[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[May 22, 1997]
[Pages 640-651]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Townhall Meeting on Education in Clarksburg, West Virginia
May 22, 1997

    The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mary Helen. She said 
she was nervous, but I thought she did a great job, didn't you? 
Terrific.
    Thank you, Bob Kittle, for hosting us here, Leon Pilewski, the 
principal, and all the faculty here at Robert Byrd High School. I thank 
Governor Underwood, Mrs. Underwood, Governor Caperton, the other State 
officials for being here, the legislative leaders, the local school 
officials.
    The congressional delegation did want to come, but the Senate is 
voting today on the balanced budget amendment. I'll have a little more 
to say about that in a minute. But I kind of wish Senator Byrd had been 
able to come here, especially to this school, but he and your other 
legislators have put their duty first, and I respect that, and they're 
where we all want them to be.
    I'd like to thank your State superintendent of education, Hank 
Marockie, for being here, and recognize the president of the State board 
of education, Cleo Mathews, who's here because not only is she the 
president of the State board of education but her daughter, Sylvia, is 
the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President. And that's a nice little 
walk from Hinton, West Virginia, so I thank them for being here. Cleo, 
thank you.
    I thank Mayor Flynn and others for making me feel so welcome in 
Clarksburg and all the communities along the way where the people came 
out to say hello. But mostly I want to thank all of you in this audience 
for joining me to talk about education, about the plans that you have 
and the plans that I have to make education better, and especially the 
importance of high standards, to give our children the knowledge and 
skills they will need to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges 
of the 21st century.
    I came here in part because of the great progress you are making in 
the national movement to raise academic achievement. In 1996, the State 
of West Virginia tied for third in the Nation in improvement since 1992 
in the mathematics performance of fourth and eighth graders. You should 
be very, very proud of that.
    I want to thank Governor Underwood for supporting this educational 
effort, and I want to thank my former colleague, with whom I served for 
many years, Gaston Caperton, for making education his top priority here 
in West Virginia, among other things, making West Virginia the Nation's 
leader in putting technology in schools.
    I believe you either now have or soon will have computers in every 
single one of your elementary schools in West Virginia. That is 
something you can be very proud of--that, the distance learning work 
you've done. And I want

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to tell you all, if you don't know, in addition to being on public 
broadcasting here in West Virginia and whatever else the networks choose 
to pick up tonight, we are live on the Internet in West Virginia and 
across the country. So you're in cyberspace, and I hope you're having a 
good time there.
    For the last 4 years we have worked very hard to advance our goals 
in education to make sure all our children are ready to learn; to make 
sure that they have good basic skills, from expanding Head Start to the 
Goals 2000 program, which West Virginia has used; to have grassroots 
efforts to raise academic performance; to our school-to-work program, to 
help the learning of young people who don't go on to colleges but do 
deserve to have good access to further training after high school; to 
open the doors of college to all Americans.
    The balanced budget agreement that I reached with the leaders of 
Congress provides for the largest increased investment in education in a 
generation. If the Senate adopts it--the House has already adopted it by 
a better than 75 percent vote; if the Senate adopts it, that's what it 
will do. It expands Head Start, moving toward our goal of a million kids 
in Head Start by 2002. It funds our America Reads program, designed to 
mobilize a million volunteer reading tutors across America to ensure 
that every 8-year-old in this country can read independently by the end 
of the third grade--very important in a country that is as diverse as 
ours is becoming.
    We have 4 school districts in America where there are more than 100 
different native ethnic linguistic groups. That's a stunning statistic. 
But everybody has to be able to read in our common language of English, 
so this is very important.
    We also have the largest increased investment in higher education 
since the GI bill was passed at the end of World War II; a HOPE 
scholarship tax credit for families, designed to make 2 years of 
education after high school as universal as a high school diploma is 
today; tax deductions for the costs of all tuition after high school; 
and the biggest increase in Pell grants in 20 years. It will add 300,000 
more people who are eligible for the Pell grant program, something which 
will be especially helpful in a State like West Virginia.
    In addition to that, we have funding to try to follow your lead to 
make sure that we can connect every classroom and library in the United 
States to the Internet by the year 2000. But the most important thing of 
all in our education program, I believe, is the effort to develop 
national standards and a national measure of whether those standards are 
being met, because from West Virginia to Nevada, from Washington State 
to Florida, from Maine to Arizona, math is the same; the need for basic 
reading skills are the same.
    I called in my State of the Union Address for national standards of 
excellence in basic learning, not Federal Government standards but 
national standards, starting with fourth grade reading and eighth grade 
math and reflected in examinations which I would challenge every school, 
every State, every student to participate in by 1999.
    I have proposed that these exams be based on the only widely 
accepted national standards-based test we have today, called the 
National Assessment of Education Progress. When I just said that West 
Virginia ranked third in the country in progress and performance in math 
tests, that is based on your students' performance on the so-called NAEP 
test, the National Assessment of Education Progress. But today we only 
give those tests to a sampling of students in States, and we only know 
what either the State scores are or in some cases the district or 
regional scores are. So we have to do this for the whole Nation.
    Today I am pleased to announce that Governor Underwood, along with 
the State board of education and the State superintendent of education, 
has agreed that West Virginia should participate in these examinations 
in 1999. And I'm grateful to him, and you should be proud of it.
    In addition, Massachusetts and the National Alliance of Business are 
endorsing our call for national tests. West Virginia, Massachusetts, the 
National Alliance of Business joined several other States and other 
groups in the growing national consensus for standards. And I am very, 
very encouraged.
    Let me also say that, you know my native State of Arkansas has a lot 
in common with West Virginia. In the 1980 census, we were the two States 
with the highest percentage of people living in the States who were born 
there. And we also have had to struggle with low incomes and an economy 
that was not easily changeable to meet the demands of the modern world. 
And

