    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [October 24, 1997]
    [Pages 1420-1424]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1420]]

    Remarks to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
    Honoring Board-Certified Master Teachers
    October 24, 1997

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I have to say the Vice
    President always says when--we have this arrangement, he always says,
    thank you for the standing ovation. [Laughter] I'd also like to thank
    the United States Marine Band for being here for us today. I know you
    enjoyed them very much. You know, when I have to leave this job, in 3
    years and a couple of months, I'll miss a lot of things about Washington
    and the White House--a few things I won't. [Laughter] But I'll really
    miss the Marine Band. It's a great honor to be around them every day.
    They're terrific.
        I want to thank Rebecca Palacios for her introduction and for her
    lifetime of dedication. We wanted her up here because she stands for all
    of you. And she first came to my attention when she spoke at Al
    Shanker's memorial service, and I know that a lot of you feel as I do. I
    wish he were here today. He'd be tickled to see this crowd and the
    progress of this endeavor.
        I'd like to thank Congressman Bob Etheridge and our good friend
    Senator Jim Jeffords from Vermont for being here and for the support we
    have received in the Congress with the leadership that they have given,
    and others, to this endeavor.
        I thank Secretary Riley. You know, I got a little nostalgic when
    Dick Riley was up here talking--Governor Hunt and Governor Riley and
    Governor Clinton--we've been at this since the 1970's. And none of us
    are very young anymore, and we're a little beat up, but it's been, I
    must say, one of the great treasures of my life to be friends with these
    two great leaders, to get to know their wives and their families, and to
    feel like we were giving a lifetime to this endeavor of advancing
    education. And I agree with Jim Hunt, Dick Riley is the best Secretary
    of Education we've ever had, and I thank him for that.
        Governor Hunt, I thank you for your leadership yesterday at the
    first-ever White House Conference on Child Care that Hillary and I
    sponsored, and I thank you for what you're doing in North Carolina to
    get a systematic approach to giving all of our children in their
    preschool years the best preparation and support they can have. I thank
    you for 10 years at the helm of this extraordinary organization. Because
    of the work that you and the national board, with support from the
    business community and from States all across America, have done, more
    teachers are now being challenged to fulfill their greatest potential,
    and just as important, they're finally being rewarded for doing so. And
    I thank you for that.
        And thank you, Barbara Kelley, for stepping in to fill Governor
    Hunt's shoes. You've worked tirelessly to improve education in Maine,
    and you've served the board well as vice chair. And I must say, you've
    got quite a crowd up for your first day on the job here.
    Congratulations. I'd also like to thank James Kelly and Sarah Mernissi
    for their leadership on the board.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to take just a couple of minutes and
    try to put what you're doing here in this truly historic endeavor into
    the larger context of the journey that your Nation is on. Six years ago
    this month, when I began to seek the Presidency, I did it because I
    thought we had to change course, become more focused, more united, and
    more energetic if we were going to succeed in preparing America for the
    21st century. And I had a simple but, I think, quite profound vision of
    what I wanted our country to be like when we crossed that next divide.
        With all of our challenges, all of our difficulties, and all of our
    diversity, I want this to be a country where the American dream is alive
    for everybody who is responsible enough to work for it. I want America
    to still be the world's leading force for peace and freedom and
    prosperity. And I want us to be able to reach across all the lines that
    divide us, to make one America.
        Together, we've made a lot of progress: The economy is growing;
    crime is down; the social fabric is mending. That happened in no small
    part, I think, because we underwent as a nation our own educational
    process. We had to think anew and learn anew about what the role of
    Government is and what we ought to be doing in all of these areas that
    are important to us.

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        I had listened for years as a Governor to a debate here about
    whether the Government should do nothing or try to do everything,
    neither of which made any sense to me in my own life. So we've given
    America a smaller and more focused Government that focuses on giving
    people the tools and creating the conditions to make the most of their
    own lives.
        I also believed that we had to go beyond a lot of other kind of
    false choices. In the economy, the argument used to be, are we going to
    do something about the deficit, in which case we won't do anything else,
    or are we going to just keep spending and betray the future of all the
    children in the audience? We have shown that you can reduce the deficit
    and balance the budget and still invest in America's children and its
    future, and that is the right approach. [Applause] Thank you.
