor of
New York, Mario Cuomo. Governor Cuomo, who was also the only
Governor not to sign the Medicaid mandate letter, began
working with Senator Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Human
Resources Committee, and Congressman Hawkins, his House
counterpart. They wanted Congressional leaders to participate
in the Summit since Congress would have to fund any Federal
initiatives, and they were also urging Democratic Governors
to go to the Summit with an agenda demanding full Federal
funding of a variety of programs, and the creation of several
new Federal programs as well.
Many of the Democratic Governors believed this approach to
be misguided, that if the Governors' conversation with the
President on education simply mirrored Washington's fights
over formulas and funding, then the public would view the
meeting skeptically, and we would lose an important
opportunity to articulate a national commitment to education.
Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was the Lead Democratic
Governor for Education, and he and I worked together to
convince our Democratic gubernatorial colleagues of this
point of view. It was a difficult challenge and the outcome
was uncertain. Attempts were made by some to convince
individual Democratic Governors, and their staffs, that the
Summit was a clever trap devised by the administration to
ensure that no new resources would go into education.
In the end, we convinced most of the Democratic Governors
that the best way forward was an approach that focused on a
set of challenging goals and standards; stringent enough that
the goals could not be reached without a major financial
commitment at all levels of government.
We believed that if we just asked for more money, we would
lose the public debate; that people would not support money
divorced from results; that both needed to go hand-in-hand.
We believed, in short, that the best way to obtain
additional resources for education was to set goals that
could not be achieved without those new resources.
So, if one is looking for a reason why the major result of
the Summit was a commitment to develop national goals, this
is a good place to start.
In the meantime, the Republicans were having their own
discussions. Most of them also revolved around funding, with
the administration being wary of calls simply to provide more
Federal money. Congressional Republicans largely agreed with
the new administration in opposing more money, with some even
wanting to make cuts in education spending. Republican
Governors wanted to be supportive of their President in
holding the line against demands for major new cash
infusions, but they also realized that more resources were
required. Some of the most conservative Republicans were
concerned that the Summit would all but enshrine a Federal
role in education that they opposed.
In the end, Republican Governors came to a very similar
conclusion as their Democratic counterparts--that national
goals would be the best way forward. My impression was that
they were under much less pressure from their congressional
counterparts than the Democratic Governors were from
congressional Democrats; the pressure Republican Governors
faced came more from an administration not wanting to be
pressured into major new infusions of Federal money. But
Governors of both parties ultimately came to similar
conclusions prior to the Summit.
In today's partisan political climate, this bipartisan
consensus seems almost impossible to believe. There were many
reasons for this bipartisan convergence in thinking.
Perhaps it is because Governors have always been--or at
least were then--better able to work across Party lines than
members of Congress.
Perhaps it is because Governor Clinton and South Carolina
Governor Carroll Campbell, who was the Lead Republican
Governor for Education, got along so well or because Iowa
Governor Terry Brandstad and Washington Governor Booth
Gardner, the new Chairman
[[Page S11452]]
and Vice Chairman respectively, of the National Governors
Association got along so well, or because we all got along
with John Sununu, who as White House Chief of Staff played a
major role in Summit preparations. Who knows?
The fact is, however, that the political needs and desires
of both Democratic and Republican Governors happened to
coincide in an important way at that time, and the Governors
went in to the Summit pretty much united over the need for
fairly aggressive national goals. It was, to resurrect a
phrase, a time of harmonic convergence.
And what about the White House? As I mentioned earlier, the
main political worry from the White House was that the Summit
would lead to intense pressure for a major infusion of new
Federal dollars. I remember, very specifically, that this was
the one non-negotiable demand from the White House--the
Summit would not be allowed to focus solely on discussions of
new Federal money.
Some on the White House staff wanted little more than a
statement saying that the President and Governors shared a
common commitment to education. Others believed that such a
result would be seen as inadequate and would merely confirm
the suspicion many had that the entire Summit was pure
politics.
I want to state, by the way, that my belief has always been
that President Bush was sincere in his desire to chart a new
way forward in education. This view was confirmed by what I
observed at the Summit and by conversations I had with the
President in the months and years after the Summit--including
a visit to Camp David a couple of years later. In this, he
had the effective assistance of John Sununu and, later, Lamar
Alexander. But there were some in the administration in
September, 1989, who advocated a minimalist approach, to say
the least.
But others at the White House, echoing the President,
believed that we had the opportunity to achieve more than a
``Mom and Apple Pie'' joint statement on the value of
education. They were no more interested in committing the
administration to major new Federal spending than the
minimalists, but they did believe that we had a golden
opportunity to focus the country's attention on the need for
a shared national goal of education excellence.
Thus was the consensus born that the Summit would attempt
to articulate a set of national educational goals, or at
least begin a process in which such goals could be developed.
So, yes, politics was critically important to how the
Summit unfolded and concluded. But as my UVA friend Larry
Sabato likes to say, ``politics is a good thing.'' And in
this case, politics led to a shared approach and a
constructive outcome for educational reform.
competiveness
Let me turn now to my second point, the substantive
international policy concerns of late 1989.
