    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 4, 2000]
    [Pages 840-850]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion on Reforming America's Schools in
    Columbus, Ohio
    May 4, 2000

    [Barbara Blake, principal, Eastgate Elementary
    School, welcomed participants and outlined improvements in student
    performance at her school. She then introduced the President, noting
    that she had requested information on educational reform from him while
    he was Governor of Arkansas.]

        The President.  Thank you very much, Ms. Blake. I guess I should begin by saying I'm certainly glad I
    answered that letter--[laughter]--so many years ago. I want to thank you
    for welcoming me here. And thank you, Mayor Coleman, for your leadership and for welcoming me also. Thank you,
    Superintendent Rosa Smith; Representative
    Beatty; City Council President Habash; House Minority Leader Ford.
    I'd like to thank the leaders of the Columbus and Ohio Education
    Association, John Grossman and Gary
    Allen, who are here. And I'd like to thank all of
    our panelists who are here.
        I have been on a tour these last 2 days to highlight the good things
    that are happening in education in America, to highlight the reforms
    that make these good things possible, and most important, to highlight
    the great challenge before the United States today to turn around all
    low-performing schools and give all of our children a world-class
    education.
        Yesterday morning I was in western Kentucky in the little town of
    Owensboro, which has had extraordinary success in turning around its
    lowest performing schools. In 1996, the State identified 175 of them.
    Just 2 years later, 159--over 90 percent--had improved beyond the goals
    the State set for them. In the little school I visited, where two-thirds
    of the children were eligible for free and reduced lunches, in 4 years
    they had recorded the same sort of improvements that you mentioned here,
    on a trend line, which proves that income and station in life are not
    destiny, that all of our children can

    [[Page 841]]

    learn, that intelligence is equally distributed. And that means the
    grownups among us have a big responsibility to give every single one of
    these kids, like those beautiful, bright-eyed kids that I saw in this
    school--and I just shook hands with every one of them--have a chance to
    live up to their dreams.
        Then after I left Kentucky yesterday, I went to Davenport, Iowa, and
    I visited a 93-year-old high school finally beginning to get the
    renovations it needs so that students have the learning environment they
    need. Some of those school rooms didn't even have electrical outlets in
    the wall. And believe it or not, it was even hotter in the gym there
    than it is here today. [Laughter] So I'm just as cool as a cucumber now.
        This morning I was in the Nation's first charter school in St. Paul,
    Minnesota, which is providing an excellent education to students who
    were not succeeding in other public schools. That was the first charter
    school in the country, established in 1992. They were basically schools
    within the public school system set up by teachers and parents and
    citizens with a specific, definite mission, and schools that can be shut
    down if they fail in that mission.
        There was one in the whole country, that one I visited today, in
    '72. We've invested $500 million since then, and there are now 1,700,
    providing excellence in education to special needs of the people and
    their communities. And while I was there, I actually had a Webside Chat
    on the Internet with students all across America about the challenges in
    education. And in a matter of about 20 minutes, they sent me over 10,000
    questions. [Laughter] So don't let anybody say the young people of
    America are not curious. They could ask faster than I could answer.
        I really can think of no better place to wrap up my tour than here
    in Columbus, which has had a long history of educational intervention
    and innovation and excellence. In 1909, Columbus opened the Nation's
    very first junior high school. And now, again, you're on the cutting
    edge of reform and improvement.
        I'm here today primarily not to talk but to listen to the panelists
    here about what you're doing right. But I want to say, for the benefit
    of the country and through the press who are here, that this community
    has implemented high academic standards and assessments to see if the
    students and the schools are meeting those standards. They've given
    students help to meet those standards, from after-school programs to
    smaller classes. Their strategy, which is our strategy in the Clinton-
    Gore administration, of investing more and demanding more, is working.
        Now, you heard our principal talk about the advances. Just in the
    last 3 years, the test scores have skyrocketed. And the test scores
    themselves have gone up more than 200 percent but--I don't know if you
    listened to that--the percentage of students doing an acceptable job--
    listen to this--in one year--she talked about 2 years ago and last year,
    not this year--in one year went up almost 500 percent in reading, over
    300 percent in math, and 300 percent in science--in one year. All
    children can learn.
        I want to say a special word of appreciation to the teachers who I
    also met outside and to those of you who work to improve the quality of
    the teacher corps. Listen to this: More than a third of these teachers
    have a master's degree and over 10 years' experience teaching. I
    understand your peer assistance and review program is helping both new
    and veteran teachers to do better by learning from each other, something
    I very much believe in.
        And this is very important: You have cut the attrition rate of
    first-year teachers by 40 percent. This is terrifically important
    because we have so many teachers who will be retiring in America in the
    next few years, and we have the largest number of students in our
    schools in history. So reducing the attrition rate is a big deal and
    something you should be very proud of.
        While there is still more work to be done here and, indeed, in every
    school in the country, you have proved that with the right ideas and the
    right tools, you can do what needs to be done.
        Since 1993, our administration has worked hard to make education our
    number one priority, not just in a speech but in reality. And I must
    say, I don't know that I have ever been more touched by anything I have
    ever seen in any school in my life as I was when I looked up--hanging
    from the ceiling on the corridor when I came down here--and you had put
    up a history of what our administration had done since January of '93 in
    education. I was completely blown away. I dare say that outside of
    Hillary, the Vice President, and Secretary Riley,
    you now know more about what we have done than anybody else in America.
    [Laughter]

