    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [July 25, 1997]
    [Pages 997-1001]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Association of Elementary School Principals in
    Arlington, Virginia
    July 25, 1997

        The President. Thank you very much, Superintendent Paz, President
    Allen, my longtime friend Sam Sava. Thank you, Secretary Riley. I
    believe the record will reflect, when your tenure is over, that you have
    done more for the children of America than any Secretary of Education
    who ever served, and I thank you.
        I want to say, we are joined today by a number of other
    distinguished education leaders, other superintendents from cities
    around our country, along with Bob Chase, the president of the NEA;
    Sandra Feldman, the president of the AFT; Michael Casserley, the
    executive director of the Council of Great City Schools; and Anne
    Bryant, the executive director of the National School Board Association;
    and my good friend Mayor Beverly O'Neill from Long Beach, California.
    And a lot of superintendents are here. I thank you for joining the
    elementary school principals and for your support for better education
    for our children.
        I want to begin by thanking the elementary principals for what they
    do for America's children. Like every parent, I remember very well

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    the first time I sent my child off to school, putting her in the hands
    of a principal I did not know but whom I came to know and like very
    well. [Laughter] Every year hundreds of thousands of children arrive on
    your doorstep, entrusted to you by their parents. And every year you
    prove their trust is well-placed.
        When I was the Governor of Arkansas, I had the opportunity to
    cochair a national task force on school leadership for the education
    commission of the States. And we found about a decade ago what you have
    always known, that when it comes to the quality of education in the
    school, it is the principal who makes all the difference.
        As school enrollments reach record levels, up to 54 million by the
    year 2006, and as we move into the 21st century's knowledge economy
    where learning for a lifetime will be essential to success, your
    leadership will be more important than ever. And your ability to inspire
    people and to make them believe that we can achieve educational
    excellence will be more important than ever. Beginning with our Nation's
    elementary schools, we have to demand excellence from every school,
    every teacher, every student. We have to repair and rebuild our schools.
    We have to make sure they take advantage of the newest technologies. We
    have to make sure that they are safe and drug-free. We have to make sure
    that we are supporting promising reforms like charter schools and other
    initiatives underway in many of your districts. But I believe the single
    most important thing we can do to give our children world-class
    education is to insist on high national standards, so that we make sure
    that we've done everything we can to see that every single child learns
    what he or she knows to succeed in the exciting world of the 21st
    century. For too long we've been unwilling to insist on that as a
    nation, perhaps for fear that some of our children could not reach those
    standards, perhaps out of a misguided notion that such standards would
    lead to too much Federal Government involvement or too much loss of
    local control.
        I believe a lot of Americans have always feared that children from
    disadvantaged backgrounds and struggling communities just might not be
    able to hold their own. I believe that too many Americans have thought
    that with so much diversity and poverty and family difficulties among
    our young students, American children would simply always lag behind
    other countries that had more homogenous, less disruptive cultures, and
    perhaps longer school years. Still, for more than a decade now, at least
    since the issuance of ``A Nation At Risk'' report in 1983 and, indeed,
    going back some years before, Americans have been working hard, led by
    their educators and reform-minded public servants, to improve our
    schools, and it is making a difference.
        As Secretary Riley said, last month we learned that our fears were
    wrong when America's fourth graders finished second only to Korea in
    science in the international math and science tests. They scored well
    above the average on the annual math tests. Six years earlier, our
    fourth graders had scored well below the international average. These
    tests, of course, are not of all of our fourth graders, but they are of
    a rather large and representative sample of them. And they tested enough
    of them to prove that we don't have to settle for second-class
    expectations or second-class goals for any of our children.
        They also show, frankly, that by the time our students reach the
    eighth grade, the high test scores drop back below the international
    average. I think we all know that the problems our children face are
    aggravated in those middle school years, when they move into
    adolescence, and that in many of our communities the structure and
    organization of the middle school was more adequate to a previous time
    when a lot of those problems did not exist.
        Nonetheless, the fourth grade test proved, number one, that you're
    doing a good job and, number two, that our kids can do it. And that is,
    after all, the most important thing. Therefore, I believe it is
    imperative now to take action and to begin the movement to high national
    standards for all of our children. When we don't expect or encourage our
    children to learn, we indirectly encourage them to fail. When we set
    high standards and when we insist on them, there's no end to what our
    kids can do. You see that every day; you know that better than anyone.
        In my State of the Union Address I challenged every State and every
    school to adopt high national standards and by 1999 to actually test all
    our fourth graders in reading and all our eighth graders in math to make
    sure the standards are being met, not Federal standards but national
    ones, standards that every child can meet in every city and State in
    America and

