[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 37 (Monday, September 18, 1995)]
[Pages 1548-1552]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in a Teleconference on Education and an Exchange With Reporters

September 12, 1995

    The President. Can you all hear me?
    School Superintendents. Yes, yes.
    The President. That's great. Well, I'm on the phone here with 
Secretary Riley. And I want to thank all you superintendents for joining 
me today on this conference call to discuss the importance of continuing 
our national commitment to education. All of you know better than I that 
America has just started back to school.
    Over the last week I have met with chief executive officers from 
major corporations, such as IBM and TRW, with mayors and county 
executives from large and small cities, and yesterday with college 
students from 10 different universities in 5 States. And I have just 
come from a meeting with some of our young national service corps, 
AmeriCorps, participants, along with college presidents and business 
leaders who support their involvement. And everywhere I go, when I deal 
with people who are working with Americans who are struggling to make 
the most of their own lives or trying to help our country adjust to the 
global economy, I hear the same message: It is wrong for our economy to 
be growing with so many hardworking Americans' incomes not growing. And 
everywhere I hear the same response: The answer is to give people a 
better education, to give our young people the tools they need to learn 
and to give all Americans a chance to build better lives.
    That's why I presented to Congress a balanced budget, which shows 
that we can get rid of the deficit and still invest more in education 
and training, to put our young people and our future first. That's why 
we have committed ourselves to a greater investment in Head Start, to 
the Goals 2000 program that many of you are very familiar with, to 
decreasing class sizes through programs like Title I, to the Safe and 
Drug-Free Schools program.
    These are not bureaucratic programs. These are programs that relate 
to the future of our children, the strength of our economy, and 
therefore the future of all the rest of us in America.
    I know that it is easy to cut these programs here in Washington. We 
are a long way from the schools and the grassroots. You're a long way 
from the human consequences of those cuts. But these things actually 
mean something where all of you live and work. And that's what I want 
you to talk about.
    For example, four schools in Portland, Oregon, helping 9th and 10th 
graders to reach higher standards in math and science, will lose their 
funding, just at the time when we know our young people are taking more 
advanced courses, doing more homework, and trying harder to measure up 
to global standards of excellence. Four hundred and fifty teaching 
assistants and other staff who help children with basic reading, 
writing, and math skills will have to be laid off in Miami. There are 
examples like this all across the country. That's why we've had such 
incredibly strong bipartisan business support for our education budget.
    Joe Gorman, the chief executive officer of TRW, said last week that, 
and I quote, ``Goals 2000 is critically important. Far more than dollars 
are involved. It provides incentives to States to change themselves 
within their educational systems.'' Lou Gerstner, the CEO of IBM, said, 
``Goals 2000 is the fragile beginning of the establishment of a culture 
of measuring standards and accountability in our country. We have to go 
way beyond Goals 2000, but if we lose Goals 2000 it is,'' and I quote, 
``an incredibly negative setback for our country.''

[[Page 1549]]

    So I think that we've got good, bipartisan support in the grassroots 
for continuing to invest in education. We are only helping people who 
are willing to help themselves. We are not giving anything to people who 
don't need it, and we are not giving things to people who won't use it. 
We're just making an investment in America's future. And I hope that 
together all of us can succeed in securing both a balanced budget and an 
education budget that will be good for America's future.
    I'd like to ask Secretary Riley to say a few words, and then I'd 
like to hear from all of you. Mr. Secretary.

[At this point, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley described the 
progress made in education and the need for greater investment.]

    The President. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Now I'd like to call on the 
superintendents to speak. And I'd like to emphasize one more time 
something that--the American taxpayers always say that they don't want 
us giving anybody something for nothing. They don't want us giving 
people things they don't need. And they're right about that.
    But we're talking here about a student population that we now know 
is working harder, doing more homework, investing more in their own 
future, and understanding more about education. And as I said, I was--
just yesterday, I was at Southern Illinois University. And I met with 11 
recipients of student aid. And every one of them was a working person 
struggling to get a good education to make their own lives better and 
this country stronger. So that's what we're talking about here. And it's 
a good expenditure of our tax dollars.
    I'd like to begin by calling on the Superintendent of the Dade 
County, Florida, schools, Octavio Visiedo. And sir, you're the first up. 
Just say whatever's on you mind.

[Mr. Visieno discussed the recent layoff of paraprofessionals in Dade 
County and emphasized its impact on students who recently immigrated.]

    The President. Thank you very much. I'd like to now ask the 
Superintendent of the Portland, Oregon, schools to speak, Jack 
Bierwirth. Mr. Bierwirth.

[Mr. Bierwirth discussed the Head Start program, Goals 2000, and the 
need for national education standards.]