    [[Page 842]]

        But let me just briefly review a couple of the things that I think
    are important. When I came in office, we had a $295 billion deficit.
    Interest rates were high. Unemployment was high. We had to get rid of
    the deficit. We had to keep doing things. We got rid of hundreds of
    programs. And as we turned a deficit into 3 years of surpluses, now this
    year we will have paid off $355 billion of the national debt, well on
    our way to getting America out of debt entirely, for the first time
    since 1835. We have doubled our investment in education and training.
    And I think that's very important.
        But we also said to people that got Federal aid to education, ``If
    you want this Federal aid, you have to have high standards for what your
    children should know.'' We've given the States the resources they need
    to help schools implement those standards. We've required States to
    identify their low-performing schools and come up with strategies to
    turn them around.
        We've helped to reduce class size in the early grades with our
    program, now in its third year, to provide 100,000 new, highly trained
    teachers in the first 3 grades. I'm happy to say that 55 of those
    teachers are now in Columbus, 2 here at Eastgate. And this community has
    taken the average class size in grades one through 3 from nearly 25 down
    to 15. That is, doubtless, one reason you're seeing these big
    improvements in students' performance, and again I applaud you for that.
        When I became President, there was no Federal support for summer
    school programs. All these studies would show the kids that were having
    trouble learning forgot a lot of what they did learn over the summer.
    And then the teachers would have to spend 4, 6, sometimes as many as 8
    weeks reviewing what was done the year before, before they could even
    start on what they were being held responsible to teach in the new year.
        We went from a $1 million program in 1997 to $20 million in '98, to
    $200 million in '99, to $450 million this year. And my budget asks for a
    billion dollars. If the Congress will give it to me, we will be able to
    guarantee summer school opportunities to every student in every low-
    performing school in the entire United States of America. It is terribly
    important that we pass this.
        What you have done here--I know that 30 fourth graders in this
    school participate in such programs. I said summer school; I meant
    after-school, although the funds can also be used for summer school. I
    just came from Minneapolis, where a third of all their students are now
    in summer school programs, in the entire school district. Why? Because
    they have so many people who are coming from other countries whose first
    language is not English. They would never even have a chance to not only
    master the language but learn what they need to learn if summer school
    weren't made available to them. So the after-school and the summer
    school programs are important.
        We're trying to build or radically overhaul 6,000 schools and to
    modernize another 5,000 over the next 5 years--5,000 a year. We now--
    when I became President, we had only 3 percent of our classrooms and 16
    percent of our schools connected to the Internet. Today, we have nearly
    75 percent of the classrooms and 95 percent of the schools with at least
    one Internet connection with the E-rate, which the Vice President pioneered, that gives a $2 billion subsidy so
    that poorer schools and poorer communities can afford to have their
    schools log on to the Internet.
        So we're working on it. I have sent Congress an education
    accountability act that basically seeks to ratify what you're doing. It
    says: Set high standards; enforce them. End the practice of social
    promotion, but don't punish the kids for the failures of the system.
    Give after-school programs; give summer school programs. The kids can
    learn. We see it here. Have a system that works. And I hope that this
    will pass this year.
        And let me just make two final points. As your principal said, I've
    been working at this a long time. I've been in a lot of schools, and I
    never get tired of going into them. I've shaken hands with a lot of
    kids, and I'll never get tired of shaking hands with them. They make us
    all perpetually young.
        But I can tell you this: There is a world of difference between what
    we know now and what we knew in 1979, when Secretary Riley and I started in education reform. And there is a
    world of difference between what we know now and what we knew in 1983,
    when the ``Nation At Risk'' report was issued and when Hillary and I
    passed our first sweeping reforms at home in Arkansas.
        We know what works. You're seeing what works in this school. What
    does that mean? It means again that the adults among us no longer