[[Page 642]]

I'd like to think that we believe that our children are as gifted as 
children anywhere and that if we give them high standards, good 
teaching, and good parental support and good support in the schools, 
they can do as well as students anywhere in the world. So again, 
Governor, thank you. And thank you to all the educators. We're going to 
do this, and it's important.
    Now, before we open the floor to questions, I thought you might be 
interested in just seeing what these exams are like. So we'll go through 
a question or two, just so you'll get the feeling for what a fourth 
grade--we'll start with the fourth grade reading exam, and you'll see 
why this is important. If you have a standards exam--it's not like 
giving an exam in class where somebody might grade on the curve and two 
people can make an A and everybody else has to make something lower. 
Standards-based exams are designed to assure that everybody can pass, 
but to pass, it means something. It means you know what you need to 
know. So no one is supposed to fail, and this is not designed to put any 
school, any student, any group down but to lift us all up. The tests are 
designed so that if they don't work out so well the first time, you'll 
know what to do to teach, to improve and lift these standards.
    But it's very important to understand the difference between a 
standards-based test and normal grading, where you expect somebody to 
make 100, somebody to make 60, and everybody to be in between. With the 
idea of standards, you want everybody to clear at least the fundamental 
bar.
    So let's look at the charts here. Chart one describes the fourth 
grade reading test, and the standard performance is divided into three 
categories. Basic performance means that a reader can recognize most of 
the words, identify the most important information. The next level is 
proficient; in addition to that, you can summarize the passage, find 
specific information, and describe the way it's presented. Then an 
advanced understanding would be that you could provide a more detailed 
and thoughtful explanation. And I'll give you an example of that by 
asking one of your students to join me. Hannah Galey, who is a fourth 
grader from Nutter Fort Intermediate, is going to come forward. Hannah 
is going to read us a passage from ``Charlotte's Web,'' a wonderful book 
I'm sure a lot of the adults here read with your children when they were 
little.
    Hannah? Give her a hand. [Applause]

[At this point, Hannah Galey read the passage.]

    The President. That's wonderful. That's great. Give her a hand. 
[Applause] You were great. If we were giving a read score, she would be 
double advanced, you know. [Laughter] Thank you.
    Now, here's the way the question would work for a fourth grader: 
``Based upon the passage you just read, how would you describe Charlotte 
to a friend?'' And then these are three possible answers, and you see 
how they would be graded, based on what I just said. A basic proficiency 
would be, ``Charlotte keeps her promise.'' That's basic standards. A 
proficient answer would be, ``Charlotte works hard to keep her 
promise,'' describing that she hasn't kept it yet, she's working to keep 
it. And then, an advanced understanding would just explain in one 
sentence what the whole paragraph was about. ``She plans to keep her 
promise to save Wilbur's life''--what the promise is--``by tricking 
Zuckerman''--how she plans to keep it--all three things. But you can see 
if you give--and obviously there are various variations, but the test 
would be--the answers would be aggregated in three categories like that, 
so that you would have some sense of how the children were reading.
    Now, let's look at chart four, which will show how our fourth 
graders are doing. Again, this is the National Assessment of Education 
Progress. This is the reading version of the math test that I just 
quoted that West Virginia was third in the country in improvement on. 
Given to a representative sample of fourth graders in America, 40 
percent did not do as well as saying, ``Charlotte keeps her promise''--
could not say that's what this was about.
    Now, you know, some of these young people may not have English as a 
first language, but a lot of them do and still are not reading at an 
advanced enough level. That is why it is so important that we provide in 
every community an army of trained reading tutors to help support the 
parents and support the literacy efforts under way and support the 
schools.
    Thirty percent cleared the first hurdle: ``This is about Charlotte 
keeping a promise.'' Twenty-three percent were more proficient; they 
knew it was her plan, she was outlining her plan. Only 7 percent of the 
fourth graders went as far as saying, ``She plans to keep her promise to 
save the life by tricking the man.'' You see?

