[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

[[Page S11453]]

     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.

                          ____________________