    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [December 17, 1993]
    [Pages 2186-2187]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 2186]]

    Remarks Announcing the Annenberg Foundation Education Challenge Grants
    December 17, 1993

        Thank you very much, Secretary Riley and Secretary and Mrs. Bentsen,
    Deputy Secretary of Education Madeleine Kunin. I want to mention some of
    the people who are here. I'm glad to see Senator Kennedy, Senator Pell,
    and Congressman Reed here, and my former colleagues and friends Governor
    Romer and Governor Edgar, Dr. Gregorian and David Kearns and Ted Sizer
    and Frank Newman and so many people that I've worked with over the
    years. When Walter Annenberg was giving his very brief statement, it
    reminded me of a comment that the President with the best developed
    mind, Thomas Jefferson, once said. He said, ``You know, if I had more
    time I could write shorter letters.'' [Laughter] So I think he said all
    that needed to be said.
        Walter and Leonore Annenberg have done a remarkable and truly
    wonderful thing on this day in giving the largest private gift in
    American history to the future of America's children. It could not have
    come at a better time. In a moment all of you will repair to another
    place and discuss in greater detail exactly what this gift will do and
    how it will be done. But since I spent the better part of my life in
    public service laboring to improve public education, I want the press
    and the American people to know that there are two things that are
    important about this gift: its size and the way the money is going to be
    spent.
        It could not come at a better time, 10 years after the issuance of
    ``A Nation At Risk'' report and on the eve, we all earnestly hope, of
    the passage of our ``Goals 2000 Act,'' which attempts to put into law a
    mechanism by which the United States can achieve the national education
    goals adopted by the Governors and by the Bush administration jointly in
    1989.
        In our legislation, we attempt to set high academic standards, to
    give our country world-class schools, to give our children a way to
    fulfill their dreams instead of their nightmares, along with the other
    things we've tried to do: reforming the student loan program; opening
    the doors of college to everyone; trying to develop a national system of
    moving from school to work for those who don't go to college; pushing a
    safe schools act so that we don't have 160,000 kids stay home every day
    because they're afraid to go to school; establishing a system of
    lifetime learning. These things make a real difference. But if I have
    learned one thing in all the years, in all the countless hours that
    Hillary and I have spent in public schools all across this country, it
    is that the true magic of education in the end occurs between teachers
    and students and principals and parents and those who care about what
    happens in the classroom and outside the classroom.
        And one of the things that has plagued me all these years is seeing
    all the successes, because, I tell you, I have tried to focus the
    American people in the last several weeks on the crime and violence that
    is consuming so many millions of our young people. But what is important
    for America to know is that there is another reality out there. There
    are two realities that are at war, one with the other. There is the
    reality that we all see: too many guns and too much violence in schools
    that don't function. There is another reality: In the most difficult
    circumstances you can find anywhere in this country, there are children
    and parents who obey the law, who love their country, who believe in the
    future, and who are in schools working with teachers who are succeeding
    by any standard of international excellence against all the odds.
        Therefore, it is clear that the most pressing need in this country
    today, the most pressing need, is to have a standard of excellence by
    which all of us can judge our collective efforts, down to the smallest
    schoolroom in the smallest community in America, and then to have a
    system to somehow take what is working against all the odds and make it
    work everywhere.
        All these people who are in this room who have devoted their lives
    to education are constantly plagued by the fact that nearly every
    problem has been solved by somebody somewhere, and yet we can't seem to
    replicate it everywhere else. Anybody who has spent a serious amount of
    time thinking and looking about this knows that that is the central
    challenge of this age in education.

    [[Page 2187]]

        That's why Ted Sizer has devoted his career to establishing a system
    which can be recreated and adapted to the facts of every school. That's
    why David Kearns left a brilliantly successful career in business and
    wrote a book about what works in reinventing schools. That's why my
    friend Frank Newman stopped being a university president and went to the
    Education Commission of the States and every year hounded Governors like
    me to help him, because we knew that there were examples that work, and
    nobody has unraveled this mystery. That's why people often run for
    Governor and stay Governors of States, believing that we can somehow
    have the alternative reality that is out there prevail in the end.
        And the way this money is going to be allocated is just as important
    as how much money is being offered, because Walter Annenberg has
    challenged the rest of us to match his efforts today and in a way is
    challenging America to realize that there are millions of good kids and
    good teachers and good efforts being made out there. And the time has
    come for us to say, here are the national standards, here is a way of
    measuring whether we're meeting them, and here's a way of recognizing
    that in reality all these things have to happen school by school,
    neighborhood by neighborhood, student by student. And what is our
    excuse, when we can give you a hundred examples of where it's working,
    for not having thousands and thousands and thousands examples of where
    it's working?
        That is the magic of what is being done. This is a very, very
    important day for American education and for America's future. And the
    people in the United States will forever be in the debt of these two
    fine people.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:34 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Jim Edgar of Illinois;
    Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado; Vartan Gregorian, president, Brown
    University; David Kearns, president, New American Schools Development
    Corp.; Theodore R. Sizer, chairman, Coalition for Essential Schools; and
    Frank Newman, president, Education Commission of the States.