    [[Page 843]]

    have an excuse not to give these opportunities to every child in
    America, because now we know what works.
        The second thing I'd like to say is, with the strongest economy in
    our history, the great test the American people face this year in the
    elections--and those of us who are elected officials--and as citizens
    is, what is it that we mean to do with this prosperity? If we're not
    going to do this now, when in the wide world will we ever get around to
    doing it? We're in the best shape economically we've ever been in. We
    can afford to do it, no matter what anybody says. And I think we ought
    to get about the business of doing it.
        So that's why I came here, why I wanted to hear from all of you. And
    what the purpose of this panel is, is to sort of fill in the blanks of
    my remarks here so that we will have a clear sense of how far you've
    come, how you did it, and what we need to do from here on out.
        Thank you very much.
        Now, I would like to begin by asking your superintendent to speak a
    little, maybe in a little greater detail than I did in my remarks or
    even than Principal Blake did in hers, and
    talk about how did you decide to do what you're doing, and what exactly
    are you doing to turn around low-performing schools? That's the big
    issue in the whole country.
        And let me just make one other comment. I've been in hundreds of
    schools in so many States. Nearly every problem you could ever dream of
    in American education has been solved by somebody somewhere. The real
    problem with American education is we never get our solutions to scale;
    that is, we don't take what we're doing really right for some people and
    keep on at it until it's being done for everybody, for all the kids.
        And there seems to me to be a real systematic effort here. So that's
    what I would like for you to talk about, Dr. Smith, in whatever way you want.

    [Rosa A. Smith, superintendent, Columbus
    Public Schools, described the district's strategy to improve its
    schools.]

        The President.  Yes, give her a hand.
    [Applause] That's great. Let me just emphasize one thing she said
    because, unless you've heard people say these things a lot, it would be
    easy to miss. She said that there were three clearly defined goals, and
    then the second point she made I think is very important. She said, ``We
    are using a research-based approach.'' That means--that's a nice way of
    saying what I said in more crude language, that you don't have to sort
    of fire a shotgun at this problem anymore. It's not like we don't know
    what works. There is lots and lots of research available today as a
    result of the serious efforts of the last 20 years.
        And one of the reasons that we have not had the kind of systematic
    results that we're seeing here around the country is that people don't
    take the research and really act on it. And it's interesting, because
    there is hardly any other endeavor of your life that you would ignore
    that in. If you were starting a business and 15 people had succeeded
    doing a certain thing and 3 people had failed doing the reverse, you
    wouldn't say, ``Well, I think I'll see if I can't make money doing what
    the three did. I think I can do it a little better.''
        So I think that Columbus deserves a lot of credit. I'd like to
    follow up by asking your principal, Barbara
    Blake--you've been a principal for a good while. As you pointed out, you
    wrote me when I was Governor and asked me about some of the things we
    were doing. Why do you think what you're doing now is working so much
    better?

    [Ms. Blake attributed the improvement to
    smaller class size and mentor support for teachers.]

        The President.  Just to give you some idea of what she said, I went
    through those numbers a minute ago, but I can't think of how you could
    possibly explain a 500 percent increase in the percentage of kids
    reading at the appropriate level in a year other than more individual
    attention by someone who is a good teacher and knows how to do it.
        And let me say, in this little class I visited in Kentucky
    yesterday, this elementary school class, all the kids and I took turns
    reading a chapter from the wonderful book ``Charlotte's Web.'' And I
    made every child read a couple paragraphs. And some of those paragraphs
    are pretty tough for kids in the third grade, you know, and they all got
    through it. In 4 years, they had almost a tenfold increase. And you'll
    do even better than that, at the rate you started. So I think this is
    very important. I think the smaller classes really do amount to
    something.
        I'd like to ask Heather Knapp to speak
    next. She is a teacher at East Linden Elementary,

    [[Page 844]]

    and she was hired with the help of our class size reduction funds as a
    first grade teacher. And she teaches a class of 18 first graders, along
    with a 25-year veteran of the Columbus Public Schools, Karen
    Johnson. And you, too, have, I understand, a
    large immigrant population in your school. So I'd like for you to talk a
    little about what the impact of children whose first language is not
    English is and the educational process and what you're doing.

    [Heather Knapp said that reduced class size
    enabled teachers to work with students in small groups and on a one-to-
    one basis and to spend time helping them to assimilate.]

