    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 14, 2000]
    [Pages 702-711]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Education Writers
    Association in Atlanta, Georgia
    April 14, 2000

        The President. Thank you very much, Kit.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to be here with all of you, along
    with Secretary Riley and Bruce Reed, my Domestic Policy Adviser.
        It has been over 20 years now since Dick Riley and I, as young Governors, first began to grapple with the
    need to reform education. It's been 17 years since the ``Nation At
    Risk'' report sounded the alarm about the state of education nationwide,
    over 10 years since the Education Summit in Charlottesville which put us
    on a path to national action. And as Kit said, it was 10 years ago this
    month that I got up at 4:30 in the morning to fly to Chicago to speak to
    this group. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't remember exactly what I
    said in the fog of that early morning. [Laughter]
        Doubtless, some of the veteran reporters here have been around long
    enough to have seen this whole fascinating drama unfold. Today I'd

    [[Page 703]]

    like to talk about the progress our public schools have made and the
    hard work still ahead. First I want to note something astonishing that I
    think everyone in this room should be proud of: 17 years after the
    ``Nation At Risk'' report, over 10 years after Charlottesville, there is
    still a passionate sense of national urgency about school reform, about
    lifting standards, improving accountability, increasing learning. I can
    think of no other issue that has sustained such an intense level of
    commitment from the public, elected officials, business leaders, and the
    press.
        If anything, the determination of the American people to improve our
    schools is greater than ever. That's a tribute to the love of our people
    for their children, to their understanding of the importance of
    education in the global information economy, to the realization that we
    have the largest and most diverse student body in our history, and to
    the enduring American belief that all our children can and must learn.
    It is also a tribute to the commitment and the enterprise of education
    writers in cities and towns all across this country who have kept the
    story of education reform in the news year after year.
        This intense national commitment has produced real progress. Today I
    am pleased to announce a new report by the Department of Education which
    documents the progress of the last 7 years, some of which Kit mentioned. The report makes clear that math and reading
    scores are rising across the country, with some of the greatest gains in
    some of the most disadvantaged communities. For instance, reading scores
    of 9-year-olds in the highest poverty schools rose almost an entire
    grade level on the National Assessment of Education Progress between
    1992 and 1996, reversing a downward trend. The report also shows that 67
    percent of high school graduates now go on to college, up 10 percent
    since 1993. This is a copy of it, and it will be available soon, and I
    hope all of you will read it and then distill it for the people who read
    you.
        Clearly, we're making progress. Our young people are getting the
    message they need a college education to have the future of their
    dreams. We've tried to make those dreams more affordable, with the
    largest expansion of college opportunity since the G.I. bill, including
    the creation of the HOPE scholarship tax credit, which over 5 million
    families have already claimed since 1998; education IRA's; more
    affordable student loans, which have saved students $8 billion--about a
    third of our student loan recipients are in the direct loan program
    now--they've saved students $8 billion, and the taxpayers $5 billion
    more. They have helped us to take the default level from over 22 percent
    to under 9 percent, and to triple annual loan repayment rates.
        We also have more Pell grants; we're up to a million work-study
    slots; we've had over 150,000 young Americans earn scholarships by
    serving in AmeriCorps, many of them in our public schools. And the GEAR
    UP program is now pairing college mentors with a quarter of a million
    middle school students who are at risk, to prepare them for college and
    convince them the money will be there when they're ready to go. College
    entrance exam scores are rising, even though more students from
    disadvantaged backgrounds are taking the test.
        And before the Congress this year is my proposal to provide a tax
    deduction for college tuition of up to $10,000. If we can do that, along
    with another increase in the Pell grants and the other proposals I've
    mentioned, I think when we leave, Dick and
    I, we'll be able to say that we have truly opened the doors of 4 years
    of college education to all Americans.
        We also see progress in the fact that about two-thirds of all of our
    classrooms are connected to the Internet, with the help of the E-rate
    program which the Vice President pioneered.
    That's up from only 3 percent in 1993. Ninety-five percent of our
    schools have at least one Internet connection, including 90 percent of
    our poorest schools. And I think we'll be right at 100 percent by the
    end of the year for not only the schools but for almost all the
    classrooms, except--and this is a big ``except''--in those schools that
    are literally too dilapidated to be wired for the Internet.
        We see progress in falling class sizes in the early grades, and
    we're trying to help that with our program to hire 100,000 new highly
    trained teachers, 30,000 of whom have been funded, and we're trying to
    go to 50,000 in this year's budget. We see progress in the very large
    increase we've had for preschool--and I've proposed the largest in
    history for this year--and in the fact that 1,400 of our colleges and
    universities are providing volunteers for the America Reads program to
    help make sure all our third graders can read independently by the time
    they finish that year.

