[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[February 23, 1998]
[Pages 266-268]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



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Remarks at the National Governors' Association Meeting
February 23, 1998

    Good morning. Governor Voinovich, 
Governor Carper, Mr. Scheppach, and to the members of the administration that are 
here and all the Governors, let me welcome you back to the White House. 
Before I begin, let me say what I know is on all of our minds: Our 
thoughts and prayers are with the people in central Florida where 
tornadoes have now killed 28 people. Governor Chiles is going to visit with our FEMA Director, James Lee 
Witt, the area today, and they will have our 
concerns with them.
    I'd also like to say I'm sorry we're starting a little late, but 
I've been working on the situation in Iraq. The Vice President and I met with National Security Adviser 
Berger this morning. Last night, just 
before our dinner, I spoke with the Secretary-General, Kofi 
Annan, and I have called Prime Minister 
Blair this morning; we had a long talk about the 
situation. I still have to talk to President Yeltsin and President Chirac, and I 
may have to leave the meeting and then come back. But that's all I have 
to say now, but I'm sorry we're starting a little late.
    I'd like to confine my opening remarks--and I'll try to truncate 
them since we're starting late--to education. For 20 years now, 
Governors have been in the forefront of education reform in the United 
States. In the late seventies, I was working with Governor Riley and now-Senator Bob Graham 
and Governor Hunt and others in the South 
who were trying to raise the standard of living in the Southern States 
to the national average, in part through an improvement in education.
    In '83, when President Reagan was here, Secretary Bell issued the ``Nation at Risk'' report. In '89, we had the 
education summit--some of you were there then--which produced the 
national education goals. In '93, we passed Goals 2000 here and the 
school-to-work program--I might say both of which have been implemented 
without a single new Federal regulation, something I'm very proud of.
    Last year, in my State of the Union, I outlined a 10-point program 
in education and asked that we leave politics at the schoolhouse door. 
And most of that program has now been implemented. I won't go over all 
of it, but I would just mention three or four issues that I think are 
important because they relate to many concerns that the Governors have.
    First of all, with the increases in Pell grants and 300,000 more 
work-study positions, with the education IRA's finally giving interest 
deductions for payments on college loans, the direct loan program, the 
HOPE scholarship--named after Governor Miller's 
program in Georgia--and the lifetime learning tax credit, which also 
applies to the 2d, the 3d, and 4th years of college and graduate school, 
I think we can finally say for the first time in the history of the 
country, we've opened the doors of college to all Americans. And that's 
an astonishing achievement for America. And I'm very proud of that. 
Secondly, we are well on our way to hooking up all the classrooms and 
libraries in the country to the Internet by the year 2000. And many of 
you have been very active in that. Thirdly--I'll say a little more about 
this in a minute--the national standards movement is alive and well. 
Fourth, we had the America Reads program, which has several thousand 
college students in all your States going into elementary school 
classrooms to teach kids to read. And finally, we funded a huge 
expansion in the master teacher program, which Governor Hunt has been so active in, and which I think is 
critically important to the future of education. If we can get a master 
teacher, a certified master teacher in every school building in America, 
it will change the culture and content and results of American 
education.
    Now, in '98, in the State of the Union Address, I asked the American 
people to focus on the fact that we could be happy that we'd opened the 
doors of college to everybody, because everyone accepts the fact that we 
have the best system of higher education in the world; everyone accepts 
that. No one believes America has the best system of elementary and 
secondary education in the world. And it seems incongruous. We know that 
we can have, and I think that should be our goal.
    So with a view towards standards, accountability, and expectations 
all being lifted, our budget in this year makes the largest commitment 
to K through 12 education in the history

