[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 8 (Monday, February 24, 1997)]
[Pages 220-225]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Announcing the District of Columbia College Reading Tutor 
Initiative

February 21, 1997

    Thank you very much. Thank you, General Becton, for the 
introduction. Thank you, Principal Andrea Robinson, for making the First 
Lady and me feel so very welcome here in Garrison today. Delegate 
Norton, Mr. Mayor, all the college presidents who are

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here, some out in the audience, but especially those here behind me who 
are part of our announcement today: Dr. Ladner of American University, 
Brother Patrick Ellis of Catholic, Dr. I. King Jordan of Gallaudet, 
Father Leo O'Donovan of Georgetown, Steven Trachtenberg of George 
Washington, Pat McGuire of Trinity, Patrick Swygert of Howard.
    To the Council members who are here today, Hilda Mason and Harry 
Thomas, Judge Hamilton. To the School Board members who are here and 
others who are here who are part of our endeavor. I would like to 
especially acknowledge the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Jim Billington; 
the Secretary of Education, Secretary Dick Riley; Carol Rasco, the 
National Director of our America Reads program; Frank Raines, the 
Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Harris Wofford, who 
heads our national service program.
    I'd also like to thank Dr. Robert Corrigan from San Francisco State 
University, who is here. He and Father O'Donovan are two of the 21 
steering committee members for our national effort to get volunteers in 
colleges all over America involved in helping our children to read. So 
I'm delighted to be here with this distinguished assemblage.
    Two weeks ago in my State of the Union Address I spoke of the 
importance of renewing our great Capital City to make it the finest 
place to learn, to work, to live, to make it once again the proud face 
America shows to the world. This is a city of truly remarkable 
strengths. I saw that when I lived here as a student so very many years 
ago now. I see it now, having come back as President. We see the majesty 
of the monuments, the beauty of the parks, the commitment of community 
and business leaders. But most importantly, we see it in the eyes of our 
children.
    I was just in Stephanie Abney's first grade class, where Hillary and 
I read ``The Tortoise and the Hare'' to the students, and they could 
have been reading it back to us. And I thought about those wonderful 
children and all the others who are here. They deserve the best future 
we can give them, and we can give them a better future. And that is what 
this is all about.
    As the First Lady said, this endeavor will require us to be more 
like the tortoise than the hare. We will have to move slowly but 
deliberately, and we will not be able to sit down and rest. But if we do 
that, like the tortoise, we will win the race. This is our city. All of 
us who live here, all of us who work here, all of us who want America's 
Capital to be a world capital, second to none; all of us have an 
obligation to work with the mayor, with General Becton, with the control 
board, with Delegate Norton, with all the leaders of the city to help to 
renew and to revitalize Washington, DC. I pledge to you today that we, 
my personal family and my official family, will be with you as you make 
those efforts, every step of the way.
    I'd like to say a special word of appreciation to three people who 
have been particularly important to me in this endeavor: First, to the 
First Lady who has been telling me for a long time that we had to do 
more, we owed it to Washington to do more and that we could do more. 
Second, to Frank Raines, the Director of the Office of Management and 
Budget who came up with the proposal we have made to relieve the 
District of Columbia of some of its unfair and unnecessary financial 
burdens and reallocate responsibility among the State and Federal 
Government. And third to a--I didn't know if she was here with us today, 
but I finally spotted her in the audience--to Carol Thompson Cole, 
Carol, thank you very much for all that you have done to help us to get 
this effort off the ground.
    So we've made this proposal to the Congress to relieve the District 
government of some of its financial burdens. As I have said many times, 
one of the major problems of the District of Columbia is that it has too 
often been a ``not quite'' place. It's not quite a State, but it's not 
quite a city. So it has been loaded up with responsibilities that 
normally are only borne by States. I think that is wrong, and I think we 
should do better about that.
    To strengthen the city's economic base, we also must provide some 
financial incentives for people to move businesses and to move 
themselves back into the city. We must expand the empowerment approach 
that has worked so well across the country. In De