        The President. My notes--and they're not always right, but they
    usually are--my notes say that if you didn't have these class size
    reduction funds to hire more teachers, that you and your team teacher,
    Ms. Johnson, would be each teaching,
    separately, first grade classes with more than 30 students in them. And
    if that's true, there would be no way in the world you could deal with
    all these children whose first language is not English.
        Ms. Knapp. No.
        The President.  Yes, that's pretty straightforward. [Laughter]
        Ms. Knapp. As a first-year teacher, I
    believe, no. [Laughter]
        The President.  I think many Americans have no idea just how diverse
    these student bodies are now. Like I said, I just came from Minneapolis/
    St. Paul. We think about that as sort of the capital of Norwegian
    America. And it still is. But there are children in the Minneapolis/St.
    Paul school district, combined, with native languages in excess of 100,
    counting all the people who come from the different African and
    Southeast Asian peoples who are there. And the same thing is happening
    all over America.
        Now, a lot of these kids, once they're here for about 18 months, if
    they get good basic grounding, start to do very well indeed. And since
    we're living in a global economy in an increasingly global society, this
    is a great advantage for the United States. We should be thrilled by
    this. This is going to put us in a very good position to do very well
    when all these children get out of school. Ten years, 20 years, 30 years
    from now, our country will be the best positioned country in the entire
    global society if, but only if, we take care of these kids now.
        Sometimes people back in Washington ask me why I spend so much time
    on this. You know, when Barbara introduced me,
    she said, ``the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces'' and all that. I
    think this is a national security issue for America. I think it's an
    important part of our long-term security. So I want you to keep
    plugging.
        I'd like to ask the president of the Columbus Education Association
    now to talk a little bit about your teacher development strategies.
    Everybody who becomes a teacher knows that he or she is not going to
    become wealthy, but it's important to pay them enough so that they can
    afford to stay. But it's more than pay. People also want to feel that
    they're doing their job well. Most people like to get up in the morning
    and look forward to going to work and believe that what they do is
    important and know they're doing it well. And that feeling is more
    important for teachers probably than any other single group in our
    society.
        So I'd like to ask Mr. Grossman to talk a
    little bit about how this peer assistance review program works and how
    it contributes to teacher quality.

    [John Grossman described how the peer
    assistance review program provided mentors for support, training, and
    evaluation of first-year teachers, in partnership with the union,
    administrators, and Ohio State University.]

        The President.  Let me just follow up on that a little bit. Again,
    this is one of those issues--it's very hard--for example, we've got all
    these folks here who are reporting on this today, and it's very hard to
    have a blaring headline across the Columbus paper tomorrow, with an
    exclamation point, ``Columbus Committed Only To Use Research-Based
    Strategies!'' or ``Peer Review and Assistance the Main Thing!'' It
    doesn't have the edge, like ``Clinton Robs a Liquor Store!'' or
    something. [Laughter]
        As a result of that, we often overlook what matters most. But let me
    just tell you this. We forget how much our teachers need support and
    training and the time and resources to do that. I think a lot of times
    we just assume that, well, if you went through school and you got good
    grades in math and you went to an education college and you took those
    courses, well, obviously you can teach math. We forget, unless we've
    actually seen how hard they work, how much time it takes for these
    teachers just to

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    get through the day, to deal with the children, give them as much
    individual attention as possible, give the tests, grade the tests, deal
    with all the other stuff they have to deal with.
        I can only tell you, most people believe the United States military
    is a pretty efficient operation, and we fought an air war in Kosovo and
    didn't lose a single pilot. But let me tell you, we did lose pilots.
    They didn't die in that war; they were pilots that die every year in the
    military training of the country. And we spend a lot of your tax money
    just training people relentlessly, over and over and over again. We
    don't assume that some people are smart and some people are dumb and
    some people can do it and some people can't. We assume in the military
    that the people we accept and the people we train are capable of doing
    the mission that they are assigned. We don't even assume that you're
    either a born leader or not, and if you're not born one, you can't lead.
    We train people to lead, too, in the military, and they lead. And a lot
    of people who would never be picked as leaders, the whole time they're
    born until the time they join the military, wind up performing superbly.
        If you look at the best run companies, they invest huge amounts of
    time and money in developing the capacities of their people. And we have
    never done this for our teachers in the sort of systematic way that we
    should, setting aside the time we should, investing the money in it we
    should. And again, it's a very hard thing for--the mayor can run for
    election, somebody can run for the school board, or somebody can run for
    President, and it's the last thing you'll ever see them say, because you
    can't turn it into a headline with an exclamation or a 30-second
    television ad. But it matters.
        That's why I wanted John to talk about it.
    It is so important. And it means something to the teachers. It's a way
    of reaffirming their significance and their capacity to grow in
    satisfying their own intellectual hunger. Any time you think training
    doesn't matter for education--suppose I would say to you, ``I've got a
    way to give you a bigger tax cut; we'll cease all training operations in
    the military, and we'll just take smart people and see how they do.''
    [Laughter] So this is very, very important. And I thank you for that.
        Mr. Mayor, tell me, what has the
    mayor got to do with the schools here? [Laughter] What is it you're
    trying to do?
        Mayor Michael B. Coleman of Columbus.
    I'm asked that question often, Mr. President. [Laughter]
        The President.  They ask me, too, all the time. [Laughter]