    [[Page 704]]

        And we see progress in the growing public consensus about what must
    be done to reach our ultimate goal, providing a world-class education
    for every child in America. I think this consensus can be summed up in a
    simple phrase that has been our mission for the last 7 years: Invest
    more in our schools; demand more from our schools.
        When I became President in 1992, the education debate in Washington,
    I felt, was fairly stale and predictable and unfortunately divided into
    what I thought were partisan camps with false choices. On the one side
    were those, most of them in my party, who believed that money could
    solve all the problems in our schools, and who feared that setting high
    standards and holding schools and teachers and students accountable to
    them would only hold back poor children, especially poor minority
    children.
        On the other side, there were those, mostly in the other party, who
    fundamentally did not think the public schools were fixable and
    therefore didn't want to spend much money trying. Also, they felt
    education was a State responsibility and therefore should not have a
    comprehensive national response. Some of them, you'll remember, even
    tried to get rid of the Department of Education.
        Vice President Gore and I believed both those positions were wrong.
    There was plenty of evidence, even then, that high levels of learning
    were possible in even the most difficult social and economic
    circumstances. The challenge was to make the school transformation going
    on in some schools available and active and real in all schools. And we
    sought to do it by investing more in our schools and demanding more from
    our schools.
        This did not require, as some have charged even recently,
    micromanagement of our schools by the Department of Education. Indeed,
    under Secretary Riley's remarkable, steady
    leadership, Federal regulations on schools K-through-12 have been
    reduced by two-thirds. In addition, we made ed-flex available to all 50
    States, which makes it possible for them to reduce even further Federal
    regulations on the details of how Federal dollars are spent.
        In 1993 we passed a new economic plan that cut hundreds of programs
    in order to reduce the deficit and improve the economy. But even in that
    harsh budget year, we boosted education spending. Over the last 7 years,
    we've nearly doubled investment in education and training, even as we've
    turned record deficits into record surpluses.
        In 1994 we overhauled the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
    requiring States to set academic standards for what their students
    should know. We passed the Goals 2000 legislation, which provided States
    with more resources to create and implement strategies to achieve
    standards. Since then, we've gone from only a handful of States having
    standards to nearly every State with them.
        Forty-eight States also have assessments in place to measure student
    progress in meeting those standards--although, as Kit noted, I have been unsuccessful so far in convincing the
    Congress that we ought to have national standards and a voluntary
    national test to measure them. But because we insisted in 1994 that
    Title I funds be better targeted, 95 percent of high-poverty schools get
    them today, up from 79 percent 7 years ago. And I think it's very
    important that this progress not be undone as Congress looks at Title I
    again this year.
        In 1994 we began encouraging more competition and more choice for
    parents within the public school system, including magnet schools,
    schools within schools, worksite schools, and the creation of public
    charter schools. We also invested the resources necessary to get the
    charter school movement off the ground. When I became President, there
    was just one charter school in all of America, in Minnesota. Today,
    thanks in part to our investments, there are over 1,700. Vice President
    Gore has called for tripling that number.
        I think the spread of the charter school movement is one of the
    great underreported stories in education, one that makes the whole
    debate over vouchers into something of a sideshow. Charter schools
    provide choice and competition that proponents of vouchers say they
    want. And unlike private schools, charter schools are accountable to the
    public for results. They all haven't succeeded, although most of them
    have done quite well, but then they can be shut down if they don't. I
    think we should be working to make all public schools more accountable,
    not diverting much-needed energy and money away from them.
        The strategy of greater accountability and greater investment
    continues to guide everything