    The President. I thank you for saying that. I want to emphasize, 
because there's been some--a little bit of controversy about Goals 2000 
that I think the genius of the program is that under Secretary Riley's 
leadership, we have done more to give more flexibility to local school 
districts and individual schools to creatively pursue their own 
solutions for excellence while trying to develop national standards so 
that parents could know what their children should know and whether 
they're learning it. And it seems to me that was a very good bargain for 
the American people and one we ought not to back off of now.
    Mr. Bierwirth. And it's beginning to pay off very well out here.
    The President. That's the thing. It's just beginning to work. And I 
really appreciate you saying that.
    I'd like to call on Dr. Gerry House, the superintendent of the 
Memphis school systems. Dr. House.

[Dr. House discussed the impact of funding cuts on child nutrition and 
the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program and described the Memphis school 
system's antismoking campaign.]

    The President. Well, thank you very much, and thank you for telling 
us about your smoke-free program. I appreciate that, and I hope you are 
very successful with it.
    I think I'd like to make just two points here. One is--one the 
Secretary of Education made me clearly aware of. And that is that we're 
fixing to have another big increase in school students, what Secretary 
Riley called the ``baby boom echo.'' And that means that these 
reductions in the school lunch program will be much more severe than 
they might look on paper because we have calculated--in our budget we 
asked for money based on the increase in student population we know 
we're going to have. And a disproportionate number of these young 
people, of course, do come from low-income families and often don't get 
the kind of nourishment they need.

[[Page 1550]]

    The other point I want to make is that the Safe and Drug-Free 
Schools program passed as a bipartisan program. This was not, when it 
was started, a partisan issue. This was a bipartisan issue. And one of 
the things that the Republicans have always said is that we needed to do 
more to change people's behavior as it relates to drugs and violence, 
that we can't just concentrate on drug treatment, we can't just 
concentrate on punishing people, we can't just concentrate on trying to 
interdict drugs when they come in this country. We have to do more to 
change people's behavior.
    This program works on changing people's behavior and, therefore, to 
undermine it and not give the schools the resources they need to deal 
with this terrific problem, it seems to me to run counter to the 
position that they've taken consistently, at least, since I've been here 
in Washington for the last 2\1/2\ years.
    So I appreciate what you said, and I hope we can do well by both 
those programs before this is over.
    I'd like to call on the Superintendent from Milwaukee now, Robert 
Jasna, to say whatever he would like to say.

[Mr. Jasna discussed the impact of funding cuts on the Safe and Drug-
Free Schools program, the School-to-Work program, and class size.]

    The President. Thank you very much, Mr. Jasna. As you know, a lot 
of--this conversation is being held not only in the presence of 
representatives of the national media here but for regional media around 
the country. So I think I should make two points about the very 
important comment you've made.
    First of all, the School-to-Work program, which you discussed, is 
basically the effort of the local school districts around the country 
supported by Federal and sometimes by State funds to train people both 
academically and vocationally while they're in school, both in the 
school and in the workplace, and to continue that training after they 
leave high school so they have a chance to get a good job with a growing 
income.
    In the United States, because we don't have a comprehensive system 
of training people who don't go on to colleges, we often find that the 
earnings of people without a college education are dropping dramatically 
and have been for 20 years now.
    The School-to-Work program is an attempt to build in a flexible 
American way the kind of systems that the Germans, for example, have had 
for many years, which have led to rising incomes for a lot of their 
workers without university degrees but with very good education and very 
good training.
    So this would hit a huge percentage of young American workers who 
have the chance to escape the declining earnings that have plagued non-
college educated Americans for 20 years now.
    And on the class size issue, I just want to mention one thing to 
hammer this home. There has been an enormous amount of educational 
research in the last 10 years especially demonstrating that if you can 
get class sizes down to under 20 to 1, especially--you mentioned you had 
class sizes of 15 to 1--that kids with serious learning problems can 
dramatically improve with that kind of student-teacher ratio.
    So if you have to double it, there's no question that the learning 
capacity of our system or our teaching capacity will go way down. And I 
really appreciate both the points you made.
    Mr. Jasna. Thank you.
    The President. I'd like to now call on a longtime friend of mine, 
the Superintendent of the Philadelphia schools, David Hornbeck. David, 
are you there?

[Mr. Hornbeck discussed the impact of funding cuts on Goals 2000, the 
Head Start program, and AmeriCorps.]

    The President. Thank you, David, and thank you for what you said 
about Goals 2000. I think one of the problems we've had with Goals 2000 
is that only the educators have understood it. You know, it doesn't ring 
any bells in the public mind. And I think when people understand it's 
about high expectations, high standards, and grassroots reform, it will 
help us to continue the work.
    On AmeriCorps, let me say one of the things that came out today. 
Today we had representatives of most of the colleges and universities in 
Rhode Island, and business leaders from Rhode Island and Boston that

[[Page 1551]]

are supporting it, and we also had a man who worked as President Ford's 
Commissioner of Education who had evaluated the program. And they said 
that one of the attacks on AmeriCorps was that if young people got paid 
for their college education for volunteering in their communities, it 
would run volunteers off, and that quite to the contrary, the average 
AmeriCorps volunteer had generated 12 more volunteers. And you say in 
Philadelphia it's up to 20 in the schools, so that's a wonderful 
statement, and I thank you for your good work and for what you said 
today.
    Now I want to call on a gentleman who was here just a few days ago 
to visit with me about some of these issues, Albert Thompson, the 
Superintendent of the Buffalo, New York, schools.
    Mr. Thompson.