    [Mayor Coleman discussed the city's
    efforts to create and fund quality after-school programs.]

        The President.  Let me just say, I think that--first, I think
    you're to be commended, and I assure you
    that I will be fighting as hard as I can to get the appropriation
    doubled again. But as I said, in 1997, I got a million dollars out of
    the Congress to plan for a Federal after-school program. And then we
    went from $20 million to $200 million to $450 million in 3 years. And we
    estimate that if we can get up to a billion dollars a year in Federal
    support for after-school, at least we'll be able to give cities like
    Columbus enough money to target all the schools where either the
    performance is the most disappointing or you have the highest percentage
    of low income kids.
        But I think you will want to do more
    than that, and you'll probably have to make a case to the business
    community and others that it's a good economic investment for the city.
    But again I'll say, particularly if you have a lot of immigrant
    children, it's really important. These kids need as much time as they
    can to master the language so they can begin to learn all the other
    things they need to learn. And they just cannot do it in the regular
    day, in the regular school year.
        And I'll do what I can to help you.
    But I think you deserve it. I think you've made the right decision about
    what's best for you.
        Mayor Coleman.  Thank you very much.
        The President.  I would like to call on a parent now, a stakeholder
    in this enterprise. Linda Hoetger--is that
    right? I studied German in college. [Laughter] Linda and her husband,
    Ray, have four sons, all in the Columbus public
    school system. Both of them volunteer to work in the school system. And
    their 9-year-old son at East Columbus Elementary School got a Federal
    21st Century Community Learning Center grant to start an after-school
    program. So I'd just like for her to talk to us about her work in the
    after-school program at her son's school. How does it work; how did it
    start; what does she do; what is your view of the role of parents in
    this?

    [[Page 846]]

        But I would really like to begin just by thanking you and your husband for your
    support for the schools and for your willingness to give your time. I'd
    like for you to talk about what you do.

    [Linda Hoetger described her experiences as a
    volunteer for the after-school programs, offering students tutoring and
    standardized test preparation services.]

        The President.  Is all the after-school work at the school where you
    work designed toward helping prepare them for the test or giving them
    homework assistance? Are there any other kind of things----

    [Ms. Hoetger said the program also offered violence prevention classes.]

        The President.  I think this is really important. If I might just
    say, again, I've talked to a lot of young people in a lot of schools
    about violence, obviously because of all the very high profile tragedies
    we've had in our schools.
        But I think it's worth pointing out that in spite of those high
    profile tragedies, gun violence in America is down 35 percent since
    1993. And violence in the schools has declined. And I think one of the
    principle reasons is involving more young people in peer programs and
    training more young people--young people, like the rest of us--people
    model the behavior they see, either at home or they learn on television
    or in some other way. People are not born knowing how to resolve their
    anger, their frustration, their conflicts in a non-violent way. And if
    they don't have models, if they have either destructive models or no
    models at all, you run the risk of having a higher incidence of
    violence. So I wanted you to talk about this because I also think this
    is very important.
        Again, the more diverse the student body becomes, the more likely
    there are to be moments when people who won't understand each other
    because their backgrounds will be so different, their experiences will
    be so different. And when those moments come, it's very, very important
    that young people at least have been given a chance to know that there's
    some other way to resolve their differences--also that they don't have
    to bury them, because that also becomes a big problem. I mean, a lot of
    these kids that do really bad things are too far gone when the times
    they do it, but it's only after years and years and years and years of
    internalizing things that, had they not been buried, the children might
    have been saved.
        So I think that you deserve a lot of credit for that, too, and I
    think that should be a part of every school's effort, and I thank you
    for it.
        I want to now talk to Laura Avalos-Arguedas, who is an AmeriCorps volunteer with the City Year
    program in Columbus. She was born in Costa Rica and moved to the United
    States when she was 6 years old. She graduated from Grandview Heights
    High School in 1998 and began a 2-year volunteer program in City Year,
    where she tutors four first grade students in reading at the Second
    Avenue Elementary School. So I'd like for her to talk about that.
        And I just want to say, I don't know that I have done anything as
    President that I'm any more proud of than establish the AmeriCorps
    program. We've now had over 150,000 young people like Laura spend one or 2 years in this program, working
    in communities--sometimes in their home communities, sometimes half a
    nation away--and at the process, earning money for college. In the first
    4 years of AmeriCorps, we had more people than we had in the first 20
    years of the Peace Corps. And it's just been an amazing thing.
        So I'd like for you, Laura, to
    talk about why did you decide to become a volunteer in the City Year
    program, and how do you feel about the mentoring you're doing and the
    relationships you're building with the students? And do you think it's
    improving their learning?

