    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 2, 1999]
    [Pages 143-148]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community at Jackson Mann Elementary School in Allston,
    Massachusetts
    February 2, 1999

        Thank you so much. First, I would like to thank all those who have
    joined us today. Governor, thank you for
    your remarks and your commitment. To Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry, to
    Congressman Moakley and Congressman
    McGovern, and the other members of the
    Massachusetts delegation, I couldn't ask for stronger supporters and
    leaders for the cause of education.
        Mayor, thank you for setting an example
    which I hope will be followed by every mayor in the country in terms of
    your commitment to education. I want to congratulate Boston on stealing
    your superintendent, Tom Payzant, from the
    Department of Education and my administration. [Laughter] I forgive you
    for that. You have given a lot more to me than you have taken, and it is
    a gift to the children of this city.
        I'd like to thank Dr. Joanne Collins Russell and Gail Zimmerman and the
    faculty and the students, the chorus here at Jackson Mann, all of you,
    for making us feel so at home. Thank you so much. I want to thank the
    legislators and the local officials, the others who are here.
        I'm glad to be here. I heard a lot about this school. Tom Menino
    told me the last time he was here that you gave him pasta. So I didn't
    eat lunch at the last event--[laughter]--just waiting. That's not true,
    but it's a good story. He liked the pasta. [Laughter] It is true that he
    got pasta; it's not true I didn't eat lunch. [Laughter]
        But I also want to say to all of you, I was terribly impressed by
    what everyone said but most impressed by what your principal and what
    your teacher said, because it convinced me that this is a school which
    is going to be able to do right by the children of 21st century America.
    And every now and then, while I'm going through this talk and tell you
    what I'm going to propose to Congress, just look up there--there they
    are; that's America's future. That looks pretty good to me, but it is
    very different than our past.
        When I spoke at the State of the Union last month--to tell the
    American people that the state of our Union is strong, that our economy
    is perhaps the strongest it has ever been--I asked the American people
    to reflect upon what our obligations are in the midst of this economic
    success, with the social successes we've had, the welfare rolls cut
    almost in half, the lowest crime rate in a generation. What are we going
    to do with this?
        And I asked the American people to join together to meet the great
    challenges of a new century--things like the aging of America, helping
    families balance work and child rearing, helping communities and States
    and our entire country balance the need to grow the economy with the
    need to preserve the quality of life and the quality of our
    environment--big challenges.
        There is no challenge larger than giving every child in this country
    a world-class education, for every child will be not only a citizen of
    the United States but a citizen of the world. If you look at these
    children up here, you won't be surprised to know that all over America
    we

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    not only have the largest group of schoolchildren in history, it is the
    most racially, ethnically, religiously, culturally diverse group in
    history.
        Now, as the world grows smaller and our contacts with people all
    over the world on every continent become more frequent and more
    profound, there is no country in the world better positioned to preserve
    liberty and prosperity and to be a beacon of hope than the United
    States. Because as we look more like the world, we will have more
    advantages to have a positive influence in the world--if, but only if,
    we prove that we really can build a successful multiracial, multiethnic,
    multicultural democracy where we say we cherish, we enjoy, we celebrate
    our diversity, but what we have in common is more important.
        And the challenge of this and every school is to make sure that all
    of our children understand and are proud of what is different about
    them, but also understand and are proud of what they have in common, and
    understand that all children can learn and all children must learn and
    that it will be more important to their generation than to any previous
    generation of Americans.
        The results you're getting here on your test scores, and just the
    feeling that one gets here in listening to what your principal and your
    teacher said, make me know that you are on the right track. I was so
    impressed with Ms. Zimmerman, when she got
    through I said, ``You did a good job. You ought to run for public
    office.'' [Laughter] And she said, ``Well, I might.'' [Laughter] I hope
    she'll teach a few more classes of kids with that kind of skill and
    understanding, first.
        There are lots of schools--over the last 20 years, Secretary Riley
    and I used to be Governors together, and I've spent a lot of time in
    public schools over the last 20 years--a lot of time, a lot of time as
    President. And this is actually unusual for me, just to come to the
    meeting like this. Normally when I come to a school, I also visit a
    class and talk to the teachers and talk to the students and listen and
    observe.
