[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I)]
[April 16, 1992]
[Pages 609-613]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Lehigh Valley 2000 Community in Allentown, Pennsylvania

April 16, 1992
    My fellow president, thank you very, very much. [Laughter] This is a 
nonpolitical appearance, if there is any such thing in a strange 
political year. But let me just say this: I'm very glad that Hilda is 
not running for President this year. [Laughter] And thank you for your 
introduction.
    And may I congratulate all six of these guys that spelled out the 
six educational goals, reminding us of what our national goals are. And 
I asked one of them if he was nervous. He shook me off, said no. I don't 
believe him, but--[laughter]--they did a first-class job, all of them, 
every one of them.
    And may I pay my respects to our very able Secretary of Education, 
Lamar Alexander, former Governor, now challenging this country with 
America 2000 and doing a superb job for all the American people; and at 
my side in the United States Congress, caring deeply about education, 
telling me over and over again about the changes and the wonder that's 
taking place right here in the valley, Don Ritter, your Congressman. 
He's doing a first-class job in Washington.
    May I salute Mayors Daddona and Smith, the Mayor of Allentown and 
the Mayor of Bethlehem, and of course, pay my respect to Ed Donley, a 
driving force behind Lehigh Valley 2000 and cochair of Pennsylvania 
2000. And my respect also to she who led us in the pledge, Ann Snyder, 
the valedictorian of the class of '92. Ann, thank you; our guests who 
did such a great job with the goals; Mike Meilinger, the principal, and 
I thank him for calling this special assembly today and getting a lot of 
you out of class. You ought to be grateful to him. My special thanks to 
the parents and the teachers and the staff. Thanks also to all the folks 
here from Allentown and Easton and Bethlehem, the leading lights of 
Lehigh Valley. Last but not least, let me say hello to the students of 
Dieruff High, with special thanks to the band. It was first-class music. 
Thank you all very, very much.
    I don't know who is in charge of signs around this place, but they 
did a first-class job, all through the building and everyplace else. And 
it's astonishing to be here with the class of '92 as a graduate of the 
class of '42. I realize the world I thought of as new, for you, well, 
it's history. But look now at the world you'll soon call your own, at 
the pace of change that we've come to expect. Each day we see history 
played out in the headlines, literally. Old empires expire; new worlds 
are born. In the past 6 months alone, 6 months, we've seen the birth of 
18 new nations. Who knows how many there will be by the time you take 
your big geography final a few weeks from now.
    But the challenges we face, the sheer complexity of our world, 
cannot obscure the basic values that guide this Nation. Times change; 
but truths, fundamental truths, endure. I'm talking about the big issues 
that shape our world, about the values close to home. Everything I've 
tried to do and done to preserve and advance three precious legacies: 
strong families, good jobs, and a world at peace. These are my goals. 
They should be all of ours. Securing those legacies has been my mission 
as President, and it's going to be my mission today and every day as 
long as I am President of the United States.
    You know, right now here in Allentown and across America, the number 
one concern is the economy. Turning this economy around, creating jobs 
is the mission that

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matters most. Listen to what people say about the economy. Get beneath 
the cold statistics; get down to the real heart of this issue. People 
want to know whether they can keep the job they've got and whether 
they're on track for a better one. For their kids, for each one of the 
students here today, parents have got grander visions, great hopes: Not 
just a job, a career; work that means more than simply making ends meet; 
work that gives real meaning to your life.
    People have a right to ask, ``What is Government's role in all of 
this?'' No, we can't legislate the American dream. But Government can 
serve as a catalyst for change, clearing away the obstacles to economic 
growth and the unnecessary costs of doing business, expanding the 
opportunities for aggressive businesses, for enterprising individuals to 
create new jobs, training and educating our children, giving you the 
tools of thought you'll need to compete in this new, exciting world 
economy.