        On the environment, the debate was, well, if we clean up the
    environment, we'll wreck the economy--in spite of the fact that that
    contradicted all our experiences. So we have energetically embraced the
    proposition that we have to dramatically improve the environment,
    dramatically reduce our greenhouse gases, and we're going to do it and
    grow the economy. When you start new things in an innovative way, you
    create more jobs and more opportunities. Doing the right thing is
    normally something that benefits you economically, and it will here as
    well.
        On crime, I thought there was a totally false debate about people
    who talked tough on the one hand, and people who were genuinely
    compassionate about the circumstances that bred crime on the other. I
    thought we ought to be both tough and compassionate in trying to prevent
    people from getting into trouble in the first place. And that approach
    is working, and the crime rate is dropping.
        On welfare, there was a debate which basically treated everybody on
    welfare on the one hand as if they never wanted to go to work and say we
    ought to impose a lot of requirements on them, and other people who were
    genuinely concerned about the welfare of children of people on welfare
    but never wanted to hold them to higher standards. So we took an
    approach to welfare reform that required everybody to work who can, but
    take care of the children. That's our most important job. And in the
    process our country has learned and grown and gained self-confidence,
    just the way your students do in the class.
        And we are still engaged in this debate here in Washington about
    education. You know, there are those who say that the Federal Government
    should do next to nothing in education and that basically it should be
    left alone. Or some people think it should be abandoned altogether. I
    believe that we have to go beyond either giving up on the one hand or
    giving more money to the status quo on the other. None of you represent
    the status quo. You represent standards, reform, and investment. That is
    the proper path for education in the future and every area.
        I know we've been saying this all our lives, but it is really true
    that the greatest challenge America faces to realizing our entire vision
    is the challenge of giving every child in this country a world-class
    education. If we don't do it, how can we preserve the American dream for
    people who are responsible enough to work for it? There are a lot of
    people today in America--every day I think about all the people out
    there who are willing to work, are willing to work harder, who are
    trapped in circumstances that they find totally unsatisfactory, that are
    difficult for their children, simply because they never got a good
    education to develop their abilities.
        How can we lead the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity if
    we are weak at home because we don't have strength in the minds and
    hearts and spirits and the self-confidence of all of our people? How can
    we have enough sense to overcome all of our diversity and be one
    America, at a time when racial and ethnic and religious tensions are
    causing people to kill each other all over the world, if we don't have
    the education that makes us understand that deep down inside what we
    have in common will always be more important than the things that divide
    us? You are carrying us into the future.
        Now, therefore, in a very fundamental sense, you are at the center
    of America's mission to the 21st century. And you know some things that
    sometimes it seems like we forget here in Washington when you hear these
    debates: Meeting the challenge will not be easy. There is no quick fix.
    There is no single proposal that will magically give all our children
    the education that they need and deserve.
        I might say that I do not believe that a proposal that takes
    resources away from public schools, most of which are already
    underfunded,

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    will do anything for the 90 percent of the children who are going to
    remain there. But I would also say, we make a great mistake when we stop
    at the denial. We cannot afford to be in denial. What's that story all
    the children say? ``Denial is not just a river in Egypt.'' [Laughter] We
    know, and you have proved by what you have done, that we all have to be
    impatient. If you believe in the education of all children, if you
    believe in the potential of the public schools, we have to be impatient
    and focused and determined and willing not just to settle for isolated
    successes but to do systematic things.
        That is the genius of the national board. I think, of all the many
    contributions Jim Hunt has made to our public life, when his whole
    career is over, two will stand out: the work he's done on this board,
    and the work he's done in North Carolina to take a systematic approach
    to all children between birth and age 5 to get them ready to go to
    school.
        We must be impatient. We have to change the system for everyone.
    It's got to work for everyone. Isolated examples of success are not
    enough. Therefore, we have to fight to raise standards for students and
    teachers. We ought to give more choice and competition among public
    schools. We ought to equip all of our schools with the latest technology
    and people who know how to use it. [Laughter]
        We ought to empower our parents to take a more active role in their
    children's education. We ought to recognize that people can't succeed in
    school unless our schools, all of them, are safe and disciplined and
    drug-free. We have to do more to bring high-quality teachers to
    difficult, underserved, poor areas, where the children need them the
    most. We ought to make it easier for all schools to reform, to be less
    bureaucratic. If people aren't performing, it ought to be easier for
    them to be moved out. But the most important thing we can do is to train
    and reward the finest teachers in America, to get them and keep them in
    the classroom.