        And one of the things that I want the American people who aren't
    here to know and understand is that every single problem in American
    education has been solved by someone somewhere, and that many of these
    problems have been solved in schools where, if you didn't know anything
    about education, you could hardly believe it. Sometimes they're in the
    toughest neighborhoods; sometimes they have the most limited financial
    base. But with good principals, good teachers, a good culture in the
    school, high values, high standards, it is astonishing what I have seen
    in places where you wouldn't believe it.
        The great trick and difficulty in American education is, and the
    thing that we have not solved, we have not yet figured out how we can
    accelerate the pace by which all schools do what works in some schools.
    And I think every teacher here, everyone who has ever been across the
    country or across the State or maybe even across the city and had
    experience from school to school would say that that is sort of the
    nagging challenge.
        Part of it, of course, is that all schools are different; all kids
    are different; all classes are different; all circumstances are
    different. Part of it is that there are internal resistances to doing
    what the mayor is now trying to do citywide
    and the Governor is now trying to do
    statewide.
        That's why this year, our continuing effort to promote educational
    excellence will be of special importance, because this year we're going
    to try to do something the National Government has never done before.
    Every 5 years, we have a great debate in Congress on how we should spend
    the Federal contribution to our public schools: What are the terms under
    which the States and the school districts get this money? It is called a
    reauthorization act, and we're going to have that debate this year.
        This year I am going to ask the Congress, for the first time, to
    invest more money than ever before in our schools but to invest only in
    what the schools and the teachers and the parents have told us works and
    to stop investing in what doesn't work. [Applause] Now, I don't think we
    should subsidize inadequate performance; I think we should reward
    results. And sure enough, more people will follow the lead of schools
    like this one, if it happens.
        Now, this may seem self-evident; you all clapped. Believe me, this
    will be very controversial. After all, there are some people in Congress
    who don't believe we have any business investing in more--more in public
    education, because it is a State constitutional function. And in every
    State most of the money is raised either at the local level or at the
    State level, but only nationwide about 7 percent of the money comes from

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    the national level. But it's a lot of money. I mean, $15 billion--$15
    billion is not chump change. It's real money, and it can make a real
    difference. There's more than ever before.
        Last year we got bipartisan agreement in Congress, after a big
    debate, to make a big downpayment on 100,000 more teachers in the early
    grades to help you deal with the problem of more teachers retiring as
    more kids come in. And the plain evidence is that smaller classes in the
    early grades make a special difference.
        We did not pass last year--I hope we will this year--my proposal to
    build or modernize 5,000 schools, through the use of the tax credit.
    Now, we actually have--Boston is the first city with all the schools
    hooked up to the Internet, you heard the mayor say that. I hate to tell
    you this: We have some cities where the school buildings are in such bad
    shape they are not capable of being hooked up to the Internet. And I
    have been in school districts from Virginia to Florida to California
    where there are so many kids that the outside is littered with
    housetrailers where they're going to school.
        So this is a big challenge. There are some who don't think we should
    be doing that. They think that's somebody else's job. But there's an
    even deeper debate you will see this year about more than money. Some
    people argue that even though we spend $15 billion a year on public
    education, the National Government has no business whatever holding the
    system accountable for results. They say, if we say we're going to hold
    districts accountable for results, that we're trying to micromanage the
    schools.
        Nothing could be further from the truth. If I have learned one
    single, solitary thing in 20 years of going into schools, it is that if
    you have a good principal and a good attitude among the faculty and a
    decent relationship with the parents, you're going to have a successful
    school. You're doing the right things; I've learned that.
        So you will not find anybody who is more reluctant to micromanage
    the schools than me. But keep in mind what I said--and you ask the
    teachers when I'm gone if this is not true--every problem in American
    education has been solved by somebody somewhere. The problem is we are
    not very good at spreading what works to all the rest of the schools in
    a timely and efficient manner.
        Therefore, what I propose to do is to write into the law what
    teachers and other educators have said to me are the critical elements
    of dealing with the challenges of this generation of young people, and
    the dramatic income and other differences we see from school district to
    school district, and say: If you want the money, you should do this--not
    should--you must do this.
        This will be very controversial. But I'm telling you, I have been
    frustrated for 20 years in trying it the other way. We had some school
    districts in my State that had done things that achieved national
    acclaim, and I put in a bill--and I passed it--to create a pot of money
    to pay the expenses of educators from other school districts in my State
    to go to these school districts to see what was going on, and a majority
    of them wouldn't do it when I offered to pay their way. We should have--
    it wasn't because they weren't dedicated. It was just sort of, ``Oh,
    well, you know, we do it our way. They do it their way.''