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    So it shows you that ideally we would like 100 percent at advanced, 
but at least we need 100 percent at basic or above. And so the idea of 
giving the exam would not be to identify failures but to show schools 
and school districts how well children are reading based on what they 
understand so that everybody would reach a certain understanding. That 
way their performance in all subsequent grades would improve. A lot of 
children have the mental capacity to do very well in school and fall 
further and further behind because they didn't get the comprehension 
they needed early on.
    Now, I want to show you one other chart, and we'll come back to this 
at the end of the program. This is a sample eighth grade math test, so 
ask yourself this question--no answer forthcoming now: A car has a fuel 
tank that holds 15 gallons of fuel. The car consumes 5 gallons of fuel 
for every 100 miles. A trip of 250 miles was started with a full tank of 
fuel. How much fuel remained in the tank at the end of the trip? And 
there are four answers: 2\1/2\ gallons, 12\1/2\ gallons, 17\1/2\ 
gallons, 5 gallons. We'll come back to that at the end of the show. 
That's designed to hold viewer interest out there. [Laughter]
    So that's basically what these standards tests are designed to do. I 
wanted to come here and talk about that because West Virginia has not 
only proved that you can have a big increase in teachers' salaries, 
which is wonderful; one of the best student-teacher ratios in America, 
which is wonderful; the most aggressive plan to put computers in 
elementary schools in the country, which is terrific and helps to 
reinforce standards learning; but you're also showing that you can raise 
standards and today, with the Governor's statement, that you want to do 
more.
    So with that, I'd like to hear from about any of these educational 
matters you would like to discuss, questions you'd like to ask, 
statements you'd like to make, and we'll go back to our leader here, Mr. 
Kittle.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Kittle. We're ready now to do the townhall meeting, so we're 
ready to open for questions for the President.
    The President. Here's some over here.
    Mr. Kittle. Over here?
    The President. Yes, over there. And there's some there.

[David Hardesty, president of West Virginia University, asked the 
President to identify the impediments to the adoption of national 
standards.]

    The President. I think there are two major barriers, from what I've 
heard. The first is a political one; the second one is a deeply personal 
one, almost.
    The political one is sometimes when people say ``national 
standards''--and Secretary Riley and I have to deal with this all across 
America--when people say ``national standards,'' they say, ``I don't 
want the Federal Government setting standards for my school.'' That is 
not what this is about. All the Federal Government proposes to do is to 
fund the development of the tests to measure whether the standards are 
being met.
    The National Assessment of Education Progress tests, which you 
participate in, was developed by educators, academics, and other 
experts. The Federal Government is not running this test. We are not 
telling you that you have to participate in it. The whole thing is 
voluntary. But I believe every State will want to be a part of it when 
it is obviously a process that has integrity, that will help our 
children.
    So the first thing is we have to tell people, this is not some 
attempt of the Federal Government to take over your schools. We have 
done a lot in our administration to get rid of a lot of the Federal 
rules and regulations associated with grant programs, to try to give 
local school districts more flexibility as long as they were developing 
academic standards that they could hold themselves accountable for. 
That's the first thing.
    The second thing--big problem, I think, is it's scary. It's 
personal. You're afraid. What happens if you take it, and you don't do 
very well? And I think the important thing there is that we are not--we 
want all of our children to take it, but we're not necessarily trying to 
identify the specific score of every student, but we want the schools 
and the classes to see how they're doing so they can lift the students 
up. I don't want anybody's score published in the paper or anything like 
that. This is not an instrument of failure; it's an instrument of 
accountability and a pathway to success.
    But I can tell you, when you look at other countries with which 
we're competing for the high-wage jobs of tomorrow--huge issue in

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West Virginia, now, for years--I was looking at the topography of West 
Virginia, which looks like about half of Arkansas, you know, all these 
mountains and how beautiful it is. For years, it made it hard for you to 
diversify your economy. You had coal in the ground, but it was hard for 
people to get here and do other things, and it slowed up the 
diversification of your economy and kept your wage levels too low.
    The explosion of technology will mean that many kinds of work can be 
done anywhere in America and anywhere in the world. And it both gives 
you an enormous new opportunity but a much higher responsibility to lift 
your education level. So we've got to get people over the idea that they 
have to be scared of how this thing comes out.
    No matter how bad it is, once you get a roadmap, it will be better 
next year, and it will be better the year after that. And all the 
evidence is that children do better with higher expectations. To me 
those are the two things. If you can confront those two things head on, 
go out here and tell the citizens of West Virginia the Government is not 
trying to run a testing program and take over your schools, number one; 
and number two, don't be scared of how it comes out, because it's going 
to make us better in the long run.
    Mr. Kittle. Okay. Time for the next question. Let's take one from 
this group over here.

[A participant asked if schools would receive increased funding for 
reading specialists at the elementary school level.]

    The President. What's the answer to that, Secretary Riley? Yes? Yes, 
he doesn't have a microphone. Secretary, just tell him what you just 
said. [Laughter] This is something I'm very proud of. I'll give you the 
intro. In addition to the million volunteers we're going to try to get 
to support you, those of you who do this at a higher level of skill on a 
full-time basis, we are also going to provide--that's what he was about 
to say.

[Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley responded that the President's 
America Reads initiative provided Federal funding for reading 
specialists to work with selected students.]