It is hard to remember now, with most of Europe and Japan
stuck in a decade-long economic funk, but in the late 1980's
the major issue hanging over the education debate--permeating
debates over everything in fact--was competitiveness. At the
time, the best way to get attention for one's issue was to
link it to the effort to make the American economy more
competitive on a global basis. The book shelves were filled
with tomes written by academics, journalists, politicians,
sports coaches and others about competitiveness.
Education was a major issue affected by the competitiveness
debate. The changes that so challenged the Nation--the
changes that inspired the Education Summit--were as much
external as they were internal. And they were viewed as quite
real, even threatening.
The case for viewing education in this light was first made
with the 1983 publication of ``A Nation at Risk.'' That
report completely transformed the education reform issue; it
began to nationalize the issue, and it placed education
firmly in the middle of the competitiveness debate.
Listen to the language in the opening paragraphs of that
report: ``[America's] once unchallenged preeminence in
commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is
being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. . . .
[T]he educational foundations of our society are presently
being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens
our very future as a Nation and as a people. . . . We have,
in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral
educational disarmament.''
Tough stuff. Of course, the intent of the words was to jolt
the public, the press and our political institutions out of
their complacency and remove the inertia of the status quo.
The fact that the report came from a panel created by
President Reagan's Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell, made
the words all the more powerful.
Well, if the intent was to jolt, it worked. Within just one
year of the report's release, 41 States had toughened high
school graduation requirements in line with the report's
recommendations. Thirty-five States had raised teacher
certification standards, twenty States had increased
instructional time and nineteen had improved school
discipline policies.
In 1986, the National Governors' Association released ``A
Time for Results.'' This report proposed a series of actions
to be completed by 1991--to strengthen teaching, increase the
use of technology and raise the level of local educational
standards. This report was to be updated each year in a
series called ``Results in Education.''
Also in 1986, the Southern Governors Association Advisory
Council on International Education released a report calling
for improvements in the teaching of languages, geography and
other international subjects. The report stated: ``By every
measure, Americans are not prepared to compete and to
participate in the international marketplace.'' The report
continued: ``We, as a nation, as constantly surprised by
world political and economic events. They occur in places we
never heard of, for reasons we do not understand.'' The title
of the report?
Cornerstone of Competition
In 1987, the National Governors Association launched a
year-long initiative called ``Jobs, Growth and Competition''
which focused on a variety of issues, including education,
that were deemed important to improving our international
competitiveness. In 1989, the National Governors' Association
launched an initiative during my chairmanship called
``America in Transition, the International Frontier.'' The
final report was entitled ``A Competitive Nation.'' A
series of earlier reports had focused on a variety of
issues, including education.
But, this competitiveness concern wasn't just for
Governors. Congress and the President got in on the act as
well.
Congress created the Competitiveness Policy Council and
charged it with reporting yearly on a series of actions that
the nation could take to enhance its competitiveness in
transportation, technology, trade, fiscal policy and
education.
The White House created a Competitiveness Council, chaired
by the Vice President. So, this topic was a concern at every
level of government.
At the 1989 Education Summit's opening press conference, I
noted that: ``We increasingly cannot compete with overseas
nations. . . . The problem is that successful state and local
programs are not enough; we need national educational
excellence, and a national commitment to obtain it.''
So, the competitiveness issue permeated the political
landscape, it impacted everything else. There was consensus
across the land that we had a ``competitiveness problem'' And
education was a part of that problem--and solution.
What did this mean?
It meant that education could no longer be strictly a local
or state issue. For if we had a national problem of
competitiveness, then we needed national solutions. We could
not leave it to chance that every State and locality would
properly educate their young people; after all, our
competitors had not. We needed a national conversation about
education, we needed national results. We needed--voila--
national goals, just like our competitors had. That's why the
Joint Statement issued by the President and Governors at the
conclusion of the Summit began with these words: ``The
President and the nation's Governors agree that a better
educated citizenry is the key to the continued growth and
prosperity of the United States. . . . Education has always
been important, but never this important because the stakes
have changed: Our competitors for opportunity are also
working to educate their people. As they continue to improve,
they make the future a moving target.''
And in the introduction to the National Education Goals
agreed to five months later by the President and the
Governors, you will find these words: ``America's educational
performance must be second to none in the 21st century.
Education is central to our quality of life. It is at the
heart of our economic strength and security, our creativity
in the arts and letters, our invention in the sciences, and
the perpetuation of our cultural values. Education is the key
to America's international competitiveness.''
The need to fit education into a national competitiveness
strategy, combined with the political conclusions arrived at
by Governors of both parties and the White House, forced a
focus on national goals as the way forward.
federal role
Finally, let me focus on my third point: the concern in
1989 over Federal involvement in education.
If the political mood and economic imperative seemed to be
converging on the idea of national education goals, there was
still an unease many people felt about Federal involvement in
education. This had been the subject of considerable debate a
decade earlier when the U.S. Department of Education was
created during the Carter Administration. It was the topic of
campaign rhetoric on the campaign trail in 1980, and it was
certainly argued in the halls of Congress on an annual basis
in the early to mid-1980's when President Reagan proposed
eliminating the department in his proposed budgets.