        And I believe that this is a very, very important debate. And I came
    here because I approve of what you're doing in this school, and I'm
    proud of it. I came here because I'm proud of what the mayor is doing. I'm proud here because of Massachusetts'
    historic commitment to excellence in education. I came here because your
    congressional delegation is as devoted to excellence in education as any
    in the land. That's why I'm here--to say that every place should be like
    this, and that we can help. And I hope you will support that.
        Can you imagine any company spending $15 billion and saying, ``Here,
    take the money. We don't care what the results are. And come back next
    year, and I'll write you another check.'' [Laughter] I don't think any
    child in America should be passed from grade to grade without knowing
    the material. I don't think we're doing children a favor. I don't think
    any child should be trapped in a failing school without a strategy to
    turn the school around or give the kid a way out. And I believe these
    should be national priorities, not to tell people how to do this but to
    say that you must have a strategy to do it, that you implement, that
    produces results. You decide how to do it.
        From now on, I think we should say to States and to school
    districts, ``Identify your worst performing, least improving schools;
    turn them around, or shut them down.'' There's $200 million in my budget
    to help school districts do that--$200 million. And we can do this. I'll
    talk more about it in a minute; I'll give you some evidence of that.

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        If we fail to do it, how many kids are we going to lose to low
    expectations? And every one of them can learn. You know it, and I know
    it. If we succeed, our best years lie ahead. Their years will be
    America's best years.
         I'll tell you, I've listened to this debate for two decades now,
    and half the time when I hear people say we can't do something, what
    they're really saying is, ``Those kids are different from my kids, and I
    don't really believe they can learn.'' Well, that is not true. All of
    our children can learn, and I intend to see that they do.
        We're working to help every city follow Boston's lead and be hooked
    up to the Internet by early in the next century. We're working to expand
    Head Start. We're working to bring more tutors to elementary schools to
    help work with the teachers to help make sure our kids can read. And
    it's very important, when their first language is not English, to give
    more and more help in the schools. We're working to send college
    students as mentors into middle schools and high schools where hardly
    any kids go to college, and convince all kids they can go to college.
        If you look at the scholarships, the loans, the Pell grants, the tax
    cuts, the work-study programs that this Congress has approved in the
    last 4 years, there's no excuse for anybody not going to college because
    of the money. You can afford to go now. We have put the money out there.
    And every 11- and 12- and 13-year-old kid in America needs to know this.
    They need to know that they can make their own future.
        I know that some of our America Reads tutors are working at Jackson
    Mann, and several AmeriCorps City Year members are working here, too.
    And I want to thank them. Boston University AmeriCorps, thank you. And I
    want to get back to the point here. Our schools are doing better all
    over the country. Almost all the scores are up. The math scores are up.
    The SAT scores are up. But we have two big challenges, and I want you to
    focus on them.
        Number one, reading scores have hardly budged. Now, that should not
    surprise you, because our school population every year has a higher and
    higher percentage of immigrant children whose first language is not
    English. So it's harder just to stay in place, but it's not good enough,
    because these children are still going to have to go out into a world
    where they'll either be able to read and learn and think and reason in
    this country's main language, or they won't. So we have to do better.
        Something that bothers me even more is that these international
    comparative scores in math and science--this is fascinating--American
    children, a representative group by race, by income, and by reason, rank
    at the top of the world in the international math and science scores in
    the fourth grade. You know, they're always first or second or third,
    last couple of years. They drop to the middle by the time they're in the
    eighth grade. By the time they're in the 12th grade, they rank near the
    bottom.
        Now, you can't say that the kids can't learn, otherwise, they never
    would have been at the top, right? So that means that we have to do some
    things in our system to make sure that their fast start speeds up, not
    slows down. There could be no more compelling evidence that our children
    can learn.
        So in this year's budget--I'll say again--I not only want to finish
    hiring the 100,000 teachers, take another big step there, and fix the
    5,000 schools and keep hooking up to the Internet and also give you
    something to find on the Internet--we're going to set up a digital
    library with hundreds of thousands of books that schools can access--so
    every school library in America, literally, within a few years, every
    school library in America can have 400,000 books if the digital library
    works.
        We also want to pass this bill that says, ``Okay, here's the Federal
    money, but here's what you have to do if you want to get it. First of
    all, you have to identify the worst performing, least improving schools
    and take responsibility for turning them around,'' just like the
    mayor is and the school people are here in
    Boston. Mr. Payzant is working on that.