    The President. Twenty-five thousand extra reading specialists, so 
that should put one in every school.
    Now, let me ask you something. You say you're a reading recovery 
teacher, and have you had great results with it? You know, the reading 
recovery program revolutionized literacy in the whole nation of New 
Zealand----
    Secretary Riley.  Absolutely.
    The President. ----and is probably the most consistently effective 
reading program that any of us know about. It's more intensive, and it's 
more expensive. And what we're trying to do is to create a network 
where, in effect, people like you can be at the center of a hub that 
reaches out, that included reading specialists and all the volunteers, 
so we'll have enough hopefully to cover what every child needs.

[Donna Rose, a teacher at Lost Creek Elementary School, described the 
reading program at Lost Creek, its emphasis on parental involvement, and 
the long-term improvement in student scores. She gave credit to the 
Title I funding and the flexibility permitted by the program and asked 
if the President was working on similar programs for the future.]

    The President. Let me say, first of all I thank you for what you are 
doing because I think it's very important. It's the most important 
thing, especially with the parents being involved. One of the things 
that we have done that I'm most proud of is the way we redid the Title I 
program, because when we got here, Secretary Riley and I got here and we 
had been Governors living with the Title I program for years, we thought 
it was really selling our lower income children in our poorer school 
districts short, basically creating a two-tiered system of education. 
And instead, we tried to organize it so that you grassroots teachers 
could use it to lift the performance level of children who were covered 
by Title I, and I think that's what you've done, and I'm very thrilled 
by it.
    What we're trying to do now, in addition to what we've just been 
talking about, on the standards--first we want to increase the 
availability of preschool education so that more kids will come to 
school prepared to learn. Secondly, we want to try to do what we can to 
support the literacy programs in the schools. We explained that.
    And then we've taken the basic education programs that we have on 
the books now in this balanced budget plan and tried to continue or 
dramatically increase the funding of as many

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of them as we could. We are particularly interested in trying to help 
enhance math and science education and, as I said earlier, trying to 
accelerate the movement of computers and connection to the Internet and 
good educational software and trained teachers in every classroom in 
America. And that's a big part of this program.
    So I hope that all those things together will make a significant 
difference when we finish this work over the next 4 to 5 years.
    Mr. Kittle. Let's take a question from one of the students now.
    The President. You've got a bunch of them. Your choice.
    Mr. Kittle. Let's take the one here on the front row, on the left.
    The President. We'll take both of them. Go ahead.

[Jennifer Brown, a fifth grade student at Simpson Elementary School, 
voiced her concern that funding for art, music, and theater programs had 
been cut, and asked if the President would ensure that the programs 
remain in schools.]

    The President. Wonderful. Well, first of all, let me say that 
historically, the main support for arts and education out in the country 
from the National Government has come through programs like the National 
Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, 
because most of the big money coming from the National Government to the 
schools has come to schools that have basically low tax bases because of 
low income, or to students with special needs. And the idea was that if 
the Federal Government gave extra money to poor schools or gave extra 
money to students with special needs because their costs were higher, 
then the States and the localities would be able to keep up the rest of 
the programs.
    There has been an alarming decline all over America in the arts and 
music programs and, I might say, in the athletic programs, apart from 
the big school teams. And I think it's a serious mistake, because we now 
know that a lot of young people develop their intellectual capacities in 
different ways, different kids learn in different ways, and that we 
really are significantly eroding the future of certain segments of our 
children if we deprive them of access to the arts and music and, even if 
they're not varsity football or basketball players or baseball players, 
to other sports.
    But we don't--except through the National Endowment for the Arts, 
we've done some things that benefit public schools. We don't have direct 
programs to do that because we spend all our money on other things. But 
I must say, I personally believe it's a mistake for schools to cut back 
on it. And when I was a Governor, I tried to dedicate enough funding to 
these purposes, to try to offset it, even though usually the decisions 
about the curriculum are made completely at the local level. I think 
that may be the problem, that all schools from time to time have 
financial problems. And it may be that because there's not a specific 
funding stream for a lot of these programs, they're more likely to be 
left undefended.
    I think the best way to keep them is for you and students like you 
to point out that you think it's an important part of your education.
    Ashby Hardesty. Mr. President, my name is Ashby Hardesty, and I'm a 
fifth grader from Nutter Fort Elementary School. I was wondering if you 
use the Internet in the White House.
    The President. We do.
    Secretary Riley. All right.
    The President. But my daughter uses it more than I do. [Laughter] We 
access the Internet in the White House, and we also have extensive E-
mail. But my speechwriters use the Internet. They can do research on the 
Internet; they pull up articles and things. We use the Internet for all 
kinds of things.
    When I become curious, I can always go down to the Vice President's 
office, because he's a bigger expert than I am, and we have interesting 
environmental discussions based on things he pulls up for me on the 
Internet. But the White House uses the Internet quite a lot.
    Mr. Kittle. Okay, let's hear from one of the parents over in this 
section.
    Jim?
    Jim McCallum. Mr. President, welcome to West Virginia.
    The President. Thank you.

[Mr. McCallum, a member of the West Virginia Board of Education, asked 
the President's opinion on extending the school year.]

