    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [May 14, 1993]
    [Pages 657-659]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 657]]

    Remarks Honoring Blue Ribbon Schools
    May 14, 1993

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary Riley. Thank you, ladies
    and gentlemen.
        I want to welcome you all to the White House today on this gorgeous
    day. I hope you've enjoyed yourselves. The Marine Band has been in
    especially fine form this morning. I woke up to them; I went jogging to
    them. I almost felt like a President this morning for sure when I was
    walking over to the Oval Office. They were playing a march that was
    written for the coronation of a British monarch, so I almost got myself
    confused. [Laughter]
        There are 228 schools here represented today, the winners of the
    Blue Ribbon Awards this year. And all of you are winners, representing
    what is best in American education in public and private schools and
    urban and suburban and rural schools. You all share some common features
    with all your differences: visionary leadership, a sense of shared
    purpose, a climate conducive to learning, impressive academic
    achievement brought on not only by gifted teachers but also by
    responsible and open student behavior, and real involvement of parents
    and often the broader community in the life of the school.
        I spent a lot of time thinking about these educational issues over
    the last 12 or so years. I spent more of my time as a Governor on
    education than on any other single issue except for the economy of my
    State. I spent hundreds of hours, I suppose, in schools in my State and
    around the country over the last 12 to 15 years and some time in one of
    the schools from Arkansas that's being honored today.
        A hundred years ago the key to a strong economy was our raw material
    base. Fifty years ago it was mass production. Now it is clearly the
    trained human mind. We live in a world where the average person will
    change work seven or eight times in a lifetime, when the volume of
    knowledge is doubling every few years. When people in Silicon Valley
    making new computers and new computer programs tell me their average
    product life is now down to 18 months, clearly the reasoning, creative,
    facile but also deep mind is key to the future of the United States. We
    also live in a time when hardly anybody can get and keep a decent job
    without more education that too many of our people lack today.
        If we could multiply the grade schools here represented on this lawn
    all across the country, we could really revolutionize education in
    America. I must tell you that the most challenging--[applause]--give
    yourselves a hand. That's a good idea. The most challenging thing I ever
    faced as Governor and the most continually frustrating was going into
    our schools and realizing that virtually every challenge in American
    education has been met successfully by somebody somewhere.
        There are people succeeding against all the odds and producing
    magnificent results in extremely difficult circumstances. There are
    schools producing world-class results by any rigorous measure. The
    problem with American education is that we have never found an effective
    way to help replicate success, partly because the magic of education is
    always what happens in the individual classroom between the teacher and
    the student, supported by the parents, strengthened by the culture of a
    school that is set overwhelmingly by a gifted principal. I know that.
        But there have to be ways to recognize the plain fact that
    notwithstanding the funding problems, notwithstanding the inequalities,
    notwithstanding all the problems of American education, you can find
    virtually every problem in our country solved by somebody somewhere in
    an astonishingly effective fashion if you look at enough schools. So the
    challenge for us here is to figure out how to replicate that. That is
    what Secretary Riley and I are trying to do with the ``Educate America
    Act,'' the Goals 2000 act that we presented to the United States
    Congress, a bill we believe will lead to the creation of world-class
    learning standards and also help to promote the idea that, clearly, all
    reforms must occur school by school.
        Goals 2000 will, in effect, enshrine the national education goals in
    the law of the land, raise expectations for all students, and help to
    enrich the content of our courses, the training of our teachers, and the
    quality of our textbooks and our technology. Finally, the bill will
    challenge our schools to show real results. We believe students and
    schools should have more