[Mr. Thompson discussed the impact of Chapter I cuts on several groups 
of students. Secretary Riley concluded the remarks by indicating that 
the proposed cuts would represent a retreat from support of education.]

    The President. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
    Let me just close by thanking all of you for the work you're doing 
out there every day, and through you, your principals and your teachers, 
and the parents that are helping you. You know, this issue--I wanted to 
do this call today to make it clear that this issue is not just another 
money issue; this is about the future of this country. And these 
programs we're talking about, every one has been enacted or expanded 
with bipartisan support. And the direction that I have taken since I've 
been President, working with Secretary Riley, rooted in our experience 
as Governors with people like you, has been to focus on high 
expectations, high standards, and high accountability and rewarding the 
assumption of personal responsibility by students.
    These are the things that the American people know we need to do. 
And everybody knows we can't turn around the stagnation of American 
incomes unless we dramatically increase the output but also the 
investment in American education.
    So I think that you know that history is on your side, that right is 
on your side. We're just going to have to keep working here so that we 
can prevail in Washington and make sure that here in Washington people 
understand the consequences of what they do out there where you live. 
And you have gone a long way to help us make that case today, and we're 
very, very grateful to you.
    Thank you.
    School Superintendents. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
    The President. Thank you all. Good-bye.

Education Budget

    Q. Mr. President, do you think you're going to be able to save these 
programs? It looks like there's a real wall there.
    The President. Yes, I do, because I think--I think that--keep in 
mind, if you look at the educational programs that I started here, like 
Goals 2000, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, the School-to-Work 
program, the AmeriCorps program, or if you look at the ones we've 
expanded, like Head Start, or the ones we've reformed, like the Chapter 
I program, without exception, these programs had bipartisan support, not 
only out in the country but in the Congress.
    Now the Congress is basically operating within a budget resolution 
which has an arbitrary time frame of 7 years and an arbitrary tax cut of 
$250 billion and, I think, a very modest estimate of revenue growth or 
economic growth for America, 2.3 percent, which is less than we've grown 
for the last 25 years. Presumably, they believe that if we balance the 
budget we'll grow faster, not slower. In other words, I don't think they 
want to balance the budget to give America a low-grade economic 
infection.
    So I believe when we start to talk about these things and we pull 
out what has historically been there, which is the bipartisan support 
for education plus what everyone understands, which is that we've now 
got 20 years of stagnant incomes in this country and the only way--the 
only way to turn it around is to raise the educational level, I think we 
have an excellent chance of saving these programs because they work; 
they're good; they're grassroots oriented; they're not Federal 
bureaucracies.

[[Page 1552]]

    Q. Mr. President, if you're to avoid the train wreck that you--
[inaudible]--earlier, some in Congress have suggested that a budget 
summit of some kind may be the only way to work out these very stark 
differences between you and the Republican leadership. Is that something 
that you'd be willing to agree to?
    The President. Well, I think the discussion of the summit is 
premature at this time. I do believe, as I said earlier today, I've seen 
in some of the comments of some of the Republican leaders the prospect 
that we might be able to bridge these differences. I'm willing to reach 
across the bridge, but it takes two people to reach across a bridge to 
meet in the middle somewhere. So I think we can do it. We're just going 
to have to work at it.
    But the first thing we ought to do, and what I'm trying to do here 
today and what I'm trying to do this whole week with this back-to-school 
theme, is to try to lift this issue beyond politics, beyond partisan 
politics and beyond Washington politics. That is, why are we balancing 
the budget? Because we want to lift debt off our children, and we want 
to reduce borrowing now so we'll have more money available in the 
private sector to generate jobs and incomes. That's why we're doing it.
    Why did they propose a tax cut? Why do I propose a tax cut, even 
though we're very different? Because we think it will make family life 
better; it will make child rearing stronger; it will make the economy 
stronger; it will make America a more solid, stronger country.
    If those are our objectives then we have to pursue balancing the 
budget and reducing taxes in a way consistent with our objectives, not a 
partisan deal, not a political deal. Education, if you take it out of 
the equation, the objectives will fail. That's the point I'm trying to 
make. That's the point I want us to focus on. And it is not necessary to 
make these education cuts to balance the budget. I think we've got a 
real chance to make that case, and I'm very, very hopeful.

Bomb Plot in Austin, Texas

    Q. Mr. President, word is starting to come out about the aborted 
bomb plot against the IRS center in Austin, Texas. Have you been briefed 
on that, sir?
    The President. No.
    Thank you.

Budget Debate

    Q. Do you think you're going to get a continuing resolution while 
this debate goes on?
    The President. I certainly hope so. I think that's the responsible 
thing to do. And I think that--my guess is that there's a good chance 
that will occur.
    Thank you.

Note: The teleconference began at 2:25 p.m. The President spoke from the 
Roosevelt Room at the White House.