    The President. I have always thought if you could afford it, it was 
a good thing to do. I think that the only major industrial country with 
a shorter school year than we have, that I'm aware of is Belgium, and 
I'm not quite sure what the historic reasons for it are. But Belgium

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does have a shorter school year than we do. Every other nation in the 
world with an advanced economy has a longer school year.
    And as you know, basically the American school year was developed 
around an agricultural society when all of the children had to get off 
and help their folks in the fields. A lot of our more overcrowded school 
districts now are now open year-round. They just operate on three 
trimesters, and the students have to go to two of three trimesters. And 
obviously that reduces by a third the amount of new school construction 
they have to do, although it costs more, obviously, to operate the 
schools and pay the personnel.
    I think on balance it's a good thing to do. I think that--let me 
just say what we're learning already from the NAEP tests and other 
things. In math--what we're learning in mathematics for example in the 
higher years is that our students may skip over a large number of 
subjects and touch a large number of subjects, for example, in advanced 
mathematics. But our competitors in East Asia and in Germany, for 
example, may study slightly fewer subjects, but because they're in 
school longer, they go into much greater depth, which means when they 
get out of high school, they carry a higher level of capacity with them.
    So if you are going to lengthen the school year, I would say the 
first thing you ought to do is bring educators and others in and say, 
``Well, if we went to school longer, what would we do with the time?'' I 
mean, you don't want the kids to get bored. In a lot of States like our 
home State, every time we talked about lengthening the school year, they 
would tell me about how many schools weren't properly air-conditioned 
and we would have the teachers and the kids passing out and all that 
kind of stuff. It's very unpopular, lengthening the school year, but I 
was always for it. I just think you need to analyze--and I think you get 
more support if you say, ``Here is what we would do if we went to school 
a week longer. Here is what we would do with that time. If we went to 
school 2 weeks longer, here is what we would do with that time.'' And 
then, of course, you have to figure out how you're going to pay for it 
and what kind of offset you get with questions like the young lady asked 
here about already having cutbacks in other things.
    On balance, do I think it would be better if we had a slightly 
longer school year? I do.

[Bill Sharpe, president pro tempore of the West Virginia Senate, asked 
the President if the national standards would emphasize the importance 
of writing.]

    The President. First of all, let me say I do not--if I were in a 
different line of work, for example, if I were the superintendent of 
schools here like Mr. Kittle, or if I were the State superintendent of 
public education, I would not say that we should only have high 
standards in reading for fourth graders and math for eighth graders. 
It's just that this is the--we have to make a beginning somewhere as a 
nation, so I'm trying to get us to make a beginning as a nation with 
this in 1999.
    I would have--we already have an enormous amount of work that's been 
done, for example, by the science teachers to have national standards in 
science. And National Geographic has spent a fortune to work with 
geography teachers to develop national standards in geography and 
teaching materials for it. And there are national standards in civics. 
And there should be standards in reading and language, generally, that 
go from the fourth grade to the eighth grade. And there ought to be--and 
one in high school, perhaps 10th grade. And in my dream world, before 
too long, we would have this fourth grade reading test and this eighth 
grade test replicated in elementary, junior high, and high school in 
several areas, and then all the schools in the country could pick and 
choose about what they would participate in.
    Obviously, if you went to the eighth grade, and certainly in the 
high school, you would want a writing sample as well. I'm interested 
in--more and more of the college application forms you see a lot of 
you--I'm sort of into this now, as a lot of you know--[laughter]--are 
requiring young people to write an essay to get into college. And I 
think it's a very good thing. So I would agree that writing and the 
measurement of writing capacity should be a very important part of a 
national standards program once you move beyond the fourth grade into 
junior high and then on into high school. It's very important that young 
people be able to express themselves.
    Mr. Kittle. Let's move back to this side.
    The President. What were you going to say? Secretary Riley wants to 
say something. Talk to him about our summer program, Dick.

[Secretary Riley discussed Read Write Now, a summer program designed to 
encourage young

[[Page 647]]

people to read and write every day in the summer.]

    Mr. Kittle. Let's move on to the back row.
    The President. While she's taking the microphone back there, 
Senator, let me say one other thing.
    Senator Sharpe. You have the floor, sir. [Laughter]
    The President. There is a lot--and you probably know this--there is 
a lot of educational research that shows just as some young people learn 
better when they're exposed to music and the arts, there are some young 
people whose learning increases exponentially, even if they're not 
particularly literate at the time, when they begin to write, and they 
begin to write stories of their own life and stories of how they want 
to--so it triggers their imagination in a way that nothing else quite 
can. So I think it's very important that this be taught, even before 
it's tested.

[Parent Jim Eschenmann asked what additional measures could be taken to 
protect students from the harmful areas of the Internet, while 
guaranteeing full access and protecting freedom of speech.]