    [[Page 705]]

    we're fighting for in education. I have sent Congress an ``Education
    Accountability Act'' to fundamentally change the way the Federal
    Government invests in our schools, to support more of what we know works
    and to stop supporting what we know does not work.
        We want quality teachers in all classrooms; report cards to parents
    on school performance, for all parents and all schools; no social
    promotion, but help for students, not blaming them when the system fails
    them; a plan to identify failing schools and improve them, or shut them
    down; a systematic effort to make our schools safe, disciplined, and
    drug-free.
        I've also asked Congress to make a range of other investments to
    make accountability work. Yes, we must end social promotion. But I say
    again, we need more investments in after-school and summer school
    programs. It is wrong to blame the students for the failure of the
    system.
        We had the first Federal support for after-school programs in 1997,
    at a million dollars a year; $40 million in '98; $200 million in '99;
    $453 million in 2000; and we're asking for a billion dollars in 2001. If
    we get it, we will soon be able to provide after-school programs to
    every student in a poor-performing school in the United States.
        We must also invest in modernizing our schools, to get our kids out
    of overcrowded classrooms or classrooms where the walls are too old to
    be wired for the Internet or where it's so stifling hot in the summer
    that students in summer school can't learn. There are many cities in
    this country where the average school building is 65 years of age or
    more. There are schools in New York City that are still being heated by
    coal-fired furnaces. There are literally school buildings all across the
    country that cannot be hooked up to the Internet--they simply can't be
    wired. And we all know the stories of how many of our kids are in
    trailers. The largest number of trailers I have seen behind the smallest
    school was 12, outside an elementary school in Jupiter, Florida, a
    couple of years ago. So I think that is very important.
        We have also worked on this for a long time. For 4 years I have
    tried to get the Congress to approve my tax credit to help to build or
    modernize 6,000 schools. I have made the proposal again this year, along
    with an appropriation that would allow us to do renovations on another
    5,000 schools a year for the next 5 years, in districts that are so poor
    it is simply unrealistic to expect that they could float a bond issue
    and raise the money, even with a tax credit.
        Six years ago we passed legislation calling on States and school
    districts to identify and improve low-performing schools. States have
    now identified some 7,000 low-performing schools, and they're working to
    improve them. The education budget that I have presented last year--that
    we passed, excuse me, we passed last year required States that failed to
    turn around their low-performing schools to let their students transfer
    out of those schools to other public schools.
        I've asked Congress now to double our investment in the educational
    accountability fund, so that we'll have adequate funding to help more
    schools turn around or be shut down. School districts can use this money
    to make the sweeping systematic changes that have proven so effective in
    turning around low-performing schools, from Dade County to Kentucky to
    Chicago.
        Last year, for example, I gave a Blue Ribbon Schools award to
    Beaufort County Elementary in Beaufort, South Carolina. Classified as
    one of the State's worst performing schools 5 years ago, Beaufort
    embraced accountability and higher academic standards and started after-
    school and summer school programs for students who were lagging behind.
    Today, their math and test scores exceed the State average, and local
    parents are pulling their children out of private school and putting
    them in the city's public schools.
        If, for whatever reason, a school doesn't turn around, our
    educational accountability fund can be used to allow parents to transfer
    their students out of these schools into better performing ones,
    including charter schools.
        The standards movement is making a difference. I believe when we
    passed Goals 2000 and provided funds to help States develop standards
    and strategies for meeting them, we made a contribution. Now, the real
    key is--and I think it's embodied in the topic of your conference--is if
    we have standards in all the States, how do we get them in the
    classroom? And how do we make sure they're making a difference in the
    lives of the students? That, to me, is the real key.
        And you have to begin, I think, with improving the capacity of
    principals and teachers to do their jobs. We have $40 million in our
    budget to help States improve school management

