    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 12, 1995]
    [Pages 1348-1352]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Teleconference Remarks on Education and an Exchange With Reporters
    September 12, 1995

        The President. Can you all hear me?
        School Superintendents. Yes, yes.
        The President. That's great. Well, I'm on the phone here with
    Secretary Riley. And I want to thank all you superintendents for joining
    me today on this conference call to discuss the importance of continuing
    our national commitment to education. All of you know better than I that
    America has just started back to school.
        Over the last week I have met with chief executive officers from
    major corporations such as IBM and TRW, with mayors and county
    executives from large and small cities, and yesterday with college
    students from 10 different universities in 5 States. And I have just
    come from a meeting with some of our young national service corps,
    AmeriCorps, participants, along with college presidents and business
    leaders who support their involvement. And everywhere I go, when I deal
    with people who are working with Americans who are struggling to make
    the most of their own lives or trying to help our country adjust to the
    global economy, I hear the same message: It is wrong for our economy to
    be growing with so many hardworking Americans' incomes not growing. And
    everywhere I hear the same response: The answer is to give people a
    better education, to give our young people the tools they need to learn
    and to give all Americans a chance to build better lives.
        That's why I presented to Congress a balanced budget, which shows
    that we can get rid of the deficit and still invest more in education
    and training, to put our young people and our future first. That's why
    we have committed ourselves to a greater investment in Head Start, to
    the Goals 2000 program that many of you are very familiar with, to
    decreasing class sizes through programs like Title I, to the safe and
    drug-free schools program.
        These are not bureaucratic programs. These are programs that relate
    to the future of our children, the strength of our economy, and
    therefore the future of all the rest of us in America.
        I know that it is easy to cut these programs here in Washington. We
    are a long way from the schools and the grassroots. You're a long way
    from the human consequences of those cuts. But these things actually
    mean something

    [[Page 1349]]

    where all of you live and work. And that's what I want you to talk
    about.
        For example, four schools in Portland, Oregon, helping 9th and 10th
    graders to reach higher standards in math and science, will lose their
    funding, just at the time when we know our young people are taking more
    advanced courses, doing more homework, and trying harder to measure up
    to global standards of excellence. Four hundred and fifty teaching
    assistants and other staff who help children with basic reading,
    writing, and math skills will have to be laid off in Miami. There are
    examples like this all across the country. That's why we've had such
    incredibly strong bipartisan business support for our education budget.
        Joe Gorman, the chief executive officer of TRW, said last week that,
    and I quote, ``Goals 2000 is critically important. Far more than dollars
    are involved. It provides incentives to States to change themselves
    within their educational systems.'' Lou Gerstner, the CEO of IBM, said,
    ``Goals 2000 is the fragile beginning of the establishment of a culture
    of measuring standards and accountability in our country. We have to go
    way beyond Goals 2000, but if we lose Goals 2000 it is,'' and I quote,
    ``an incredibly negative setback for our country.''
        So I think that we've got good, bipartisan support in the grassroots
    for continuing to invest in education. We are only helping people who
    are willing to help themselves. We are not giving anything to people who
    don't need it, and we are not giving things to people who won't use it.
    We're just making an investment in America's future. And I hope that
    together all of us can succeed in securing both a balanced budget and an
    education budget that will be good for America's future.
        I'd like to ask Secretary Riley to say a few words, and then I'd
    like to hear from all of you. Mr. Secretary.

    [At this point, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley described the
    progress made in education and the need for greater investment.]

        The President. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Now I'd like to call on the
    superintendents to speak. And I'd like to emphasize one more time
    something that--the American taxpayers always say that they don't want
    us giving anybody something for nothing. They don't want us giving
    people things they don't need. And they're right about that.
        But we're talking here about a student population that we now know
    is working harder, doing more homework, investing more in their own
    future, and understanding more about education. And as I said, I was--
    just yesterday, I was at Southern Illinois University. And I met with 11
    recipients of student aid. And every one of them was a working person
    struggling to get a good education to make their own lives better and
    this country stronger. So that's what we're talking about here. And it's
    a good expenditure of our tax dollars.
        I'd like to begin by calling on the Superintendent of the Dade
    County, Florida, schools, Octavio Visiedo. And sir, you're the first up.
    Just say whatever's on you mind.

    [Mr. Visiedo discussed the recent layoff of paraprofessionals in Dade
    County and emphasized its impact on students who recently immigrated.]

        The President. Thank you very much. I'd like to now ask the
    Superintendent of the Portland, Oregon, schools to speak, Jack
    Bierwirth. Mr. Bierwirth.

    [Mr. Bierwirth discussed the Head Start program, Goals 2000, and the
    need for national education standards.]

        The President. I thank you for saying that. I want to emphasize,
    because there's been a little bit of controversy about Goals 2000, that
    I think the genius of the program is that, under Secretary Riley's
    leadership, we have done more to give more flexibility to local school
    districts and individual schools to creatively pursue their own
    solutions for excellence while trying to develop national standards so
    that parents could know what their children should know and whether
    they're learning it. And it seems to me that was a very good bargain for
    the American people and one we ought not to back off of now.
        Mr. Bierwirth. And it's beginning to pay off very well out here.
        The President. That's the thing. It's just beginning to work. And I
    really appreciate you saying that.
        I'd like to call on Dr. Gerry House, the superintendent of the
    Memphis school systems. Dr. House.

