[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.