    The fate of America's economic future rests on five key reforms:
    Free and fair trade, our ability to break down barriers, open new 
markets to American goods;
    Our future rests on legal reform, on ending the explosion of 
litigation that strains our patience and saps our economy. We're suing 
each other too much. We ought to be helping each other more;
    On health care reform, opening up access to all Americans, 
controlling the runaway cost of health care without sacrificing choice 
and without sacrificing the best quality health care in the entire 
world;
    And then on Government reform, because only if we reverse a 
generation of creeping bureaucracy and only if we restore limits to 
Government can we restore public trust;
    Finally, the reason I've come here to the valley today: Our future 
depends on education reform, on our ability to revolutionize, literally 
reinvent our schools, to take that revolution beyond the four walls of 
the classroom, transform our attitudes and ideas, the way we think about 
education.
    And I wish every adult and every kid could have been with me a few 
minutes ago as some of the leaders, business and education leaders 
assembled, civic leaders, to tell me about this exciting change taking 
place right here in Lehigh Valley.
    Education, it represents a perfect community of interest between the 
individual and society, between one generation and the next, between the 
proud history we must pass on and the path-breaking future we must 
create. And in terms of America's economic future, education is nothing 
less than a matter of economic survival. It's just this simple: Better 
schools mean better jobs.
    You've seen the news stories. You've heard the statistics. Anyone 
who worries about slack productivity or a bad balance of trade ought to 
be alarmed about the test scores. Millions of students work hard; 
millions of dedicated teachers, doing their very best; and still, in one 
test after another, America's children score at or near the bottom ranks 
of international achievement. We don't need another test to tell us 
something is wrong with the state of American education. For the sake of 
every student here today, we've got to shake off any sense of 
complacency; we've got to shake up the status quo.
    Now, in a sense, I'm preaching to the choir because here in Lehigh 
Valley that's a lesson you learned long ago, years ago. But you didn't 
wait for word from Washington, DC. You didn't stand back and watch 
another generation of kids get less education than they deserved. This 
community took a direct interest in what was going on in the classroom. 
This community came together. This community took action.
    I took office determined to put the power of the Presidency behind 
change. More than 2 years ago, we took a strong first step. Working 
together with the Nation's Governors, Democrat and Republican alike, we 
set six ambitious goals for the year 2000. It never had been done 
before. Every American child must start school ready to learn. We must 
raise the high school graduation rate to 90 percent. We must put in 
place a system of world-class standards and tests to measure students' 
progress. We must be first in the world in math and science. By the year 
2000, every American adult must be literate, and every American school 
must be free of drugs, free from the violence that

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today too often follows our kids into the classroom. Let me sum up the 
six goals this way: Together, by the year 2000, we must create the best 
schools in the world for our children.
    Let me share a story that our Secretary, Lamar, told me about a 
little girl, a fourth grader named Ariane Williams. At the kickoff for 
New Orleans 2000 down in Louisiana, she stood up, and here's what she 
said, ``These goals are not just the President's goals. They're not just 
the Governor's goals. They are the Nation's goals.'' That little girl 
got the message, and so do you here in this valley. Goals define the 
mission. They tell us where we want to go, not how to get there.
    That's why, as I was reminded at this meeting I told you about, 
nearly one year ago today, I mapped out a strategy I call America 2000, 
a plan to revolutionize American education. Then I heard the progress 
that had been made before that even began, to break the mold and, for 
the sake of our children, put an end to business-as-usual. Two days from 
now, we're going to mark the first anniversary of America 2000. Let me 
share with you today a kind of report card, if you will, on what we've 
accomplished. In one year's time, we've seen America 2000 literally 
catch fire all across this country. Already, 43 States and more than 
1,000 communities, from Grand Junction, Colorado, to Lewiston, Maine, 
have joined the America 2000 crusade. Everywhere, people like you are 
working to break down the barriers between the classroom and the 
community, to spark a grassroots revolution to reinvent, not just rework 
but to literally reinvent the American school. But you know that story 
because, once again, Lehigh Valley has led the way.
    I want to share with you an old African proverb that's the motto of 
Minnesota 2000, ``It takes an entire village to educate one child.'' And 
that is what it takes because education doesn't just happen in the 
classroom. It doesn't start at 8:20 each morning and end at 5 of 3. All 
of us lead busy lives, but we must never be too busy to read to our 
kids. And if I might ad lib something in here, I am very, very proud of 
Barbara Bush for setting an example about how families ought to stay 
together and how families ought to read to their kids. Parents ought to 
read to their kids.