    [Dr. House discussed the impact of funding cuts on child nutrition and
    the safe and drug-free schools program and described the Memphis school
    system's antismoking campaign.]

    [[Page 1350]]

        The President. Well, thank you very much, and thank you for telling
    us about your smoke-free program. I appreciate that, and I hope you are
    very successful with it.
        I think I'd like to make just two points here. One is--one the
    Secretary of Education made me clearly aware of, and that is that we're
    fixing to have another big increase in school students, what Secretary
    Riley called the ``baby boom echo.'' And that means that these
    reductions in the School Lunch Program will be much more severe than
    they might look on paper because we have calculated--in our budget we
    asked for money based on the increase in student population we know
    we're going to have. And a disproportionate number of these young
    people, of course, do come from low-income families and often don't get
    the kind of nourishment they need.
        The other point I want to make is that the safe and drug-free
    schools program passed as a bipartisan program. This was not, when it
    was started, a partisan issue. This was a bipartisan issue. And one of
    the things that the Republicans have always said is that we needed to do
    more to change people's behavior as it relates to drugs and violence,
    that we can't just concentrate on drug treatment, we can't just
    concentrate on punishing people, we can't just concentrate on trying to
    interdict drugs when they come in this country. We have to do more to
    change people's behavior.
        This program works on changing people's behavior and, therefore, to
    undermine it and not give the schools the resources they need to deal
    with this terrific problem, it seems to me to run counter to the
    position that they've taken consistently, at least since I've been here
    in Washington for the last 2\1/2\ years.
        So I appreciate what you said, and I hope we can do well by both
    those programs before this is over.
        I'd like to call on the superintendent from Milwaukee now, Robert
    Jasna, to say whatever he would like to say.

    [Mr. Jasna discussed the impact of funding cuts on the safe and drug-
    free schools program, the school-to-work program, and class size.]

        The President. Thank you very much, Mr. Jasna. As you know, a lot
    of--this conversation is being held not only in the presence of
    representatives of the national media here but for regional media around
    the country. So I think I should make two points about the very
    important comment you've made.
        First of all, the school-to-work program, which you discussed, is
    basically the effort of the local school districts around the country
    supported by Federal and sometimes by State funds to train people both
    academically and vocationally while they're in school, both in the
    school and in the workplace, and to continue that training after they
    leave high school so they have a chance to get a good job with a growing
    income.
        In the United States, because we don't have a comprehensive system
    of training people who don't go on to colleges, we often find that the
    earnings of people without a college education are dropping dramatically
    and have been for 20 years now.
        The school-to-work program is an attempt to build in a flexible
    American way the kind of systems that the Germans, for example, have had
    for many years, which have led to rising incomes for a lot of their
    workers without university degrees but with very good education and very
    good training.
        So this would hit a huge percentage of young American workers who
    have the chance to escape the declining earnings that have plagued non-
    college-educated Americans for 20 years now.
        And on the class size issue, I just want to mention one thing to
    hammer this home. There has been an enormous amount of educational
    research in the last 10 years especially demonstrating that if you can
    get class sizes down to under 20 to 1, especially--you mentioned you had
    class sizes of 15 to 1--that kids with serious learning problems can
    dramatically improve with that kind of student-teacher ratio.
        So if you have to double it, there's no question that the learning
    capacity of our system or our teaching capacity will go way down. And I
    really appreciate both the points you made.
        Mr. Jasna. Thank you.
        The President. I'd like to now call on a longtime friend of mine,
    the superintendent of the Philadelphia schools, David Hornbeck. David,
    are you there?

    [Mr. Hornbeck discussed the impact of funding cuts on Goals 2000, the
    Head Start program, and AmeriCorps.]

        The President. Thank you, David, and thank you for what you said
    about Goals 2000. I think one of the problems we've had with Goals 2000

    [[Page 1351]]

    is that only the educators have understood it. You know, it doesn't ring
    any bells in the public mind. And I think when people understand it's
    about high expectations, high standards, and grassroots reform, it will
    help us to continue the work.
        On AmeriCorps, let me say one of the things that came out today.
    Today we had representatives of most of the colleges and universities in
    Rhode Island and business leaders from Rhode Island and Boston that are
    supporting it, and we also had a man who worked as President Ford's
    Commissioner of Education who had evaluated the program. And they said
    that one of the attacks on AmeriCorps was that if young people got paid
    for their college education for volunteering in their communities, it
    would run volunteers off, and that quite to the contrary, the average
    AmeriCorps volunteer had generated 12 more volunteers. And you say in
    Philadelphia it's up to 20 in the schools, so that's a wonderful
    statement, and I thank you for your good work and for what you said
    today.
        Now I want to call on a gentleman who was here just a few days ago
    to visit with me about some of these issues, Albert Thompson, the
    superintendent of the Buffalo, New York, schools.
        Mr. Thompson.