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    standards that every child must meet if we want every child to be able
    to live out his or her dreams. After all, national standards are
    defensible because reading is reading and math is math in Appalachia and
    in Alaska and all points in between.
        Since I issued that call, education leaders or Governors or both in
    seven States--California, North Carolina, Maryland, Massachusetts,
    Michigan, Kentucky, and West Virginia--along with our Department of
    Defense schools all over the world have announced their support for
    national standards and their desire to participate in the testing
    program as soon as it becomes available in 1999.
        Today I am pleased to make an announcement that would have been
    literally unthinkable just a couple of years ago. Fifteen of our largest
    school districts, including schools in six of the seven largest cities
    in the United States, have committed to meet these standards and to
    participate in the tests to measure the progress of their students
    against them.
        Now, I don't know how much news this will be tonight on the news or
    tomorrow in the papers, but every one of us who has been involved in
    education--if I had told you 5 years ago that the leaders of the school
    districts in New York; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Broward County, Florida;
    Cincinnati; Detroit; Chicago; Houston; San Antonio; El Paso; Omaha; Los
    Angeles; Long Beach; Fresno; and Seattle--that the leaders of these
    school districts have asked that their students be held to and measured
    against the same standards in reading and math that we expect our
    children to meet to have a world-class education, no one would have
    believed that. Educators know this is an historic, astonishing,
    wonderful moment in American education. And I thank them for doing that.
        This commitment means that 3\1/2\ million more children, one out of
    every 14 public school children in America, will be held to these world-
    class education standards in the basics. And it means after the test is
    given, all of them will get better education because we'll all learn
    from the test results and keep working until we get the results we want
    in every one of those districts.
        I would like to ask the representatives of those 15 school districts
    who are here to stand up and be recognized, the superintendents, the
    teachers, the principals. Thank you very much. [Applause]
        And let me say, the Secretary of Education and I are about to leave
    to go out to Las Vegas to meet with the Governors. Now, if this event
    had gone on in 1979 or 1980 or 1983 or 1984, the Governors would have
    been the first group out there. And they've been dragging their feet,
    and don't you believe for a moment that Dick Riley and I aren't going to
    tell them what we saw at the elementary school principals convention.
        When we get these results, they ought to be incorporated into school
    and school district report cards, so that parents and taxpayers can see
    how our kids are doing but can also measure their progress. Keep in
    mind--you all know this, and we have to explain this to the citizens and
    the parents--these tests are not graded on the curve. If you make the
    highest grade in the class and it's not high enough, you don't know
    enough. If you make the lowest grade in the class and you're over the
    bar, you're at least qualified to do well in the world you will live in.
    It is very important that we get that message across to our people. We
    are measuring what is required to succeed in the world our children will
    live in.
        We in the National Government will continue to do our part. The
    balanced budget agreement we reached with Congress, that was voted for
    overwhelmingly in both Houses by Members of both parties, takes Head
    Start the next step toward our goal of a million children. It will fund
    the Technology Literacy Challenge to help us participate with the
    private sector in hooking up every classroom and library to the Internet
    by the year 2000. It will help to fund America Reads, our program to get
    a million trained reading tutors available to give extra help to
    children who need it most, to make sure that all of our 8-year-olds can
    read independently. I urge Congress to act to implement this program.
    All told, you should know that if this balanced budget agreement passes,
    the increase in education funding, Federal support for education, will
    be the largest since 1965.
        I also want to emphasize that we know that one of the challenges
    especially that a lot of our big-city schools will face is a looming
    teacher shortage, that we're going to have more students coming in and
    more teachers retiring. Just last week I offered a new initiative to
    provide extra scholarship money modeled on the Federal Health Service
    Corps, where we pay for medical