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troit, one of our empowerment zone cities, the unemployment rate was cut 
in half in 4 years--in half--and investment was flooding back, business 
was coming back, people were coming back to live in the city. We can do 
this in every city in America, and we must.
    To help home rule succeed, we have to change the relationship 
between the District and our Nation's Government. Sometimes the District 
gets the worst of all worlds. It's not quite independent, but the 
dependencies it has carry burdens that cannot be borne by any community. 
So we need to work that out.
    But let's not kid ourselves, there are some things that have to be 
done here that must be done by the people of the District of Columbia. 
And the two that are most important in my view are making the schools 
work for these children and making the streets safe for them to walk and 
live on.
    What I want to say to you today is that I know you can do this. I 
have been not only here at Garrison, but I have been in the Kramer 
Junior High School in Anacostia, which has been adopted by my Secret 
Service detail--it's one of the presents they gave me for a birthday 
once--best present I could ever be given by my Secret Service detail. 
And they go to Kramer--they're in there all the time. And I get regular 
reports about the progress they're making. I have been to Thomas 
Jefferson Junior High School, which is near the Capitol, probably 5 
times in the last 10 years. I've been to Eastern High School and to a 
number of other schools in the District. You can do this. This school 
system can be great for all of its children, and what we want to do is 
to help.
    I'd also like to say that you can do the other things you have to 
do, too. Public safety can succeed here. I started the week in Boston, 
where no child has been murdered in a year and a half, not a single 
child in a year and a half, not one. And no manna dropped from Heaven, 
no outside force lifted them up. They did some things together, in a 
disciplined, organized, determined way that changed the future of 
children. And now it can be done everywhere. So I am hopeful.
    But let's begin with education. All of you know that the world we 
are moving toward will put a higher premium on education than ever 
before. It has always been important. A certain amount of it has always 
been essential for people to get along in life. It is now more critical 
than ever before not only for the individual futures of every one of 
these little kids here but for how the rest of us do as well. For the 
skeptics who are about my age, I could only say that we ought to be 
working hard to give these children a good education so they will 
support us in our old age--[laughter]--in a style that we'll be 
comfortable with.
    We can only be a strong, united community if we can educate all our 
people. If you look around--just look at these children today. America 
is building the most genuinely diverse democracy in all of human 
history. No one has ever tried to do this before, and we did it almost 
without thinking, just by being a nation of successive waves of 
immigrants. We became more and more and more diverse. And by continuing 
to advance the cause of civil rights and civil liberties, we've made 
different people more and more and more at home in our country. And then 
all of a sudden we wake up on the edge of the 21st century with four 
school districts in our country where children's native tongues number 
more than 100--in four different school districts.
    This is a great challenge because all children, even of the same 
race and the same religious background, as every teacher could tell you, 
are different. All children are different anyway. And when you think of 
this diversity we have to manage, it's even a greater challenge. But 
it's also the greatest opportunity that has ever been served up to any 
people in human history. And if we seize that opportunity, if we prove 
that all of our children can learn and they can all be given 
opportunities and they can all make a contribution, we will be richly 
rewarded.
    We know that there are some remarkable success stories in the 
District of Columbia, and we know the District's schools have to do 
better. That's why I am so grateful that, after a lifetime of service to 
his nation, General Becton has taken on yet another important challenge 
and a true act of patriotism. We are committed to supporting him.
    We know that we have to mobilize people from all walks of life, and 
I was glad to hear