    [Mr. Thompson discussed the impact of Chapter I cuts on several groups
    of students. Secretary Riley concluded the remarks by indicating that
    the proposed cuts would represent a retreat from support of education.]

        The President. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
        Let me just close by thanking all of you for the work you're doing
    out there every day and through you, your principals and your teachers,
    and the parents that are helping you. You know, this issue--I wanted to
    do this call today to make it clear that this issue is not just another
    money issue; this is about the future of this country. And these
    programs we're talking about, every one has been enacted or expanded
    with bipartisan support. And the direction that I have taken since I've
    been President, working with Secretary Riley, rooted in our experience
    as Governors with people like you, has been to focus on high
    expectations, high standards, and high accountability and rewarding the
    assumption of personal responsibility by students.
        These are the things that the American people know we need to do.
    And everybody knows we can't turn around the stagnation of American
    incomes unless we dramatically increase the output but also the
    investment in American education.
        So I think that you know that history is on your side, that right is
    on your side. We're just going to have to keep working here so that we
    can prevail in Washington and make sure that here in Washington people
    understand the consequences of what they do out there where you live.
    And you have gone a long way to help us make that case today, and we're
    very, very grateful to you.
        Thank you.
        School Superintendents. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
        The President. Thank you all. Goodbye.

    [At this point, the teleconference ended, and the President took
    questions from reporters.]

    Education Budget

        Q. Mr. President, do you think you're going to be able to save these
    programs? It looks like there's a real wall there.
        The President. Yes, I do, because I think--I think that--keep in
    mind, if you look at the educational programs that I started here, like
    Goals 2000, the safe and drug-free schools program, the school-to-work
    program, the AmeriCorps program, or if you look at the ones we've
    expanded, like Head Start, or the ones we've reformed, like the Chapter
    I program, without exception, these programs had bipartisan support, not
    only out in the country but in the Congress.
        Now the Congress is basically operating within a budget resolution
    which has an arbitrary timeframe of 7 years and an arbitrary tax cut of
    $250 billion and, I think, a very modest estimate of revenue growth or
    economic growth for America, 2.3 percent, which is less than we've grown
    for the last 25 years. Presumably, they believe that if we balance the
    budget we'll grow faster, not slower. In other words, I don't think they
    want to balance the budget to give America a low-grade economic
    infection.
        So I believe when we start to talk about these things and we pull
    out what has historically been there, which is the bipartisan support
    for education plus what everyone understands, which is that we've now
    got 20 years of stagnant incomes in this country and the only way to
    turn it around is to raise the educational level, I

    [[Page 1352]]

    think we have an excellent chance of saving these programs because they
    work; they're good; they're grassroots oriented; they're not Federal
    bureaucracies.
        Q. Mr. President, if you're to avoid the train wreck that you--
    [inaudible]--earlier, some in Congress have suggested that a budget
    summit of some kind may be the only way to work out these very stark
    differences between you and the Republican leadership. Is that something
    that you'd be willing to agree to?
        The President. Well, I think the discussion of the summit is
    premature at this time. I do believe, as I said earlier today, I've seen
    in some of the comments of some of the Republican leaders the prospect
    that we might be able to bridge these differences. I'm willing to reach
    across the bridge, but it takes two people to reach across a bridge to
    meet in the middle somewhere. So I think we can do it. We're just going
    to have to work at it.
        But the first thing we ought to do, and what I'm trying to do here
    today and what I'm trying to do this whole week with this back-to-school
    theme, is to try to lift this issue beyond politics, beyond partisan
    politics and beyond Washington politics. That is, why are we balancing
    the budget? Because we want to lift debt off our children, and we want
    to reduce borrowing now so we'll have more money available in the
    private sector to generate jobs and incomes. That's why we're doing it.
        Why did they propose a tax cut? Why do I propose a tax cut, even
    though we're very different? Because we think it will make family life
    better; it will make childrearing stronger; it will make the economy
    stronger; it will make America a more solid, stronger country.
        If those are our objectives, then we have to pursue balancing the
    budget and reducing taxes in a way consistent with our objectives, not a
    partisan deal, not a political deal. Education, if you take it out of
    the equation, the objectives will fail. That's the point I'm trying to
    make. That's the point I want us to focus on. And it is not necessary to
    make these education cuts to balance the budget. I think we've got a
    real chance to make that case, and I'm very, very hopeful.

    Bomb Plot in Austin, Texas

        Q. Mr. President, word is starting to come out about the aborted
    bomb plot against the IRS center in Austin, Texas. Have you been briefed
    on that, sir?
        The President. No.
        Thank you.

    Budget Debate

        Q. Do you think you're going to get a continuing resolution while
    this debate goes on?
        The President. I certainly hope so. I think that's the responsible
    thing to do. And I think that--my guess is that there's a good chance
    that will occur.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:25 p.m. from the Roosevelt Room at the
    White House.