    That's what you've got to do. Why is that? Because we've got to insist
    that the schools, no matter how difficult their circumstances, offer
    world-class education.
        Now, under our plan, States and school districts would audit failing
    schools for educational weaknesses, find resources that would help, do
    what Ms. Zimmerman does on her own: Go out
    and help the mentor teachers; make sure that all the teachers have been
    given the best development possible; provide reading tutors if they're
    needed; provide other kinds of help to get more parents involved; do
    whatever is necessary.

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        Then, if after 2 years the student achievement still doesn't
    improve, States and districts would have to take stronger action,
    including permitting students to attend other schools if they and their
    parents want to do so; or reconstituting the school, making staff
    changes as appropriate; or maybe even closing the school and reopening
    it, completely differently constructed.
        Now, this can work. Let me just give you two examples. Six years ago
    Houston listed 68 of its schools as low performers. Today, after much
    aggressive intervention and hard work, the vast majority of those are
    off the list, because they're getting different results, not because
    they're trying harder but because they changed their results.
        Dade County, Florida--that's Miami--one of the most diverse school
    districts in America, had 45 critical, low-performing schools. They
    raised their math and science scores so much--math and reading scores so
    much now that within 2 years all 45 were off the list, just by focusing
    on it and by refusing to accept the proposition that just because these
    kids were having a tough time financially or they live in tough
    neighborhoods, that their schools couldn't function and they couldn't
    learn.
        Now, this is what Boston is committed to doing, but this is what
    every place in America should do. And in our budget, we have $200
    million to help them do it.
        We also call for ending social promotion, but we say--and I want to
    reiterate that--it's not the students who are failing; it's the system's
    failing them. So you don't want to punish the students; you want to
    change the system. Therefore, among other things in this budget, we call
    for tripling the funds available for after-school and summer school
    programs to help kids learn more.
        In 3 years--listen to this--3 years ago, Congress appropriated $1
    million for the Federal contribution to after-school programs. Then, the
    year before last, it was 40; then last year it was 200. And this year I
    hope it's going to be 600, and we'll have a million more children in
    every State in this country off the streets, in the classroom, learning
    more and having a better future.
        We also have to give more support for teachers, more support for
    teacher development, more support for teacher education, more
    understanding of what's involved here. You have 53 million people, and
    you're going to have a couple of--according to Secretary Riley, a couple of million more teachers retire in the
    next few years.
        It should not--let me just say something. One of the big reasons
    that the test scores go down in math and science is that the teacher
    shortage has been so profound that there are a huge number of our
    teachers in America today in our junior and senior high schools, our
    middle schools and high schools, teaching courses in which they didn't
    have a college major or even a minor, because there was no one else
    available to teach them.
        And we have to do more to support the recruitment and the support
    and the continuing teacher development of those people. One of the
    things in this budget that I think is particularly important, even
    though it's not a big number, is that we have funds for 7,000 college
    scholarships for young people where we pay their way to college in
    return for their commitment to teach for 4 years in an inner-city school
    or some other place where there's a serious teacher shortage of trained
    teachers. This is a big deal. It can make a significant difference.
        I also believe that all parents should get report cards on all
    schools. That has worked. The Boston schools are doing it. It ought to
    be done everywhere. People are entitled to information. Most towns in
    this country, you can find out more about the local restaurants than you
    can about the local schools, if you're a parent, unless you just go
    there and hang around. I mean, it's important.
        And finally, interestingly enough, you know what the teachers
    organizations and teachers at the grassroots asked us to do, to put into
    this bill? They said we should say that every school district should
    have a reasonable, comprehensive discipline code that is actually
    implemented. Teachers asked for that, and I think that's important.
        So again I say, look at those kids. Think about what you want
    America to be like in 20 years. Think about what we're going to do with
    this golden moment for our economy, with this first budget surplus we've
    had in 30 years. There's a lot of things we need to do, but nothing is
    more important than giving our children a world-class education--
    nothing. And I hope you will support it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

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    Note: The President spoke at 3:45 p.m. in the auditorium. In his
    remarks, he referred to Gov. Argeo Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts; Mayor
    Thomas M. Menino of Boston; and Joanne Collins Russell, principal, and
    Gail Zimmerman, teacher, Jackson Mann Elementary School.