    The President. Well, you know, I signed a bill--when I signed the 
telecommunications bill, which I believe will create hundreds of 
thousands of jobs in our country along with the agreement we've made to 
open telecommunication competition in the world to American products and 
services--I had a provision in there to try to protect against young 
people being exposed to some of the harmful things that are on the 
Internet, not just pornography but, as I'm sure a lot of you know 
because of the events in the news in the last couple of years, there are 
even instructions on how to build bombs and things like that. There are 
a lot of things on there that we wouldn't want our children to see.
    That provision has been thrown out by a court and is still in the 
courts, I think. So it may be that what we have to do is try to develop 
something like the equivalent of what we're developing for you for 
television, like the V-chip, where it's put in the hands of the parents 
or the educators. And then if it were in the hands of the educators, the 
school board could approve certain guidelines.
    It's technically more difficult with the Internet. As you know, 
there are hundreds of new services being added to the Internet every 
week. It's growing at an explosive capacity, and we're in the process 
actually of trying to develop an Internet II. But I think that is the 
answer. Something like the V-chip for televisions. And we're working on 
it. I think it's a serious potential problem myself.
    But let me say it would be a serious potential problem if they were 
not in the schools. I think putting them in the schools, because the 
kids are normally under supervision, you have a far less likelihood that 
the Internet will be abused or that the children will be exposed to 
something they shouldn't see during the school hours, in all likelihood, 
than at home. But I do think you need guidelines in both places, and 
we're doing our best to try to figure out if there's some technological 
fix we can give you on it.

[Jeremy Thompson, a national merit scholar finalist from Bridgeport High 
School, asked if the President thought students should have to pass a 
national exam to graduate from high school and what would be the minimum 
levels in English, math, and science.]

    The President. Well, New York, for many years, has had a Regents 
exam that you actually had to pass to get a full-fledged high school 
diploma. And I believe that Louisiana, several years ago, adopted an 
11th grade exam that you had to pass to go into high school. When I was 
Governor of our State, we passed a requirement that you had to pass an 
exam in the eighth grade to be promoted to high school.
    I basically believe that it would be a good thing if you had a 
standard--an exam like this, not one you have to make a certain score on 
but one you have to show certain competence on, to move to different 
levels of education. If one were being given in high school, I would 
like to see it be given in the 11th grade so it could be given again in 
the summer so young people can go on to their senior year. Or if it were 
a condition of a diploma, it should be given very early so it can be 
taken at least twice more. Because if you give an exam that you have to 
make a certain score on or show certain competencies on to get a diploma 
after you've been put through 11 years of school, I think you ought to 
be given more than one shot.
    But I think that generally, if we can move to standards-based 
education so that every young

[[Page 648]]

person in America can stand up and make the statement about their early 
education that you just made, then it would be a good thing to have 
certain benchmarks along the way so you would make sure that if you were 
sending somebody to that next level, they really could do the work.
    Otherwise, you can really, I think, hurt a lot of young people. 
There are so many young people--there's lots of evidence that a lot of 
young people have difficulty in high school years because they never got 
the basic skills they needed in the early years. And they get sort of 
typed as being inadequate, as if they don't have the intellectual 
capacity to do it, and the truth is that way over 90 percent of us can 
do way over 90 percent of what we need to do in any given field of 
endeavor, given a proper level of preparation, the proper level of 
support, and a proper level of effort. So I would like to see something 
like that, but if you did it in the high school before graduation, I 
think we would have to start it early and give everybody more than one 
chance to pass.

[Janet Dudley-Eshbach, president of Fairmont State College, indicated 
that college presidents have difficulty devoting 50 percent of their 
work-study dollars to the America Reads program and asked if the 
President would be open to alternatives such as community service 
learning programs.]

    The President. Number one, absolutely; and secondly, let me make it 
clear what we asked to be done with work-study. We have not asked 
anybody to devote half of their work-study students to America Reads. 
What we did do is to say, last year we increased the number of work-
study students by 100,000 over the next couple of years, in our budget 
last year--by 200,000, excuse me. In my new budget, we put another 
100,000 in there so that within a matter of 3 years, we'll go from--
nationwide from 700,000 work-study students total to a million. What we 
really were shooting for is to get 100,000 of the next 300,000 into 
reading tutoring. We were urging the colleges, if they could, to, in 
effect, give up that number of hours of students working on campus to 
work in reading.
    So we're not trying to get anybody to give up half their work-study 
students. And so you could more easily calibrate kind of what your share 
was, if you wanted to participate, but there is no mandate on that.
    Secondly, I would love it if you did it that way, because another 
thing I'm trying to do, that we emphasized at the Summit of Service in 
Philadelphia with the former Presidents and General Powell and I 
sponsored at the volunteer summit, is that I hope that every college in 
America will start giving a credit for community service and will try to 
channel all of its students into community service. So if you did it 
that way, I would be elated.
    You just have to make sure--let me just say, you just have to make 
sure, and I'm sure our reading teacher over here would say that you just 
have to make sure that you've got enough time to give the minimal 
training to do what needs to be done, and that in this--whatever you 
have to do to get the credit, they'll be spending enough time with one 
student or two students or however many to really do the kids some good 
that they're helping.
    But I would love that, because I think every--I'd like to see every 
college in America follow your lead and give students credit for doing 
community service.