    [Laura Avalos-Arguedas described her
    experience with the City Year program and commented on how popular the
    after-school program was with students.]

        The President.  Mr. Mayor, I think if
    she had 140 kids show up with 7 corps
    members, she just made the strongest case for your after-school
    initiative. [Laughter]
        Mayor Coleman.  I think she has.
        The President.  I think you need to
    make her witness A in your----
        Ms. Avalos-Arguedas.  We have to
    cut down.

    [Mayor Coleman pointed out the growing
    need for more after-school programs.]

        The President.  I want to go now to a product of another program I'm
    very proud of that I did not start. It existed in the Government when I
    became President, but we have dramatically

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    expanded it. It's called the Troops to Teachers program, where people
    who have served in the military, when they retire or when they leave the
    military, then move into teaching. And in an environment in which a lot
    of our kids come from difficult home situations, I think that the Troop
    to Teachers program has made a big impact in a lot of places.
        Eastgate Elementary has a teacher who came out of 20 years in the
    Air Force, Darrell Bryon. He's here with us
    today. And I'd like for him to talk a little bit about what made him
    decide to switch careers. He doesn't look old enough to have been in the
    Air Force 20 years. I don't know if he was honest about his age when he
    joined. [Laughter] And he teaches a fourth-fifth grade split class. I'd
    like for him to talk a little bit about how his previous experience
    helps him in the classroom.
        Mr. Bryon.

    [Darrell Bryon explained how his military
    experience helped to prepare him for the demands of teaching.]

        The President.  When you told that story
    about your student sort of talking back to you, I thought to myself, his
    training in the military has qualified him to be a teacher; his
    experience as a teacher may have qualified him to be President.
    [Laughter] So I can really identify with that.
        Harry Truman once said that being President was a job in which you
    spent most of your time trying to talk people into doing things they
    should do without your having to ask them in the first place. [Laughter]
    But I thank you for your dedication.
        Let me now call on Shirley Goins, who is a
    teacher in the Monroe Middle School, a sixth-grade teacher. And she has
    worked as a teacher for 30 years. She's taught at Monroe the last 18.
    And Monroe recently instituted a school uniform policy which required
    the children to wear white shirts and blue bottoms, and the parents of
    the students supported it.
        When I started supporting these several years ago, some people
    derided me as being for a little idea that a President shouldn't be
    paying attention to, but I was inclined to disagree. And I would like
    for Shirley to talk a little bit about why her
    school adopted this policy, and what its effect on discipline and
    academic achievement and the way the students relate to each other has
    been.

    [Shirley Goins described how the uniform
    policy helped students to focus on their work, rather than being
    distracted by frivolous clothing styles.]

        The President.  That's great. You know, when I started--my
    wife is the first person who ever
    talked to me about school uniforms. She's always been for them. She's a
    fanatic supporter of--now, I guess now that she's a candidate for
    office, I shouldn't use the word ``fanatic.'' [Laughter] Subject to
    being used against her, I suppose. But we talked about it a lot for
    young kids.
        And the first place I went to explore this was Newport Beach,
    California, which is the third biggest school district in California.
    And when the junior high schools adopted it out there, the middle
    schools, they did it in self-defense, because they had a lot of gangs.
    So they picked colors to dress in that would protect the kids. All the
    gangs wore red and blue, so all the uniforms were something other than
    red and blue. And then all the schools got to pick their own colors and
    do whatever they wanted.
        But I had two children talking to me about it, one young man who
    came from a difficult circumstance who told me it was the first time he
    felt safe walking to school in 2 years, and one young woman who was in a
    much better situation economically, where she said she felt like she had
    been liberated, that neither she nor her classmates could look down on
    or feel looked down on as a result of the clothes they wore. They were
    no longer distracted, and they felt good. They were looking forward to
    going to high school where they wouldn't have to do it anymore, but they
    thought it had really calmed the atmosphere in the school and that
    learning had increased and discipline problems had decreased. I thought
    it was a very interesting.
        Between Hillary and those kids,
    I've been pretty well sold on it ever since. [Applause] Yes, one person
    agrees with me in the crowd. [Laughter] Is this a school-by-school
    option in the Columbus school district?
        Ms. Goins.  Yes, Mr. President, it is not
    required. It is a school community decision with parents.
        The President.  Now, how many schools have uniform policies in
    this----
        Ms. Goins.  Mr. President, I cannot answer
    that question. [Laughter]