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of the country, focused largely on reducing class size in the early 
grades to an average of 18--there are still a lot of classes with 30 
kids or more in them--therefore, to do that, achieving--helping the 
States and helping local school districts to hire 100,000 teachers, and 
helping to build or remodel 5,000 schools.
    It focuses on more emphasis on teachers, money for teacher training, 
and more money to develop a master teacher program. It focuses on 
standards and the continuation of the voluntary national test 
development for eighth grade math and fourth grade reading.
    I know that later today--and all of you may or may not know this--
but I know later today Secretary Riley is 
going to appoint Governor Engler to the NAGB, 
the independent board that is supposed to develop a test and that 
guarantees that the States' concerns will be taken into account. I thank 
Governor Engler for his willingness to serve. I think it is important 
that we say, whether we use national tests that are somehow evaluated by 
a national standard or State tests that are evaluated by a national 
standard, that we do believe that learning the basics is the same in 
every State in America, and we want to raise the standards in every 
State in America. I think that is terribly important and I think we can 
do it. And I thank you, Governor, for your 
willingness to serve.
    One other thing I'd like to say about standards. There's an 
interesting effort underway in America in many States, and in some 
cities like Chicago, to find a way to end the practice of social 
promotion in a way that lifts children up instead of putting them down. 
In Chicago, they have mandatory summer school, for example, for children 
that don't perform at grade level. And it's, among other things, led to 
a dramatic drop in juvenile crime in the summer in Chicago, that more 
and more people are involved in constructive activities.
    Before the next school year starts, Secretary Riley will issue guidelines on how schools can end social 
promotion and boost their efforts to ensure that more students learn 
what they need to learn the first time around, and then to help those 
who don't with extra tutoring and summer school.
    I also will send to Congress this year legislation to expand the Ed-
Flex program. That's the program that frees the States from Federal 
regulations so long as they set high academic standards, waive their own 
regulations for local schools, and hold schools accountable for results. 
There are, I think, a dozen of you now who are part of the Ed-Flex 
program. The legislation that I will send would make every State in the 
country eligible to be a part of it, which would dramatically reduce the 
regulatory burden of the Federal Government on the States in the area of 
education.
    One last thing I'd like to mention; as all of you know, we have been 
involved now for about 8 months in a national conversation on race. This 
race initiative, I think, has produced a number of results both in terms 
of specific programs and in terms of elevating the dialog in the country 
about how we can deal with our increasing diversity as one America in 
the 21st century. I'm delighted that this initiative is also working 
with the YWCA and with Governors to convene statewide days of dialog on 
race on April 30th. And I want to thank the YWCA--the CEO, Dr. Prema 
Mathai-Davis, is here today with us this 
morning--for helping us to launch these dialogs.
    Several of the Governors have already agreed to participate in this, 
and I hope all the Governors will support the days of dialog. Judith 
Winston, who is the Executive Director of 
my initiative on race, is also here today and will be happy to talk with 
you or your representatives more about this effort.
    Now, there are a lot of other issues that I know that you want to 
talk about, but I'll just end where I tried to begin. I think if we get 
education right, the rest of this will all resolve itself. As I look at 
where we are with the unemployment rate in the country, with the growth 
rate, and I ask myself how can we continue to grow, how we can lower the 
unemployment rate, how can we do it without inflation, the only answer, 
it seems to me, is to provide higher skill levels to the people in the 
places that have not yet fully participated in the good times America is 
enjoying.
    I think it is a democratic obligation on us--small ``d''--to make 
our democracy work, and I think it is an economic imperative. So I hope 
that we can focus on that, but I'm more than eager to talk about 
whatever else you'd like to discuss.
    Governor.

Note: The President spoke at 10:04 a.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. George V. Voinovich of Ohio,

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chairman, Gov. Tom Carper of Delaware, vice chairman, and Raymond C. 
Scheppach, executive director, National Governors' Association; Gov. 
Lawton Chiles of Florida; United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; 
Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom; President Boris Yeltsin 
of Russia; President Jacques Chirac of France; Gov. James B. Hunt, Jr., 
of North Carolina; former President Ronald Reagan; former Secretary of 
Education Terrel H. Bell; Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia; and Gov. John 
Engler of Michigan. The President also referred to the National 
Assessment Governing Board (NAGB); the Education Flexibility (Ed-Flex) 
Partnership Demonstration Program; and the Young Women's Christian 
Association (YWCA).