    [[Page 706]]

    and school leadership, instructional leadership, by principals. I have
    proposed a new teacher quality initiative to recruit more talented
    people into the classrooms, to reward good teachers for staying there,
    to give all teachers the training they need. This will build on the
    strong support we have given for incentives for people to go into inner-
    city and other underserved areas, that we've given to the National Board
    for Professional Teacher Certification.
        There were no board-certified master teachers when I took office;
    there are now 5,000. We've done everything we could to support that
    program. There are 10,000 teachers who are in the application process at
    this time. Our goal is to provide funding enough to get up to 100,000
    teachers that are board-certified master teachers, with the idea that
    there ought to be one in every school building in America. When that
    happens, I think it will significantly change the culture of education
    in our country, because of the rigorous certification process and the
    work that is done to make sure that the teachers are actually effective
    at teaching our children.
        We're also trying to help deal with some of our teacher shortages.
    Secretary Riley has established a
    commission on math and science teaching, and Senator John Glenn has taken that on as his next mission. In October they
    will give us a report which I hope will spur further action in that
    area. The Secretary has also called for the creation of more dual
    schools, that provide English plus education in at least one other
    foreign language, which could, I think, help to moot the whole English-
    only debate, show that we're interested in teaching all of our kids
    English and teaching them in English, but recognize the vast diversity
    we have in the country and the need we have to have more teachers who
    are bilingual and who can teach in an effective manner the students who
    come to our schools whose first language is not English.
        I would also like to mention that in our proposal to create 100,000
    new teachers for smaller class sizes, the teachers are required--every
    new teacher under that proposal is required to be fully qualified. And I
    think that this whole movement to improve teacher quality is really
    catching on. I know that you know that today the American Federation of
    Teachers is proposing a national standard and a national test for all
    new teachers. And I applaud them for it. I've been fighting for testing,
    for higher standards, for better pay for teachers for almost 20 years
    now. In 1993 Hillary and I passed a law that made Arkansas the first
    State in the country to test teachers. That was a really popular law at
    the time. [Laughter] It was an interesting experience. But because our
    teachers performed, I might add, better than anyone anticipated, it
    happened that the children began to perform better, as well. Today, I
    think Al Shanker would be very proud of the AFT, his successor, Sandy
    Feldman, and all of them. And I think all of
    you should be proud of them.
        We need to demand more of our teachers, but we need to reward them
    better. We're going to have a couple of million teachers retiring in the
    next few years. We already have the largest student population and the
    most diverse one in our history. We're going to have to work very, very
    hard to get more qualified teachers in the classroom. There are already
    too many teachers teaching classes for which they're not fully
    qualified, and this problem is going to be dramatically exacerbated by
    the size of the student population, combined with the retirement plans
    and just the ticking of the time clock for many of our teachers. So we
    have to focus more and more and more attention on this.
        And in that connection, let me say I have repeatedly challenged
    States--I'd like to do it again today--to spend more of their budget
    surpluses on raising teacher pay. Most of our States are in terrific
    shape today, but they, too--every one of these States is facing the
    prospect of too many teacher retirements. With very low unemployment,
    they're having the same problem recruiting teachers that we're now
    having in some of our military positions, recruiting and retaining. But
    they don't have any of the sort of supplemental benefits that you get if
    you're in the military.
        Everybody says this is the most important thing in the world. Most
    of the money still comes at the State level. When the budget surpluses
    are there, when the money is there, now is the best time most States
    have had in a generation to make a dramatic increase in teacher pay, and
    I hope they will do so.
        Now, let me just make a couple of points about where we are and
    where we're going. The fundamental lesson of the last 7 years, it seems
    to me, is that an education investment without accountability can be a
    real waste of money. But accountability without investment can be a real
    waste of effort. Neither will work

