[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[February 5, 1997]
[Pages 118-119]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Prior to a Roundtable Discussion on Education in Augusta, 
Georgia
February 5, 1997

    The President. First of all, I want to thank all of you for agreeing 
to be part of this, and I'll be very brief because I want to hear from 
you.
    I very much appreciate the fact that Senator Coverdell and Senator 
Cleland and Congressman Norwood came down with me today, along with 
Governor and Mrs. Miller. And I wanted to, after the State of the Union 
last night--which I believe was the most extensive treatment a President 
has ever given to the question of education in the State of the Union--I 
wanted to come here because I know a lot about what you've done here and 
what you're trying to do, and I think it's very important that the 
American people respond to the challenge that I laid out last night to 
make American education the best in the world, to understand that it 
won't be done overnight, and not to be afraid of trying to reach higher 
standards.
    I went over--and I won't belabor it now, but this is a little 
booklet that I had done that Secretary of Education Riley, who is here 
with us today, put together for us, incorporating the 10 points that I 
made in the State of the Union last night. But in virtually every one of 
these areas, the State of Georgia is trying to move forward, and that's 
the important thing, whether it's opening the doors of college education 
with a HOPE scholarship or the pre-kindergarten program or the 
remarkable thing you're trying to do on the Internet, which will have a 
huge impact around the country if you do it, because then a lot of other 
States will get in here and help us. The Vice President and I have been 
trying to get all the schools hooked up by the year 2000, but we might 
get there ahead of time if every State would take the kind of action 
that you're taking here.
    Then the thing that I really want to focus on is how we can achieve 
the objectives that were set out way back in 1989 by the Governors and 
then-President Bush. How can we achieve those national education goals? 
The only way we can ever do it is if we maintain the right blend of 
local control of our schools, State leadership, but adherence to high 
national standards so everybody understands what the bar is we're trying 
to reach.
    And what we're going to try to do is to get the States and the 
school districts of the country and all the teachers organizations, the 
other educators, and the parents especially to accept the notion that 
there ought to be high standards and we ought to measure to see how our 
kids are doing, not to put them down but to lift them up and to support 
the whole educational process and make a specific effort to mobilize a 
lot of people to make sure our children are literate and that they can 
read independently at the appropriate level, at least by the time they 
get out of the third grade. So that's what we're going to do. And I 
think--what I hope will come out of this today is that by our being here 
people will see what you're trying to do in Georgia. They'll be 
interested in it, it will spark similar activities around the country, 
and we'll see a kind of a cascading effect.
    You know, when the American people make up their mind to do 
something, they can get out ahead of the leaders in a hurry, and that's 
a good thing. When we started this hooking up the Internet, for example, 
we went to California, which is our biggest State, and had a NetDay and 
hooked up 20 percent of the schools in California. And we had this 
organized effort to get everybody else to do it. And within no time, the 
amount of activity outstripped the organization; people just went on and 
did it, just like you're doing. And that's what you want to happen.

[[Page 119]]

    So I'm very hopeful, I'm very excited, and I hope that now we can 
just hear from you. And Mr. Swearingen, I think you're going to run this 
show, so----
    Carl Swearingen. We'll try, sir.
    The President. ----the floor is yours.

Note: The President spoke at 1:17 p.m. in the Physical Education 
Athletic Complex at Augusta State University. In his remarks, he 
referred to Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia and Carl Swearingen, chairman, 
Georgia's Partnership for Excellence in Education. A portion of these 
remarks could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.