[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- 

[[Page 871]]

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.