    [[Page 707]]

    without the other. If we want our students to learn more, we should do
    both.
        The strategy is working. But again I say, with the largest, most
    diverse student body in history and the educational premium rising every
    year in the global information society, we must do more. I've been very
    pleased at the proposals that Vice President Gore has made and the education plans he's put forth. I'm also
    pleased that, after some struggle, we have had bipartisan majorities for
    the education budgets of the past few years. Unfortunately, it's still a
    fight every year. Yesterday the House Education Committee passed a so-
    called reform bill that eliminates after-school programs, abandons our
    class size effort, which is totally bipartisan, and fails to modernize a
    single school in yet another year. This comes on top of the Senate's
    education bill, which rolls back reform even more.
        I believe that the majority of people in the other party in Congress
    are still resisting the investments our schools need. In the name of
    accountability, they are still pushing vouchers and block grants that I
    believe would undermine accountability. And both bills greatly underfund
    education.
        There's an even bigger problem with many of the plans being
    discussed in this election season, and many of them apparently
    appealing. But the problem is, even the apparently appealing plans
    advanced by Republicans are in trouble because of the combined impact of
    their proposed tax cut and defense spending increases. You know, one of
    the things--somebody asked me the other day, ``Well, Mr. President, what
    was your major contribution in your economic reform package to this
    longest expansion in American history?'' And you know what my answer
    was? ``The return of arithmetic. We brought arithmetic back to the
    budget. We replaced supply-side economics with arithmetic.'' [Laughter]
    And lo and behold, it worked.
        And so when anybody says anything--they're for this, that, or the
    other thing--you have to say, ``Well, how does all this add up? Here's
    the surplus; it's going to be reduced by X amount, depending on what
    your tax cut is. Then it's going to be reduced by Y amount, depending on
    what you require for defense. Now, what are your plans for the
    retirement of the baby boomers? How will you deal with the fact that
    Social Security today is slated to run out in 2037, before the end of
    the baby boomers' life expectancy? What about Medicare? What are you
    going to do with education?'' Arithmetic is a very important element in
    politics and public life. And it is often ignored--you're laughing, but
    I'm telling the truth, and you know it. [Laughter]
        And so here's the problem with some of these education proposals. If
    you take over $1 trillion out over 10 years for a tax cut, and you
    increase defense even more than I have--and I've been a pro-defense
    Democrat; we've increased defense spending every year I've been
    President--there simply will not be the money left to fund a lot of
    these education and other proposals. I think it's wrong to spend about
    $100 of the surplus on tax cuts for every dollar you spend on education.
    I just don't think that is consistent with our national priorities.
        A study came out last week showing that the percentage of income the
    average American family is paying on income taxes is the lowest it's
    been since 1966. And it is true that income tax for lower income working
    Americans is now largely negative, because of the impact of the earned-
    income tax credit. It is true that people in the highest 20 percent are
    paying higher rates, but because of the way the economy has grown, their
    after-tax income in real, constant dollars, even with higher rates, is
    24 percent higher than it was 12 years ago.
        So I support, as I think all of you know, I support a tax cut. But
    mine is considerably more modest. I want the $10,000 deduction for
    college tuition. I want a refundable child care tax credit. I want an
    increase in the earned-income tax credit. I want families to have a
    $3,000 tax credit for long-term care, to care for an elderly or disabled
    family member--it's becoming a huge problem, and as the aging of America
    progresses, it will be a bigger and bigger problem.
        I want to give people with money, upper income people, financial
    incentives to increase philanthropy and to invest in the poor areas of
    America--the new markets of America that have been left behind--and to
    invest in new technologies that will help us clean the environment and
    combat global warming.
        But I have applied arithmetic to my proposal. And I think it is very
    important that we think about this, because it would be tragic if, after
    we're finally beginning to really make some nationally measurable
    progress in education here, not just in the inputs but in the outputs--
    and we know so much more about how to do it