Among those most uncomfortable with the idea of an
Education Summit were those who were ideologically opposed to
the very idea of Federal involvement in education. Many
writers, including William Safire, warned explicitly that the
Bush Administration was setting the stage for a large
expansion of the Federal role in education and for
nationalizing the issue.
They were right.
In fact, I would argue that the major achievement of the
1989 Education Summit was to settle, once and for all, the
argument over a Federal role in education; whether education
would be a national issue. The
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President and the Governors, by agreeing to the need for
national education goals and agreeing on a strategy for
developing those goals, had agreed upon a framework. There
WOULD be a Federal role; education WOULD be a national issue,
addressed with national solutions.
It meant that educational decisions would no longer be
settled solely at the local level. It meant that legislative
deliberations at the State and Federal levels would become
relatively less important, and executive decision and vision
relatively more important. That's what happens when results
are required; when speeches, money and programs are just not
enough.
This all seems like conventional wisdom today, but we can
easily forget it was not always so. The 1989 Summit had a
real impact, far beyond the imagining of those of us
privileged enough to have participated. It fundamentally
changed the balance of political power on education issues,
and it nationalized education policy in a way few would have
conceived just a few years earlier.
Conclusion
When the President called for a Summit with the Nation's
Governors to discuss education, many observers may not have
known what to expect. I don't recall any of the Governors
believing beforehand that, while we agreed on the need for
national goals, we would settle the argument over Federal
involvement in education, or that we would shift the Federal
focus on education from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the
other.
I do recall a great deal of skepticism and criticism from
outside observers, especially Congress and the press. But I
do not recall anything but the most constructive attitude
being expressed by any of the principal participants. And, by
the way, this was a meeting of principals, very few staff
aides were permitted much of a role at all.
It is worth noting, by the way, that the participants--
despite all of the good will and convergence of thinking on
the value of setting national goals--did not settle on
specific goals at the Summit. We agreed on the need for
goals, and, in general, what those goals should address. The
actual goals themselves, however, were not developed until
several months later.
But, for the first time, the President and Governors were
discussing on a national level a series of important
questions. Many of these had long been discussed and debated
in the States, and particularly in the Southern Regional
Education Board states. These questions included, among
others:
Intervention: Could we do a better job of preparing
children for first grade?
Dropout rates: Could we slow the tide?
Adult literacy: Could we put a dent in it, even eliminate
it?
Teacher quality: Could we motivate and inspire it?
Decentralized management: Could it produce better results?
And, parental choice: Could this be a workable technique or
just the latest fad?
In the end, it was a focus on such questions that formed
the basis of the goals and the national education policy that
we know today.
I believe the Education Summit was, to paraphrase Winston
Churchill, the ``beginning of a new beginning'' in education
policy. I believe the way we think, as a Nation, about the
goals and objectives of education began to change in
September, 1989. Unsurprisingly, we did not find all the
answers at the Summit. But we were asking the right
questions--and for the first time, we were asking them as a
Nation.
In one sense, this should not have been all that
surprising, because throughout our national history,
educational reform has been a vital and characteristic part
of the American impulse. We have always believed that we can,
by the force of our own imagination and determination,
improve tomorrow by improving ourselves and our children.
But, never has it been more important that our traditional
convictions give rise to deliberate action.
If ignorance is the enemy of democracy, in an international
economy, ignorance could well be an invitation to national
decline. In 1989, it was clear and apparent that the time had
arrived for us to put ourselves on the spot, That was the
message I heard in Charlottesville,
Accountability and the measurement of student performance,
we declared, must be an integral part of our educational
process. Indeed, Charlottesville portended a significant
shift in our approach to education: From here on, we said
that we are going to be increasingly measured by more than
the resources we invest. Instead, we declared that we are
going to be questioned and examined on the progress our
students achieve--or fail to achieve.
Frankly, I think that is how it should be--for there is too
much at stake for it to be otherwise.
In 1989, the President and the governors joined efforts to
ensure that America becomes a Nation resolved to using
education as the best means for shaping the future. The
reason we are here today is to assess our national
performance since 1989. Where are the benchmarks of progress?
Where are the guideposts for confronting the challenges?
Our speakers and panelists today are here to help us make
those assessments. I share your interest in their opinions of
how far we have come, and I am confident that they will focus
our attention on the significant challenges at hand.
Today, as in 1989, we recognize that we have a lot of work
to do, and we should always keep in perspective that all of
our educational goals, commitments and resources come down to
two fundamental points:
First, education's role as a transmitter of civilization's
knowledge and values must not be diminished. It is part of
the glue that binds together the fabric of our society.
Second, education is, also, increasingly, the engine that
drives the American economy--our economic future depends upon
our ability to compete, but our ability to compete depends
upon our ability to educate. It is just that simple.
Thank you. I look forward to the rest of the Conference.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Chambliss). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded and I be recognized to speak in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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