    And we must never be too busy to teach them right from wrong, to 
take an interest in the things that they worry about and wonder at, and 
to listen, really listen to what they say. We owe it to our children and 
to ourselves to see that we live in communities that care about 
education, communities where learning can happen.
    You've got every right to ask, ``What can Washington do to help?'' 
Well, here's one way we can. Today, I want to announce a new legislative 
initiative that I call the ``lifetime education and training account,'' 
a package of grants and line of credit worth $25,000 to every eligible 
American to further their education or acquire new job skills to make 
the most of their abilities. I've said before if we want to compete in 
the 21st century, we've got to become a Nation of students. To do that, 
we've got to take a new approach to the old notions of student aid. 
Think of the working mother, balancing her responsibility for her family 
and her job against her own hopes for the future. She'd take one college 
course at a time, but she doesn't qualify right now for the grant or 
loan that would help pay tuition. Our ``lifetime education and training 
account'' would help her get back into the classroom. Here's the message 
for the students here today and for their parents: Education doesn't end 
with graduation; learning has got to be a lifelong pursuit.
    I came to Lehigh, to one of the first communities to join the 
America 2000 crusade, to set the agenda for the second year of America 
2000. Our next step forward depends on our success in building a 
consensus for change around four core ideas, four ways to build on what 
we've begun, to transform the Federal Government into a catalyst for 
real education reform. First, if we're serious about reaching our goals, 
we must set world-class standards in five core subjects and establish a 
series of voluntary American achievement tests to measure our children's 
progress.
    Second, we've got to grant States and local school districts relief 
from Federal rules and regulations that limit their ability to improve 
educational achievement and do

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nothing to help us meet our national education goals. And 
parenthetically, I'm told by the leaders I met with today that the 
Governor of this State has granted such regulatory flexibility and 
regulatory relief to this community effort here. Our teachers and our 
principals deserve flexibility, freedom to use their frontline 
experience on what works best in their schools to meet these national 
goals. Has anyone asked the teachers here today, ``How can we ask you to 
teach and then tie your hands?''
    Third, we've got to launch a wide-open effort to create thousands of 
new American schools, starting with at least one in every congressional 
district all across the United States. Right here in Lehigh Valley, 
you're hard at work on your plan to make this community home to its own 
new American school. I heard the exciting proposals on that today. These 
break-the-mold schools won't conform to any one blueprint. Some may make 
a quantum leap forward into tomorrow's technologies. Others might seek 
to reach the future by restoring older traditions, the discipline and 
disciplines of an earlier era. Each one of these schools would be a 
living example of how we can reinvent American education. All we need 
now from Congress is the seed money to help people like you translate 
ideas into action.
    Fourth, we must create an incentive to improve education by 
promoting school choice. For far too long, we've shielded our schools 
from competition, allowed the system a damaging monopoly power over 
students. Well, just as monopolies are bad for the economy, they're bad 
for our kids. Every parent should have the power to choose which school 
is best for his child, public, private, or religious.
    Look at our colleges; look at America's colleges; look at the 
students. Our university system is the envy of the world. Each year, we 
make over $20 billion in Federal grants and loans directly to students, 
one of every two students enrolled in college right now, to use at the 
university of their choice. No one asks whether they enroll at Penn 
State or Pennsylvania University or Villanova or Lehigh or Lafayette. 
It's time we make the same choice available to all parents from the 
moment their children go to school. Whether it's the public school on 
your street or the one across town, whether it's private, parochial, 
yeshiva, or Bible school, let parents, not the Government, make that 
choice.
    And let's be clear. If we deny parents school choice, if we deny 
that choice, let's recognize who's hurt worst by the status quo. It's 
not the well-to-do. It's not the rich guy. It's not the upper-middle 
class. It's not any one of us who ever went house-hunting with a map of 
the good school districts. Deny people school choice, and the ones you 
hurt most are the middle class and lower and especially the poor.