    [[Page 708]]

    than we did when ``Nation At Risk'' was issued, so much more than we did
    in 1989 when the national education goals were written in that wonderful
    all-night session in Charlottesville I'll never forget. We know so much
    more today, and we're able to invest in what works.
        But the American people, their wealth, and their welfare will be far
    more greatly enhanced by making uniform excellence in education--proving
    that people, without regard to their race, their income, or their
    cultural or linguistic backgrounds, can learn what they need to know and
    keep learning for a lifetime--that will do so much more for the American
    economy, for the strength and coherence and fabric of our national
    community than a tax cut which cannot be justified and which will either
    throw us back to the bad old days of deficits or require big cuts in
    domestic programs, including education, or both. So one of the things
    that I hope education writers will talk about is old-fashioned
    arithmetic.
        Now, finally, let me just say, I think when all is said and done,
    there are only about three things worth focusing on. Do you believe that
    all children can learn or not? Do you believe that it's more important
    than ever before, for the quality of an individual's life, for the shape
    of a family's future, for the strength of the Nation? And do you believe
    we know how to do that now, with more investment and more accountability
    for higher standards? If the answer to all three of those questions is
    yes, then I will consider that the work that the Secretary and I have
    done, even though we haven't won every battle, will have been more than
    worth the effort.
        Thank you very much.

    [At this point, the question-and-answer session began, and Kit
    Lively, president, Education Writers Association,
    read questions from the audience. The first question, from a journalist
    with the Los Angeles Times, asked what the President could do to head
    off a growing backlash against testing and standards.]

        The President. Well, one of the things--Dick and I were talking about this on the way in today--one of
    the things that we thought would happen, if we could actually get some
    accepted national standards and then a voluntary national test that
    would measure against that, is that would provide an organizing
    principle, if you will, which we thought might allow some of these other
    tests to be dropped. I think it is absolutely true that in some
    districts there may be too many tests. And what are they measuring, and
    what do they mean?
        I also think that on all this testing business, every few years you
    have to have kind of a mid-course review. You have to see where you are
    and where you're going. And I think I've earned the right to say that,
    since you know I believe in them. I mean, I've got a pretty long record
    here on this subject.
        I think we shouldn't obscure the major point, which is, it is very
    difficult to make progress that you can't measure. There must be some
    way of measuring our movement. On the other hand, you don't want our
    children and our teachers to spend 100 percent of the time teaching to a
    test that does not encompass all the things our students need to know
    and our schools need to provide. You don't want the test to be so easy
    that the whole thing is a mockery and looks like a bureaucratic fraud.
    You don't want it to be so hard that it crowds out all the other
    endeavors that a school ought to be doing.
        But all of that, it seems to me, argues for looking at the number
    and the types of tests, what you want to measure, and whether you goals
    are sharply focused. It's not an argument against testing and
    accountability. I see no possible way to continue to reform all our
    schools without some sort of testing and accountability.
        Look, if none of us had ever come along, ever--including me--you
    know, it's hard to admit this, especially when you can't run again, but
    if none of us had ever come along, a lot of the good things that have
    happened in education would have happened. I've been saying for 15
    years, every problem in American education has been solved by somebody
    somewhere.
        How many times have you gone to a school and then you've written
    this gripping story about, oh, my goodness, look at this school in this
    high-crime neighborhood with all these poor kids and all this terrible
    disadvantage, and the kids have--they live in these little apartments,
    and they have to go into the bathroom to study at night in the bathtub
    and read all their books--I mean, how many of those stories have you
    written? Every one of you have written those stories, right? And look
    what the kids are doing.
        What is the problem in American education? It is not that nobody
    does this; it is that we

