    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 16 (Monday, April 25, 1994)]
    [Pages 870-871]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Presenting the Teacher of the Year Award

    April 21, 1994

        Thank you very much, Secretary Riley, and thank all of you for being
    here to recognize Sandra McBrayer, our 1994 Teacher of the Year.
        I want to say as I begin that the work in the Senate and the House
    has kept Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Lynn
    Schenk from coming here today. But all three of them called and asked to
    be remembered at this occasion and to say they are proud of and strongly
    support the work that Sandra McBrayer has done.
        One of the things I hoped to do when I ran for President was to
    increase our national effort to improve education in ways that made
    sense to grassroots educators who were out there making a difference.
    After serving for 12 years as a Governor and spending more time on
    schools and jobs than any other two issues, I have probably spent more
    time in more different kinds of classrooms than any person who has had
    the privilege to hold this office. And one of the things that I always
    believed was that virtually every challenge in American education had
    been met with genuine excellence by someone somewhere, that there were
    people committed, good people all across this country, that were trying
    to come to grips with the awesome challenges of educating all America's
    children to world-class standards and that what we had to do at the
    national level was to clarify what those standards are, to give people
    some means of measuring whether they were being achieved, and then to
    support the grassroots reforms and the people who were carrying them
    out. That's what we're trying to do with Goals 2000, with the school-to-
    work bill, with all our other educational initiatives.
        And that's why I was so pleased, when I first met Sandra McBrayer in
    California not very long ago and heard about her work, that she was
    actually chosen as the Teacher of the Year. We met when she came to the
    Goals 2000 signing when she was just a California Teacher of the Year,
    and I didn't know she was going to get such a quick promotion, but I
    sort of suspected it because of what she has done.
        I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have someone here who's
    proved that you could teach homeless kids and that they count and they
    matter and they can learn and they can achieve great things. She knows
    that children have to be fed; they need clothes to wear and a place to
    sleep at night, and it's harder if they don't have those things.
        She started the Homeless Outreach School in San Diego in a
    storefront in 1988. Her school provides, in addition to education, two
    meals a day, showers, and laundry facilities. Her students don't follow
    a regular schedule; they come to class between their jobs or when
    they're not caring for children of their own. But they each fulfill a
    weekly contract of studies that are completed either at home or in
    school.
        This is very important. This is one of the central ideas of Goals
    2000. We should measure our educational effort not by how teachers do
    everything all day, every day, but by whether certain results are
    achieved. And then we should allow our teachers and our school
    principals to devise their own best ways to achieve those results based
    on the realities that they deal with.
        She is living every day what I believe is the central idea that
    would do more to transform and revolutionize American education than any
    other single thing in public edu-

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    cation, at least, if we could implement it and implement it all over
    America.
        The most important lessons of these students may not be learned
    inside the classroom. Maybe it's the confidence they gain by finally
    having someone like Sandra McBrayer to believe in them, someone who
    believes they count in society and they have something to contribute and
    the rest of us need them.
        You might have heard the line that teaching kids to count is fine
    but teaching them what counts is best. Sandy McBrayer has done even more
    than that; she's taught her children that they count. Over 25 of her
    students who started out on the streets are now in college.
        So I want to thank her for her dedication to the students of the
    Homeless Outreach School, for being a model for all teachers throughout
    the country, and for the whole idea of education reform. And I'm proud
    to present her the 1994 Apple Award as America's Teacher of the Year.
    I'll hold your apple for you. I'll polish your apple for you. [Laughter]

    Note: The President spoke at 2:13 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these
    remarks.