        So that debate is going on here now, and we face a choice. There are
    those of us, like Governor Hunt and our master teachers, who are doing
    all they can to sustain and improve and strengthen public education in
    America. And there are those whose answer is to do nothing or, worse, to
    walk away. It's a choice between those who look at the challenge of
    public education and throw up their hands and those who, like you, roll
    up their sleeves.
        I have called upon all of our people to create an America in which
    every 8-year-old can read, every 12-year-old can log on to the Internet,
    every 18-year-old can go to college, and every American can keep on
    learning for lifetime.
        Let us say one thing here for the record. You and people like you
    all over the country have been working on this for more than a decade,
    and our schools--against all odds and great challenges, our schools are
    getting better. Everybody should know that. They are getting better. We
    are taking in ever more diverse student populations. We are learning
    more about how to deal with each other, and we are getting better
    results. Secretary Riley mentioned North Carolina's results. We are
    getting better results, but only when we are impatient, focused,
    determined, relentless, and systematic in our approach.
        The balanced budget I signed last summer will help us to do this. It
    will throw open the doors of college to everybody who is willing to work
    for it through more Pell grants, 300,000 more work-study slots,
    education IRA's, the historic HOPE scholarship for the first 2 years of
    college, and other tax credits for all higher education. The budget goes
    a long way toward completing our mission to connect every classroom and
    library to the Internet by the year 2000, which I think we're going to
    meet. And I thank you.
        We're fighting to fully fund America Reads, which has already
    involved AmeriCorps volunteers, tens of thousands of college students
    from 800 campuses now, many other people in churches and other volunteer
    groups going into our schools to help tutor individually young children.
    And Congress has taken the first step toward funding that, and I
    appreciate that.
        But all these things will mean little unless the classroom works.
    Ultimately, the magic of education is what goes on in the class, between
    the teachers and the students, hopefully supported at home by the
    parents. That's why we have to set high national standards of academic
    excellence. That's why I'm fighting for these fourth grade reading and
    eighth grade math tests. And I thank Governor Hunt and the other States
    and cities who have supported it.
        Through voluntary national standards, parents and teachers can make
    sure that all their children in all of our schools get the skills they

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    need. I thank Governor Hunt again for his leadership here, and I hope he
    can have even more members of the National Governors' Association
    following the lead of the heads of the biggest school districts in the
    country and many city governments all across the country who are doing
    this.
        Again I will say that if there is any attempt in Congress to kill
    this effort at national standards and voluntary testing, I will have to
    veto it.
        So this is the context in which your efforts are working, and we
    have to see it against that. It is the great frontier of our national
    effort to come to grips with all the challenges we face to get this
    country into the 21st century in the shape that we all know it must be
    in. Raising the quality of teaching has to come at the top of the list.
        We all know a single extraordinary teacher can change the lives of
    many students. We all know we should reward excellence in teaching. Now
    we know that national board certification defines excellence in
    teaching. That's why I've asked the Congress for $105 million over the
    next 5 years to help us get 100,000 board-certified master teachers.
        Now, just think of the difference a master teacher could make if we
    had a master teacher in every single school in America. All of you know
    that one of the things teachers do a good job of is talking. [Laughter]
    In the classroom, in the teachers' lounge, in the halls, before and
    after school, you talk for a living, and you're good at it. If we could
    get at least one master teacher in every single school building in
    America, then all the process through which you go, you will be, without
    even thinking about it and sometimes consciously, imparting to the other
    teachers, to the principals, changing the culture of our schools in ways
    that no one could write out a form book and predict. But we know if we
    can get enough of these master teachers, we will have a critical mass
    that will then impact on all the other teachers, on the teaching
    environment, and therefore, on the learning of all of our children.
        That is why I asked for the $100 million. That's why I want 100,000
    board teachers. I do not want to stop until we've got a master teacher
    in every single school building in the United States of America--
    eventually, I hope, in every classroom--but every school building. We
    should not stop until we do that.