    [[Page 709]]

    still have not figured out how to make achievement universal. Every one
    of you has written this story about somebody succeeding against all the
    odds, about a great teacher, a great principal, a great school. What is
    the problem? We have not devised a method to make learning occur at a
    universally high level.
        And that's what the voucher people argue. They argue that that's
    because public schools have a monopoly on revenues and customers. So we
    sought to break the monopoly without losing the accountability by
    promoting school choice, charter schools, and other alternatives. But
    you still have to have standards and measurement.
        And let me just say this--I realize I'm talking this question to
    death, but this is pretty important because it really gets to everything
    else. If I were to suggest to you that standards and measurement are
    quite distressing and troubling and I'm worried about the anxiety they
    cause so I think we'll ease up on them in the military, there would be a
    riot in the country, right? ``Thank you very much, send them back to the
    training.''
        And so I do think it's time to review all this. I think there are
    too many of these tests, and some are too easy; some are too hard; some
    are too off-beat; some may crowd out other educational missions. But
    that's why we tried, Dick and I did, to
    have a set of generally accepted national standards with a voluntary
    national test to measure them and to have it done by a nonpolitical
    group and sort of modeling on what the NAEP people do, which I think is
    quite good, by the way.
        And so, anyway, that's my answer. Just because there may be too much
    or wrong, doesn't mean you don't have to measure. You do have to
    measure. Might as well not have standards if you're not going to measure
    whether you're meeting them.

    [Ms. Lively read a question from a journalist
    with Catalyst Magazine, asking if the Chicago school system's approach
    to retention and promotion should be a model for the Nation.]

        The President. Read the first part of the question again. I didn't
    understand.

    [Ms. Lively repeated that research showed
    students retained had not benefited and were more likely to drop out.]

        The President. Well, in order to answer that question, I would have
    to know the answer to something I think is equally important, which is,
    what happened to the kids that weren't retained because of their
    performance in summer school? Are they doing better than they were? Are
    they learning more? Are they more likely to succeed and stay in school?
        Keep in mind, in the Chicago system, if you fail, you get retained
    only if you either don't go to summer school, or you go to summer school
    and you don't make the grade there. So most of the people--Chicago's
    summer school is now the sixth biggest school district in America. It's
    one reason that the juvenile crime rate is way down there. And it's the
    sixth biggest school district in America.
        So I can't answer that question without knowing whether those kids
    did better and are more likely to stay in school and learn more, because
    it wouldn't be surprising that kids that are retained get discouraged
    and drop out. But there was a study a few years ago, and I haven't kept
    up with the literature as much as I should have since I've been
    President, which showed that one big reason for dropout after the middle
    school years was that kids weren't learning. If they weren't learning
    anything and they were being passed along, they got bored and dropped
    out, too.
        So I don't want to disparage the study, but I don't know if it's
    right or not. And neither does the person who asked the question, until
    you follow what happened to the kids that weren't retained because they
    went to summer school and made the grade, and what are the percentage of
    those who made the grade as opposed to those who were retained.

    [A participant cited studies showing that students in the Chicago system
    who went to summer school and passed did indeed stay in school, but she
    pointed out that 10,000 students were retained in the last several years
    and, despite efforts to help them, became increased risks.]

        The President. But let me ask you this. Does it follow that they
    would have been helped by being promoted, or that it's worth promoting
    them even if they couldn't be helped, because the social stigma of being
    retained and dropping out makes them more likely to turn to crime? I
    mean, I think that's the answer.
        I don't believe--I guess, fundamentally, what I'd like to see done
    is--and you may be right--

    [[Page 710]]

    let me go back to that. My answer to your question is, I don't know, so
    I'll start with that.
        But you may be right. But what's hard for me to believe is that we
    can't help these young people. I mean, one of the things that I thought
    would happen with the Chicago system, sooner or later--and may be
    happening sooner, rather than later, from what you say about the study--
    is that we would identify young people who might not measure out to be
    special ed kids, for example, but who, for some reason, even though they
    showed up in class and seemed to be trying, just weren't learning, even
    though the teachers were trying, everybody was trying.
        And I think there may be some of those kind of kids in virtually
    every district, but in a district, a town as big as Chicago, you'd have
    a larger number. And one of the things that I would like to see is,
    before the principle is abandoned, I would like to see some new and
    different efforts made to see if different kind of strategies would help
    those kids to learn.
        One of the reasons I like the potential of this whole computer
    revolution in the schools--even though I think it can be oversold and
    there are a lot of computers being unused because either the software is
    not good or the teachers haven't been trained or whatever--but one of
    the things that I do believe is that there is quite a bit of evidence
    that people of more or less equal intelligence may learn in dramatically
    different ways and that some of the people who seem to be impervious to
    the best efforts of education, but they would like to learn, may be able
    to learn in radically different ways. And Chicago may have enough people
    to identify a class of folks that we ought to make a special national
    effort to see if there are some other strategies that would help them.
        I don't know the answer to that, but I'd be willing to try if they
    are, if they want to do it, if they want some help from us.