[Parent Patricia Schaeffer asked how the utilization of technology could 
ensure access to quality education for all children.]

    The President. Well, I can tell you what we're doing. What we are 
doing is to--let me get my brace out of the way here. Let me tell you 
what we're doing. We have provided some money in each of the next 5 
years in our budget to go to States to try to put, with help we get from 
the private sector and any money that the States want to put in, to try 
to make sure that all the schools get covered.
    Frankly, the principal beneficiaries of this should be the most 
rural schools and the poorest inner-city schools, because of a lot of 
the other schools are going to get computers just in the normal course 
of events. And the whole program will be a failure if we don't hook it 
up to all the rural schools.
    When we started this, when the Vice President and I started this, we 
went out to California a couple of years ago and hooked up 20 percent of 
the classrooms in California in one day. And we got all those high-tech 
companies in Silicon Valley to do that. And then we went to New Jersey 
and highlighted what they had done there to turn around a district that 
was in trouble.

[[Page 649]]

    My whole idea was that this would make it possible, if we did it 
right, for the first time in the history of the country for kids in the 
poorest urban districts and the most remote rural districts to have 
access to the same information in the same way in the same time as the 
students in the wealthiest public and private schools in America. I 
mean, if we do this right, it could revolutionize access to learning.
    So I think you've got to get the computers out there, but secondly, 
we have to make sure the teachers are trained, and third, we have to 
make sure that the software is good.
    So the answer to your question is, my goal is going to be to see 
that--every State is going to have to have a plan, and that's how we put 
the money out.
    Go ahead.

[Secretary Riley noted the administration's support of the Federal 
Communications Commission decision to approve a discounted Internet rate 
for schools in low-income areas.]

    The President. You understand what he's talking about? The poorest 
schools can have--we'll make it as close to free as we can to hook on to 
the Internet, which will make a big difference, because a lot of our 
schools were worried about getting the equipment, the software, and 
everything else and just not being able to afford to stay hooked up. But 
the E-rate that the Federal Communications Commission approved will be a 
90 percent discount for the poorest schools in the country and an 
average 60 percent discount. So that should mean that everybody out in 
the hills and hollows of north Arkansas and West Virginia should be able 
to afford to keep wired up.

[Pina Price, owner of a tax business, mentioned the President's plan to 
give parents a tax credit for the cost of their children's college 
tuition.]

    The President. That's right.

[Ms. Price asked if it was going to happen and if the President had 
considered giving new graduates a tax break for student loans.]

    The President. The answer to your question is, yes, it is going to 
happen. And the only question is--we haven't actually passed the actual 
tax bill through the Congress yet, but we have allocated roughly $35 
billion over a 5-year period to provide tax relief against the cost of 
college education.
    And we know that, among other things, there will be a tax credit, 
that is a dollar-for-dollar reduction off your taxes, for the first 2 
years of college for an amount that will be roughly equal to the cost of 
a typical community college. So you can take that just off your taxes as 
a tax credit. Because our goal is to try to make 2 years of education 
after high school as universal as a high school diploma is today.
    If you look at--the last census figures we have in 1990 show that 
young people who have 2 years of--younger workers, now, it's not the 
same for older workers--but younger workers who have 2 years of 
education or more after high school tend to get jobs with rising 
incomes. Young people who have less than 2 years of education after high 
school tend to get jobs with stagnant incomes. Young kids who are high 
school dropouts tend to get jobs with declining incomes. So it would be 
a tax credit.
    In addition to that, there will be a tax deduction from your taxable 
income for the cost of any tuition after high school, not just the first 
2 years, any tuition--the second 2 years, post-graduate, vocational, any 
tuition after high school.
    Now, beyond that, what we tried to do to help young people when they 
come out is for the schools that are in the Department of Education's 
direct college loan program, young people have the option of choosing to 
pay back their loans--they have big loans--either on a regular repayment 
schedule, which would be hard for them, particularly if they have become 
school teachers or police officers or nurses or something else where 
they're not making a lot of money. They have the option of paying that 
back as a percentage of their income, which lifts a huge burden off of 
them in the early years. So we've tried to do that. But the main focus 
of our efforts in this tax bill will be the tax credit and the tax 
deduction. But the details of it are still somewhat open because, 
obviously, Congress hasn't acted. And Secretary Riley and I talked about 
it on the way up here today, what we could do that would do the most 
good for the largest number of people.

[Parent Katherine Folio asked what the President planned to do for the 
gifted student programs, under the new education program.]

    The President. Support them. You want to talk any more about that, 
Secretary Riley? Support them. I think they should be supported.

[[Page 650]]

[Secretary Riley stated that the goal of the standards process is aimed 
at educating students in the same way that gifted kids have been taught. 
He noted that one of the advantages of gifted student programs was to 
offer advanced placement courses and college credits.]

