    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [April 24, 1998]
    [Pages 615-617]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the National Teacher of the Year Award Ceremony
    April 24, 1998

        The President. Ladies and gentlemen, I was sitting here listening to
    Secretary Riley and Senator Robb, thinking about how very long we've been working
    together, principally on education--more than 15 years, the 3 of us--and
    I've noticed a few changes. For one thing, I was looking at Chuck's
    remarks, and as the years go by, the print on our notes gets bigger.
    [Laughter]
        But I must say, their fidelity to the cause has never wavered. I
    continue to be astonished by Dick Riley's
    energy and passion and devotion to education. We couldn't have a better
    champion as Secretary of Education. And I am very grateful for a man
    with Senator Robb's raw courage, to have him
    in the Senate and on the side of our children.
        I'd also like to thank Congressman Tom Davis and Congressman Tom Petri for
    being here to honor their respective Teachers of the Year. Congressman
    Davis swears that he went to junior high school with our honoree's wife,
    who is also a teacher. But the age disparity appears to be too great for
    that to be true. [Laughter]
        I'd also like to welcome Gordon Ambach,
    the Executive Director of the Council of Chief State School Officers;
    Mary Beth Blegen, the 1997 Teacher of the
    Year; and say a special word of appreciation to all the other Teachers
    of the Year who are here from all the States and the territories.
        You know, this is the Rose Garden, and from these steps we have, at
    various times, paid tribute to our bravest soldiers, our pioneering
    astronauts, our greatest athletes. Americans who, in offering up their
    personal best made our spirits soar, and sometimes changed the course of
    history, and in so doing, earned the title of hero. But nothing could be
    more fitting than to celebrate the men and women whose great deeds

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    are too often unsung, but who, in offering up their personal best every
    day, help to create those other heroes. For every soldier, every
    astronaut, every scientist, every athlete, every artist can thank in no
    small measure a teacher, or more than one, for what he or she ultimately
    was able to become.
        In that sense, we celebrate heroes, here today, who build up our
    children and America's future. We're especially glad to honor this
    year's National Teacher of the Year, Mr. Philip Bigler, but all the other teachers, too. I'm sure he would be
    the first to say--and I'm sure all of you would be the first to say--
    that you really stand here in the shoes of tens of thousands of others
    who every day do their best to lift our children up.
        Your tools have changed over the years; textbooks have been updated,
    slates have given way to computers. But the most important tools--the
    heart and soul and compassion--are still the same. The passion for
    opening young minds to knowledge; the unshakable faith in the potential
    and possibility of every child; the commitment every now and then to
    stay after class to help a struggling student; the vigilance to answer
    every child's discouraged ``I can't'' with a determined ``Yes, you
    can.''
        Our national honoree, Philip Bigler,
    brings all these gifts to his history classes at, appropriately, Thomas
    Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia. For more
    than 20 years, his students haven't just studied history, they have
    lived it. He's transformed his classroom into a virtual time machine,
    challenging students to debate each other as members of rival ancient
    Greek city states, as lawyers before the Supreme Court, as Presidential
    candidates named Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
        Through these historic simulations, his
    students have learned lessons about democracy and the meaning of
    citizenship, lessons that will last a lifetime, lessons we want every
    American to know.
        We need more teachers like Philip Bigler
    and all our other honorees in every classroom in America today. For it
    is they who can make our schools the best in the world. It is they who
    can guarantee that America will have another American Century in the
    21st century.
        Of course, we have to help them, and here in Washington, as Senator
    Robb said, we're doing our best to push an agenda for educational
    excellence for all. Secretary Riley has
    labored for it every day since we've been here, to empower teachers and
    students and principals and parents, through national standards and
    accountability, through smaller classes and better classrooms and more
    hookups to the Internet, through more master teachers and more charter
    schools.
        For 4 years and more, the Congress and the President worked together
    in bipartisan fashion toward higher standards, greater accountability,
    and more opportunity. Indeed, in just the Balanced Budget Act last year,
    we had the biggest increase investment in public education in 35 years,
    and the biggest expansion of opportunity for our children to go on to
    college since the GI bill 50 years ago.
        As Senator Robb said, this week Congress did a little about-face.
    The Senate voted against the school construction program to modernize
    our schools, against national standards, against reducing class sizes in
    the early grades. It voted to weaken the movement to charter schools and
    our efforts to hook all our classrooms and libraries up to the Internet
    by the year 2000.
        Instead, they voted for a very small, as Senator Robb said, tax
    incentive proposal that allegedly will help parents meet elementary and
    secondary school expenses. But the truth is, this bill, though it cost
    $1.6 billion, which is a lot of money in Federal assistance to
    education, would offer an average of $7 in tax relief for parents of the
    90 percent of our children who are in public schools, and just $37 in
    tax relief on average for those with children in private schools. Upper
    income families would get a disproportionate share of the money.
    Families struggling to make ends meet wouldn't get one red cent. Public
    education would be weakened by siphoning limited Federal resources away.
    Now, we can do better than that. And I'd like to ask the teachers to
    help me prepare the right lesson plan to ensure that we do.
        Earlier this month, a House committee took, in some ways, an even
    more shocking step in our effort reward outstanding teachers all across
    America by actually eliminating funding for the important work of the
    National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which certifies the
    master teachers--something that one of our colleagues, Governor Jim
    Hunt from North Carolina, has devoted a
    major part of the last 10 years to working for.

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        By defining the standards of excellence in teaching, the National
    Board helps to focus and upgrade teacher training, recognize outstanding
    teachers, keep our best teachers in the classroom, and help them help
    other teachers. National Board certification helps our teachers test
    themselves against the toughest standards. I believe it would be a
    terrible mistake to end national support for the work of the board, and
    I'm going to work with Congress to make sure that this provision never
    reaches my desk.
        Every school in America ought to have at least one board-certified
    teacher who can inspire and help all his or her colleagues. Now is no
    time to walk away from our commitment to public education or to reject
    our common obligation to help our children and to help you help our
    children. It's no time for Congress to set a poor example for students
    by ignoring the evidence, the lessons that are plainly there from all
    the educational research that has been done in the last 15 years, since
    the issuance of the ``Nation at Risk'' report; from all the anecdotal
    evidence they could pick up by talking to any one of you who have been
    honored by your fellow teachers and your States.
        This should not be a partisan issue; it should not be an ideological
    issue. It ought to be, purely and simply, what can we do to help you do
    what is best for our children and their future?
        The most encouraging thing I can say about looking at all of you is,
    while we go on and debate all this, you're going back to your classes,
    back to our kids, and because of you they're going to do just fine while
    we argue about, often, the wrong things. [Laughter] And I think that
    should be deeply encouraging to the American people.
        Now, I close with these words, so that we can give our honoree the
    last word. The great Daniel Webster once said, ``If we work upon marble,
    it will perish. If we work upon brass, time will efface it. If we rear
    temples, they will crumble into dust. But if we work upon immortal
    minds, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all
    eternity.''
        Thank you, Philip Bigler, for brightening
    those minds to all eternity.

    [At this point, Mr. Bigler made brief remarks.]

        The President. I think we're supposed to say, class dismissed. Thank
    you. [Laughter]

    Note: The President spoke at 3:22 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Mary Beth Blegen, 1996 National
    Teacher of the Year.