    That's why choice is catching on in some of the hardest hit 
neighborhoods in this Nation. Talk to parents that are spearheading the 
school choice crusade, people like now-famous Polly Williams in 
Milwaukee. They'll tell you how the lack of choice left them powerless 
to force change and how a public school bureaucracy turned students into 
statistics and parents into pawns. Look at Milwaukee today, pioneering 
school choice, giving poor parents control and poor children a sense of 
pride. Look at the schools closer to home, East Harlem, where teachers 
put their names on waiting lists to get a chance to teach in a choice 
school. They can't wait to stand in front of a classroom of children who 
want to be there, who want to learn.
    Choice works, and here's why. When our students are a captive 
audience, our schools have no incentive to improve. Say what you want 
about reforming our schools, if you're for change, you are for school 
choice. These four ideas are generating interest and enthusiasm among 
Governors and mayors, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives; 
among business leaders, Ed Donley right here and the Allentown-Lehigh 
County Chamber of Commerce to the Fortune 500; among teachers and 
students and parents and principals, everyone at every level who 
understands the need for change.
    Everyone, that is, except the leaders of the United States Congress. 
At a moment when the consensus for change seems to be reaching critical 
mass, on Capitol Hill you can watch the last stand of the status quo. 
Forces there are waging a last-ditch effort to put the brakes on change, 
to preserve

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the business-as-usual approach that brought us the present crisis in 
education. The mindset up on Capitol Hill reminds me of a letter I got 
the other day from an elementary school student, a little girl named 
Haruka Abe. ``I like,'' she says, ``when my teacher reads my class some 
books because everybody gets sleepy.'' [Laughter] Well, it reminds me of 
Capitol Hill and the way they're approaching change. Take a look at the 
bill that's now winding its way through the Congress, the tired old 
ideas, tried and failed, that it wants to substitute for the four path-
breaking ideas I mentioned a moment ago.
    As part of America 2000, we asked Congress for authority to help 
develop world-class standards and American achievement tests, tools that 
would help us measure our students' progress, help families understand 
where their kids might stand, and assess the return we're getting for 
our education dollars. And the status quo crowd up there on Capitol Hill 
said ``slow down'' to testing and standards. I asked Congress for funds 
for this new American schools. Congress said no, no to even funding one 
percent, 535 of 50,000 new American schools that this Nation needs. They 
want to funnel more Federal dollars into these existing mandated 
business-as-usual State bureaucracies, the very same bureaucracies that 
put us where we are today. And we asked the Congress for flexibility for 
teachers, flexibility for principals. And Congress said, ``No, let's 
stick to the status quo.'' And finally, we asked the Congress to fund 
pilot programs to promote school choice, programs to help poor families 
in six American cities. And Congress said no to school choice.
    So today, let me just serve notice on the lobby, on the education 
lobby and their friends back on Capitol Hill: One year ago, I asked you 
to join with me in a revolution, a revolution to be part of America 
2000. The time has come to get on board or get out of the way and stay 
behind. No more business as usual. Congress can drag its feet, but it 
cannot stop change.
    Lehigh Valley is living proof of the words of the great Abraham 
Lincoln, ``Revolutions do not go backward.'' There's a time early in 
every revolution when the status quo looks steady and strong and the 
forces that challenge it weak and without effect. And there's the moment 
when the forces of change carry the day; the bankruptcy of the status 
quo stands revealed, and the whole hollow house of cards collapses.
    The revolution in American education is already underway. In Lehigh 
Valley and in communities all across America, the old ways are being 
pushed aside. They're being abandoned; new ideas, advanced. This 
revolution will triumph for the simplest and the strongest of reasons, 
because American parents want the best for their children and also 
because there isn't a single child anywhere in the United States of 
America who doesn't deserve the best education possible.
    From our schools to our courts, from our hospitals to the halls of 
Government, from the neighborhoods outside our door to the realities of 
the new world economy, the need for reform won't wait. The only 
acceptable response is the American response. We must rekindle a 
revolution, a revolution to bring change to the country that's changed 
the world. The American people have made their choice. The American 
people want change. And you here in Lehigh Valley can proudly say, ``We 
are out front for fundamental, constructive change.''
    Thank you all for this wonderful day of learning, this warm welcome. 
Any may God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much.

                    Note: The President spoke at 12:35 p.m. at Dieruff 
                        High School. In his remarks, he referred to 
                        Hilda Rivas, the school's senior class 
                        president.