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    school costs for doctors who will go out to underserved areas, to pay
    for the education costs of young people who will agree to teach for 3
    years in areas that are especially challenging. And I hope Congress will
    pass that as well.
        Finally, let me mention in regard to the budget that in addition to
    the support for education from Head Start through high school
    graduation, this budget takes another huge step toward opening the doors
    of college education to all Americans. The agreement provided for a tax
    credit for the first 2 years of college that would be sufficient to
    virtually guarantee universal access at least to community college for
    every high school graduate in the United States and for every adult who
    needs to go back to school. In addition, it provides tax relief for the
    3d and 4th years of college and for graduate school. And that's what
    we're working on now in these budget negotiations. The agreement
    provided for that. The tax plan that the Republicans released a couple
    of days ago falls far short of the commitment in the agreement.
        Now, let me say again, I believe we should have a tax cut. We can
    afford it and still balance the budget, because the budget is now going
    to finish this year over 80 percent below what it was when I took
    office. We've already done over 80 percent of the work in balancing the
    budget. But the tax cut has to, first of all, put middle class families
    who need the relief most at the heart of its objectives. It should help
    families to pay for all 4 years of college and for graduate education.
    It should help working people get training throughout a lifetime. It
    should help middle class parents to raise their children. And equally
    important, it should keep us within the limits of balancing this budget
    and keeping it balanced and not having it explode in the out-years.
        We have been handicapped severely for years and years and years
    because we went on a binge of deficit spending in the early eighties
    that we couldn't break. Now we have done it. You see the results in our
    economy: When we have fiscal discipline you have lower interest rates;
    you have more investment; you have a growing economy. And it's required
    us to show some restraint here over the last few years, but it's also
    helped to swell the coffers of State and local government, which fund
    our schools, primarily because we have a healthy economy. So all of this
    has to be observed.
        I have to tell you that even though there are differences which are
    clearly and publicly stated between the White House and the Republican
    leaders and, to some extent, also clearly stated between the Democrats
    in Congress and others, I think we're going to get this agreement. The
    negotiators are working even as we speak. And I think we all know that
    this is a remarkable moment in American history, and we have an
    obligation to balance the budget for the first time since 1969, to keep
    this economic growth going, and to do it in a way that gives us the
    biggest investment in education in over 30 years, and I might add also,
    the biggest investment in expanding health coverage to our children
    since 1965. And this is important. That will also help you do your jobs
    better. And I want to emphasize that if we pass college benefit
    provisions as contemplated by the budget agreement, it will be the
    biggest increase in access to college, federally supported access to
    college, since the GI bill passed in 1945. This is a very good
    agreement.
        So this is a day that we celebrate these 15 school districts
    stepping forward, representing so many of our children, putting the lie
    to the notion that our children can't meet the high standards because
    they're from immigrant families or because they're from poor families or
    because they live in difficult circumstances. We can all make excuses
    until the cows come home, but in the end, these kids have to get up and
    live their lives. And we've got to give them a chance to live their
    lives in the best way possible. And we have done that. We celebrate
    that. We live in the expectation of a successful conclusion of these
    budget negotiations.
        But the thing I want to close with is that when you go back to your
    school, I want you to know that I know that you are leading the fight
    for the future of our children. More than anybody else, you have to have
    the conviction that every child can learn to high standards. You have to
    have the conviction that your teachers can do what they have to do. You
    have to have the convictions that you can establish the alliances with
    your parents and your communities that you have to establish. You have
    to believe that if you demand high standards and have high expectations
    that our kids can meet them. You have to believe that we actually can
    succeed in giving our children the tools they need to make the most of
    their own lives and to keep our country the great beacon of hope

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    and freedom and opportunity in the 21st century.
        Pearl Buck once said that if our American way of life fails the
    child, it fails us all. It follows that if our American way of life
    supports, ennobles, lifts up our children, it does that for all of us.
    That is what you do, and I am very grateful.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    [At this point, Samuel G. Sava, executive director, National Association
    of Elementary School Principals, presented the President with a bell.]

        The President. Well, I may use this in unconventional ways. Thank
    you very much, Sam. This means more to me than you know. The young man
    you mentioned, Michael Morrison, is a wheelchair-bound young man, raised
    by a single mother, who became my friend. On that cold November Tuesday
    in 1992, when it was really cold in New Hampshire, Michael Morrison got
    up to go to the polls to work for me, and his car was broken down, his
    family car. His mother couldn't take him. And so he wheeled his
    wheelchair alongside an icy highway for more than 2 miles to reach the
    polling place. He is now a college honor student. Don't ever forget what
    you do makes a difference.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:19 a.m. at the Crystal Gateway Marriott
    Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Stanley Paz, superintendent, El
    Paso Independent School District; and Yvonne Allen, president, National
    Association of Elementary School Principals.