    [Ms. Lively read a question asking the
    President's position on gay youth groups in high schools.]

        The President. I think it ought to be decided by the school
    districts. I don't think the States ought to prohibit them. I think the
    school districts ought to make a decision based on what the facts are in
    every district.
        Look, I think the real issue here is, a lot of parents, even parents
    that are fairly openminded on such matters, are worried that if you have
    these groups when children are still impressionable, that somehow
    they'll be sanctioning or encouraging people to adopt a lifestyle that
    they may have a choice not to adopt.
        On the other hand, there's a lot of evidence that a sexual stigma
    for gay kids is one of the reasons that they have high suicide rates and
    other associated social problems. And I think that the facts will tend
    to be different from place to place, and that's why I think it would be
    better if the people who are on the ground who care about the kids and
    who aren't homophobic--that is, they're not interested in bashing them,
    but they understand there's got to be at some point below which you
    would not go, probably an age--were able to make these judgments based
    on the facts. That's my thinking about it.
        Ms. Lively. Those are the three questions.
        The President. Go ahead.
        Ms. Lively. That's all we have.
        The President. Oh, that's all? [Laughter] This is the first press
    group I have ever been with that said, ``I'm sorry, we're out of
    questions.'' Where were you when I needed you the last several years?
    [Laughter]
        Okay, go ahead.

    [Ms. Lively read a question from a journalist
    with the Savannah Morning News, asking if the President remained in
    favor of charter schools despite studies showing they were not meeting
    their original goals and were draining funds from local systems.]

        The President. Yes, but what I think the studies show is, some work
    and some don't. And the idea is that, unlike--when we started them,
    there were two ideas behind charter schools, let me remind you. There
    was an upside idea and a downside idea. The upside idea was that if
    teachers and parents and others organized these charter schools, either
    to deal with a certain kind of kids or to meet a certain mission or
    whatever, they would be more likely to succeed.
        The downside hope was, if they failed, unlike other schools, the
    parents and kids could leave immediately and the thing could be shut
    down--that is, the school district, in return for letting the charter
    schools be free of a lot of the rules and redtape that other schools
    would be under, should have the discipline to shut the thing down if it
    had had enough years to operate to see that it wasn't succeeding. And

    [[Page 711]]

    I think the evidence is, a lot of them are doing quite well. And the
    ones who aren't--the thing I'm worried about is that the ones that
    aren't will become just like other schools that aren't doing so well,
    and nobody will want to shut them down either.
        I mean, the whole purpose of the charter school was to bring the
    sort of hope--the concept of empowerment of the parents and the students
    into the public education system, and it would work on the upside. And
    if it didn't work on the upside, it would at least work on the downside.
    And that's where I think we need to focus.
        But I think that some of them have done very well, and some of them
    have not done so well. And what we need is to make sure the downside
    potential is present as well. But yes, I do still favor them, based on
    the ones I've been in and the kinds of things they've been able to do.
        And I don't think it's fair to say they drain resources. If you
    don't spend any more per kid in a charter school than you do per child
    in another school, and you've got to have those kids somewhere, I don't
    think it's fair to say that, especially if you're not--unless you're
    paying for physical facilities you wouldn't otherwise pay for.
        Ms. Lively. I've been told that was our last
    question. So, thank you. We know you have a busy day, and we appreciate
    you coming.
        The President. Thank you again for your interest. I've enjoyed this
    very much. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:35 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom North at
    the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Sandra
    Feldman, president, American Federation of Teachers.