    [[Page 848]]

        The President.  Does anybody know? Are there others? But there is
    more than one?
        Ms. Goins.  There are others. There are
    several--many, I would say.
        The President.  I think, by the way, that's a good decision. I think
    if you have it district-wide, then you've got to--there you go, good for
    you, looks great. That looks great. I think you either have to--if it's
    going to be a district-wide decision, it's got to be handled just the
    way it would be school by school. It's a very delicate thing. It only
    works if the parents are for it and if the kids buy into it. Even if
    they have reservations, they've got to buy into it. So it's better not
    something that somebody like me decides is the right thing to do.
        What we tried to do is to show people how to do it, including how
    districts have dealt with the families who couldn't afford to buy the
    uniforms, where they got the money, how they did all that sort of stuff.
    But I do think it has some merit.

    [Ms. Goins concurred that parents and students
    needed to agree on the policy.]

        The President.  Now, what school do you represent in your uniform?
        Student. I represent Columbus----
        The President.  Good for you. That's a great looking uniform. Thank
    you. I have been hissed and cheered by students talking about this.
    [Laughter]
        Mayor Coleman.  You're only going to
    be cheered here in Columbus, Mr. President. [Laughter]
        The President.  Is there anything else anybody would like to say? Is
    there anybody in the audience wants to ask anybody on the panel a
    question? Yes, sir?
        Q. Mr. President, I was wondering if Al Gore, if he becomes the next
    President, will be continuing your policies and ideals, because they are
    excellent.
        The President.  Yes, he actually--he's
    been outlining his education program, and I would say that there are a
    couple of areas, obviously, because he can look ahead 4 years beyond
    what I can argue for. One of the things that he believes, in addition--
    he has supported our educational accountability fund that I just
    explained and all these things I talked about. And he's going to have--
    he's actually giving a whole speech tomorrow on teacher quality, which I
    hope you will follow. He's been working very hard on it and talking to
    people around the country, educators and others.
        In addition to that, in the primary, he
    came out for a program to add another several hundred thousand teachers,
    federally funded, to the 100,000 that we've already provided. We're very
    concerned that over the next decade another 2 million teachers will
    retire as the number of students continues to swell. And so we think
    it--you know, I agree--but he came and talked to me about this. He
    didn't--it was entirely his idea, not mine. But he said, ``I think I'm
    going to go out there and advocate that we take a certain percentage of
    this surplus and just dedicate it to helping the communities hire
    teachers.'' Once we get the 100,000 in there, so we know we can get an
    average class size of 20 in the early grades, the rest--we're just going
    to be killing ourselves to get properly qualified teachers in the
    classroom because people retire.
        And so I think you could feel every confidence that he would support the things that have been done, but that he
    would build on them and do better. That's what I think will happen.

    [A participant said a student had commented that the President would be
    a tough act to follow.]

        The President.  Well, I appreciated his saying that. But the truth
    is that the country is changing a lot economically, and let me try to
    put this education issue that we've been talking about here into the
    larger context.
        When I became President in 1992--and the people of Ohio were good
    enough to vote for me and the Vice President--the big issue was how
    could we turn the country around. The economy was in a shambles. The
    crime was exploding. The welfare rates were exploding. Things didn't
    seem to be working. And so in the last 7 years, I've tried to look to
    the long-term challenges of the future, but first we had to get the ship
    of state righted. Things had to be working.
        Now, you're not very cynical anymore about whether you can actually
    make things better. I mean, if you look at--you know, we've gone from a
    big deficit to a big surplus. We're paying down the debt. We've got the
    lowest unemployment rate in 30 years. The welfare rolls have been cut in
    half. Crime is down to a 25-year