    [[Page 658]]

    flexibility in dealing with Federal programs and should be shooting
    toward real results and clear standards. Goals 2000 is the framework for
    that educational effort in this administration. It will facilitate
    fundamental reforms in our schools, and I must say that's probably why
    some people don't like it all that well, including some members of my
    own party in the Congress.
        But we can't raise standards and achievement either by leaving
    things the way they are or simply by piling on more particular
    governmental programs and mandates from Washington. After all, we're
    only providing about 7 percent of the total financing of public schools
    today, and while I hope to reverse that trend and over the next 5 years
    get the percentage back up to somewhere to where it was over the last
    several years, still the lion's share of the financing and the lion's
    share of the learning reforms must come from you and people like you.
    And that means we have to have a different approach in the way the
    National Government relates to our schools. I hope that the Congress
    will not dilute the package that I sent to them. I hope we can pass the
    bill in a way that will represent a real change in the way the National
    Government relates to the schools and a real increase in confidence in
    proven local leaders.
        I'd also like to say that the private sector in this country has
    shown an astonishing willingness to become more involved in education
    ever since the issuance of the ``Nation at Risk'' report 10 years ago.
    The New American Schools Development Corporation, on which Governor
    Baliles serves on the board and which Governor Riley and now Secretary
    Riley mentioned, has already raised millions of dollars from public
    spirited business leaders. It has path-breaking design teams which are
    providing us with valuable lessons about how school innovations all
    around America can help us to reach world-class standards. And it is
    trying to help to replicate what works, which I still believe is our
    most urgent task.
        Through these new designs they will be able to provide promising
    alternatives for schools and States as they work to reinvent their
    schools with the help of Goals 2000 and other reform efforts that this
    administration will make. I ask all of you to support this legislation
    and the work of the New American Schools Corporation. I ask you to
    support it in the larger context of what we must do as a nation.
        Think of what has happened to bring us to this point where we have
    come to 17 months in a row with unemployment rate at 7 percent or higher
    in every month, even though we are allegedly in an economic recovery.
    What has happened to bring us to a point where most American families
    are spending more hours on the job than they were 20 years ago with
    lower real incomes than they made 10 years ago, including some of the
    families represented in this audience? What has caused that? Our lack of
    ability to be continuously productive, our lack of ability to create
    more and more new jobs that will stand the test of the rigorous global
    economy. What we have to do in our administration and what I earnestly
    ask for your support in doing is to reverse the trends that have brought
    us to this past.
        Let us first of all bring down the Government deficit that has
    gotten our debt from $1 trillion to $4 trillion in the last 12 years
    simply by telling people at election time what they wanted to hear: I'll
    cut your taxes and write you a check. All the arithmetic teachers in
    this audience could have figured out that sooner or later that would get
    us in trouble. Nobody could have passed math in this town in any of your
    schools in the last 12 years who with a straight face said, ``I've got
    you a deal. I'll cut your taxes, and I'll send you a check.''
        So it fell to me to try to change that ratio. And the House of
    Representatives Committee on Ways and Means yesterday reported out a
    bill which does a lot of that. It restores both spending cuts and tax
    increases to a proper balance. It will bring the deficit down by $500
    billion over the next 5 years. It will provide important new incentives
    for small businesses and for larger businesses to continue to invest, to
    create jobs in our country. It provides a real tax break for working
    families with children with incomes of under $29,000 to offset the
    impact of the energy tax and reward work so there will never be an
    incentive for people with families not to work. Because if this tax bill
    passes, for the first time in our country's history, because of the
    changes in the Tax Code, we'll be able to say that if you work 40 hours
    a week and you've got a child in the house, you will not live in
    poverty. These are important things. And over 70 percent of the money
    comes from people with incomes above $100,000.
        The budget package also over the next 5 years will increase our
    commitment to Head Start, to apprenticeship training, with partnerships

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    with our schools and our post-high school programs, and opens the doors
    of college education to everyone through a radical reform in the student
    loan program and national service. It focuses on, in other words,
    increasing investment, bringing down the deficit, and bringing us
    together as a country again. This Goals 2000 legislation is an important
    part of that. It is our effort to do our job here as well as you do your
    job back home. If we did our job here as well as you've done yours, then
    America could celebrate and give itself a blue ribbon in just a few
    years.
        Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:51 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House.