        That's the sort of thing that Jim Hunt has visualized all this time,
    a system--not isolated successes, a system--where we give our teachers,
    our schools, our children a chance to be the best they can be. That is
    what we have to do, and that is our mission. And that's why we've got to
    get this through the Congress and why I'm so glad to see Senator
    Jeffords here. And I know that he stands for a lot of other people who
    will do it.
        I must say, when Congressman Etheridge gave up being head of the
    North Carolina education effort to come to Congress, he didn't really do
    that--he's basically got two jobs in one--and I think he's going to ask
    Governor Hunt for a second salary to support it. [Laughter]
        Now, let me also say to you that you're getting a lot more support
    around the country now in local school districts and in businesses who
    are stepping up to the challenge. Last month, the Los Angeles Unified
    School District and the United Teachers of Los Angeles agreed to reward
    board-certified teachers with a 15 percent raise. You know, one of
    Clinton's laws of politics is when someone--people always say in
    Washington, ``That's not a money problem.'' When they say that, they're
    talking about someone else's problem. [Laughter] It does matter. We must
    pay people more if they're doing well, if they're better prepared, and
    if they're willing to stand out and stake out a new frontier, and it's
    important.
        Just a few days ago the McGraw-Hill company joined forces with the
    New York City Board of Education and the United Federation of Teachers
    there, along with New York universities to prepare more teachers for
    board certification. These things are crucial to our success. We can
    appropriate the money here. We can help you implement it. But we've got
    to have friends out there who believe in it and then people who will
    reward the teachers once they get the certification. So I want every
    State, every school board, every business to help more of our teachers
    become master teachers.
        As the national board continues to define what teachers should know
    and be able to do, I also hope you will make even more use of effective
    technology. Every teacher should be as comfortable with a computer as a
    chalkboard. You should not be as technologically challenged as I am.
    [Laughter]

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        And finally, let me say I think we have to do more to attract more
    young people into teaching as a career, particularly where the kids need
    it the most. I have called upon Congress to support a $350-million
    scholarship program modeled on the National Medical Service Corps. Those
    of us who come from rural States can all remember how blessed our rural
    communities have been over the last several years, the last couple of
    decades, by the doctors who were educated in medical school with the
    National Medical Service Corps and then went out to some place where
    people had never seen a doctor for years or where the town doctor had
    died and no other young people would go and how many people were helped
    by that. We need to do that for our inner-city schools, for our rural
    schools, for our poorest children.
        This proposal would basically give a talented young person an
    education in exchange for a promise to teach children growing up in our
    most underprivileged communities. It will strengthen teacher training in
    colleges that work directly with inner cities and with poor rural
    schools. It is a good idea, and I hope you will help me pass it, because
    the kids out there who have the toughest neighborhoods to live in and
    the toughest obstacles to overcome and the parents in the most difficult
    circumstances, they need the best teachers. They need them, and we ought
    to try to help them get them.
        And finally let me say just a simple thank you for making a decision
    to spend your lives on the future. If you really think about it, most of
    us do things every day where, at the end of the day, we can know that
    the major impact of what we've done comes more or less right after we do
    it. The major impact of what you do will come perhaps after we're not
    even around anymore. You literally live your lives based on a faith in
    the innate dignity and potential of every child that you may never see
    realized. They may go off to some far-distant place and do something,
    and the connection will be broken. But you know what you're doing is
    renewing this country in a constant and profound way. And I think you
    for that.
        Henry Adams once said that ``Our teachers affect eternity. They can
    never tell where their influence stops.'' You will never know where your
    influence stops, but I can tell you, you will know that it always begins
    here in Washington as long as Dick Riley and Jim Hunt and Bill Clinton
    and the people that agree with us have a job to do--[laughter]--have a
    job to do and the energy to do it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:40 a.m. in a pavilion on the South Lawn
    at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to board-certified
    master teacher Rebecca Palacios, who introduced the President; Gov.
    James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina; and Barbara Kelley, chair, James
    A. Kelly, president and chief executive officer, and Sarah ``Sally''
    Mernissi, vice president for government relations, National Board for
    Professional Teaching Standards.