    [[Page 849]]

    low. Poverty is at a 20-year low; African-American, Hispanic
    unemployment the lowest ever recorded; female unemployment the lowest in
    40 years.
        I say that to say, nobody questions whether we have the capacity as
    a people to improve. Nationwide, reading and math scores are up about a
    grade level. But in places where there's been a sharp focus on results
    and on turning around low-performing schools like Columbus, the results
    are much more dramatic, but they're up. We have--90 percent of our kids
    are immunized against serious diseases for the first time. We've--all
    the environmental indicators are better.
        So the question that the country faces now is a very different
    question than it faced in 1992. The question we face now is, what is it
    that we propose to do with this moment of unprecedented prosperity? The
    question, by the way, also is not whether you're going to change. The
    world is changing so fast, America will change. It will change just as
    much in the next 4 years as it has in the previous 4 and the 4 before
    that. So the question is not whether you're going to change. The
    question is how you're going to change.
        You know, if the Vice President were
    running for President and he said, ``Vote for me; I'll do everything
    Bill Clinton did,'' I wouldn't vote for him, because the world's going
    to be different. That's not--his message is that, ``Look, this approach
    works, so we ought to change by building on it. And here's how I'll
    build on it. I don't think we ought to abandon the approach in economics
    and education and health care and welfare reform and all these issues,
    but we're going to have to change.'' And my take on this as a citizen,
    as well as somebody with some experience now in these affairs, is that
    the way to decide what direction you want to take is to first ask
    yourself, where would you like to go?
        I remember one of the funniest things Yogi Berra used to say is that
    we may be lost, but we're making good time. [Laughter] I mean, you've
    got to ask yourself, where would you like to go? Now, my opinion is--and
    again, it's not going to be on my watch, but my opinion is that for the
    first time in at least 35 years, since we had this kind of economy
    again--which basically came apart in the Vietnam war and the civil
    rights crisis and a lot of other problems we had in the country in the
    1960's--this is the first time we've had since then to say, okay, here's
    where we want to go, and here's what we're going to do to get there.
        So my view is, one of our goals ought to be to guarantee that every
    child in this country will have access to a world-class education; that
    everybody will be able to afford to go to college if they're otherwise
    qualified; that poverty among children can be eliminated within through
    the tax system and other supports; that every working family ought to be
    able to at least have access to affordable health insurance; that we
    will deal with the challenges that the aging of America--when the baby
    boomers retire and there's only two people working for every one person
    drawing Social Security--we will act now, not then, to save Social
    Security and Medicare and add a prescription drug benefit that's
    voluntary for the seniors--big challenges.
        On the environmental front, we have to tackle this whole issue of
    global warming. You're all in here fanning yourselves; the truth is that
    the climate of this Earth is going up at a very difficult rate. Now that
    may seem like an obscure issue, because Columbus is way inland, but it's
    not going to be very funny if the polar icecaps keep melting and the
    oceans rise and the sugarcane fields in Louisiana and the Florida
    Everglades were buried and the agricultural production of America starts
    to go north and the whole framework of life here is changed--and people
    in Africa start getting even more cases of malaria and children dying
    from dehydration. This is a big issue.
        So that's what I gave my State of the Union about. But I think what
    all you need to decide as citizens is, what do you want for your kids?
    What do you want for your families? What do you want for your future?
    Where do you want to go? Then you have to say--8 years ago, I wouldn't
    have believed that we could write the future of our dreams. But now I
    know America can work.
        So again, it's kind of like school reform. We don't have an excuse
    anymore for not saying what would we like America to be like when our
    children are our age, because we know we can make America better now. We
    don't have an excuse; we know that. So every one of you--I wish you'd go
    home and take a piece of paper and say, what would I like America to
    look like in 10 years? And then, how does America

    [[Page 850]]

    have to change--not whether, but how--to get there?
        That's how you'll know who to vote for. That's how you know what
    ideas you think work. To ask yourself, where do you want to go? And my
    earnest plea to the American people this year is to do that, so we can
    take on these big challenges, because that's what I've been working for.
    I've been working for the day that when I left office, this country
    would have both the self-confidence and the capacity to build the future
    of our dreams for our children. And we can do it now. That's what I
    think we ought to be doing.

    [Dr. Smith and Mayor Coleman thanked the President for his participation.]

        The President.  Thank you all.

    Note: The roundtable began at 4:40 p.m. in the East Room at Eastgate
    Elementary School. In his remarks, the President referred to State
    Representative Joyce Beatty; City Council President Matthew D. Habash;
    State House Minority Leader Jack Ford; and Gary Allen, vice president,
    Ohio Education Association.