    The President. The more factually accurate answer to your question 
is the one Secretary Riley gave. Just about all we do for gifted 
education is to support advanced placement, and we're going to promote 
more of that. But philosophically, I strongly support it. I do believe--
and let me say when I was Governor of my State, we actually put it into 
our academic standards that every district had to offer special 
opportunities for gifted students. And we actually had a funding stream 
in our education formula for it. So I'm strongly committed to it.
    But I think the larger problem in American education is that we've 
given up on too many of the other students. Because I believe--I'll say 
again, I believe more than 90 percent of the students are capable of 
learning way over 90 percent of what they need to know to keep this 
country in the forefront of the world and keep their opportunities the 
richest in the world in the 21st century and that what we really need to 
focus on is lifting our sights so that everybody can stand up and make 
the speech this young man did when they get out of high school.
    I do strongly support gifted programs, but I think as a nation, what 
we need to do is to say the school districts and the States should fund 
those gifted programs, we should support nationally advanced placement, 
but the main thing we ought to do is be lifting the sights of all of our 
children.

[Jim Archer, a production manager at Northrup Grumman, asked the 
President what steps could be taken to help parents and teachers be more 
open to vocational and technical education.]

    The President. The first thing we should be doing, in my opinion, is 
asserting that the dividing line between vocational education and 
academic education in the world of the future is an artificial dividing 
line. If anybody doubts that, they ought to just take a random tour of 
factories in America today and see how many factory workers there are 
running very complex machines with computer programs and a thousand 
other examples that you well know.
    I can only tell you what we have tried to do and what I think we 
should do. The reason I pushed the development of this school-to-work 
program when I became President is that I had seen the same sort of 
thing you were talking about, on the one hand, and on the other hand, I 
had seen young people who were in vocational programs very often not 
getting the level of vocational training they needed because it's much 
more sophisticated now.
    So what we decided we ought to do is to bring the business 
community, in effect, into the schools and bring the students into the 
businesses and let young people make up their minds and let young people 
who chose, in effect, a kind of vocational option to do it in a way that 
they would know was not closing future doors. If they decided they 
wanted to go to a 4-year college later on or they decided they wanted to 
pursue a different career later on, they could do it.
    That's the whole idea of school-to-work, is to set up a partnership 
between the employers in the community and the schools so that the idea 
of working and learning are--these ideas are compatible, not two 
different things, and so that if young people decide they want to go 
into the workplace, they will have an adequate amount of training to be 
worth enough to you so that you will give them a decent income and they 
can earn more as they go along and they're not foreclosing the option of 
taking a different path if, after a few years, they want to go back and 
go to school.
    I think that a lot of the things that I have to do involve, well, do 
we have the right program, you know, do we have the right kind of 
incentives to go to college? Well, a lot of it is just making sure we're 
thinking right about this, because most of the decisions made every day 
by Americans are not made by anybody in Government, they're made by all 
the rest of you. So it's the way we think about these problems very 
often that determines whether we accomplish them.
    And if you look at the level of work being done at Northrup Grumman 
and any number of other companies today, it is a very foolish and 
outdated idea to have this old-fashioned dividing line between this is 
academic and respectable and this is vocational and not quite as good. 
We need to abolish the line, and that's what our school-to-work program 
has tried to do.

[[Page 651]]

    Mr. Kittle. Mr. President, in closing, would you like to go back to 
that sample math question, give us the answer, and explain how the 
United States students are compared to students in other countries?
    The President. I think that means we're out of time. [Laughter]
    Let me tell you what we always do at these town meetings. I love 
these. I have not done one in a couple years, but if any of you have 
questions that you would like to have answered, if you will provide them 
to the superintendent here, he'll load them all up, send them to me, and 
I'll write you back, because I think if you come here with a question, 
you're entitled to get an answer. I wish we had more time.
    But let's do the question, let's go back to this. Here's the eighth 
grade question, okay. If the car has a fuel tank that holds 15 gallons, 
and it uses 5 gallons every 100 miles, and it goes 250 miles, obviously 
it uses 12\1/2\ gallons of fuel and there is 2\1/2\ gallons left, and 
that was question A.
    But here is the stunning thing. Let's look at the results. Let's go 
to the next slide. Only 34 percent of American eighth graders got that 
question right. Fifty percent of Korean eighth graders got it right. 
Seventy percent of eighth graders in Singapore got it right. So if you 
lengthen the school year, maybe you should work on specific math skills.
    This has nothing to do with IQ. Nearly 100 percent of all the brains 
in the world will process this problem. Do not worry about whether we 
can do this. This is not an issue of whether we can achieve this level 
of excellence. We can easily do this. We just haven't.
    And when we deprive our children of the capacity to do this, then 
there are all kinds of other processes that they can't absorb, and it 
blunts their capacity to learn later. So I want to see that number up at 
about 90, and the only way to do it is to try and to test it. And we can 
do it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:12 p.m. in the gymnasium at Robert C. 
Byrd High School. In his remarks, he referred to Mary Helen Shields, 
senior at Robert C. Byrd High School, who introduced the President; 
Robert Kittle, superintendent, Harrison County schools; Gov. Cecil H. 
Underwood of West Virginia, and his wife, Hovah; Gaston Caperton, former 
West Virginia Governor; and Mayor Robert T. Flynn of Clarksburg.