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all the different volunteer groups recognized, particularly the seniors 
and the Vista volunteers and, of course, a great personal pride of mine, 
the AmeriCorps volunteers. And I thank some of them who are here today, 
and I thank them for being here.
    We need to start with simple, clear goals that we know are 
important, number one, and, number two, that we can determine whether we 
have met. One of the real problems that I find in all human endeavors is 
that sometimes we don't clarify our goals and make sure we're going 
after the important ones. And then sometimes, even if we've got a good 
goal, we set it up so we never can tell whether we've met it or not.
    One of our goals has to be to make sure every 8-year-old in this 
country can read a book on his or her own, and every 8-year-old in this 
school and every 8-year-old in this city can do the same in the next 4 
years. That is a very important thing, and we can find out whether that 
is being done.
    The Secretary of Education and I intend to make it possible for 
States and the District, by the year 1999, to give an examination to 
every fourth grader in reading and every eighth grader in math to see 
whether they know what they're supposed to know, based on national basic 
standards. And so we will know whether every 8-year-old can read in 
1999. And we are being given a few years to get the job done. We also 
know that these children can do the job if they're given the support, 
the discipline, the love that they need.
    But today, in America as a whole, 40 percent--4 of every 10 8-year-
olds--cannot read as well as they should read. Now, part of that is 
because so many of them's first language is not English. But a lot of it 
is because--indeed, the lion's share of it is because they simply are 
not learning as they should. Many times the teachers have more than they 
can do. Many times the teachers don't have the support they need for all 
the different challenges that the children bring into the classroom in 
their early lives. Many times, as General Becton indicated, we need more 
help from the parents at home. Many times the parents themselves need 
help to learn to read well enough to read to their children.
    So we know that this is a complicated problem. That does not, 
however, relieve us of the burden of solving it. In fact, what it does 
is impose upon more of us the responsibility to help to solve it. One of 
things--I'm glad to see my friend Bill Milliken here and I was glad to 
hear General Becton recognize the Cities and Communities in Schools 
program because they have for years in small rural cities in my home 
State and in big urban places like Washington tried to remind the 
community that our children are everyone's responsibility, and there 
must be a community approach to dealing with this.
    And that's what we're here to talk about today with regard to a 
simple but profoundly important goal, that every 8-year-old must be able 
to read independently. We intend to use thousands of AmeriCorps 
volunteers to mobilize and train a citizen army of one million reading 
tutors. We want at least 100,000 college students to help, to build our 
army of reading tutors on college campuses all across America. That's 
what the America Reads program Secretary Riley and Carol Rasco are 
spearheading is all about.
    Last fall, I worked with the Congress to create over 200,000 new 
work-study jobs on America's college campuses, the program that enables 
young people to work their way through college. My present budget calls 
for another 100,000 work-study positions to be made available to our 
college campuses. I want a portion of those new positions to be devoted 
to community service--to letting people work not just on the campus but, 
more importantly, in the community and especially teaching our children 
to read.
    College presidents nationwide have answered the call. Many of them 
are here today, the local college presidents behind me, others in the 
audience. They have pledged thousands of their work-study students and 
thousands who do not receive work-study assistance to serve for one year 
as reading tutors.
    The District of Columbia is rising to meet that challenge. Today, 
thanks to the support of General Becton and the willing leadership of 
the university presidents behind me, over the next 5 years, thousands of 
college students, AmeriCorps participants, volunteers, parents, and 
teachers will work together to

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help DC's children learn to read so that they can meet that national 
goal.
    The presidents of seven DC area colleges and universities--American, 
Catholic, Gallaudet, Georgetown, George Washington, Howard, and 
Trinity--have pledged nearly 700 students next year and thousands of 
students over the next 5 years to serve as reading tutors in DC's public 
schools. And we should all thank them for it. And we should note, too, 
that there are several hundred students from these seven schools are 
already working in our city as tutors and as other public servants.
    These new tutors, the vast majority of whom will be work-study 
students, will begin in the 18 District schools General Becton has 
identified as most in need of this kind of partnership, including 
Garrison. But we hope the effort will expand to many more of DC's 
schools. In each of the 18 schools we will place two AmeriCorps 
participants who will work full time to coordinate the effort and 
recruit more volunteers.
    I might say that one of the things I have learned in visiting 
schools all across America, in all different kinds of settings, is that 
it requires an organized effort by the schools to effectively use the 
volunteers, and sometimes volunteers aren't in the schools simply 
because the school either hasn't taken the time or doesn't have the 
resources to organize bringing them in and using them effectively. So 
that's one of the things that we hope we can accomplish with our 
AmeriCorps volunteers.
    Finally, with the help of AmeriCorps and DC businesses, General 
Becton will open a family resource center in each school so that parents 
have the support and assistance they need to read to their own children, 
so that they can be the first and best teachers for our students.
    After Hillary and I read the book to the 6-year-olds today--out of 
the mouths of babes--the children came up to see us. The first question 
they asked was, ``Now, did you read to your daughter when she was a 
little girl?'' [Laughter] ``Every night,'' I said. And the second 
question was, ``Now, did your parents read to you when you were a little 
boy?'' The first two questions they asked. So we do have to make it 
possible for these parents to do their jobs.
    That's another thing I've noticed over the years: Almost every 
parent, no matter how young they might be, no matter how uneducated they 
might be, desperately wants to do a good job. And we have to give them 
the resources to do it and the strength and self-confidence to do it.
    Now, as I said, we're plotting out a race here for a tortoise, not a 
hare. This is not going to be done overnight. Children are not built in 
a day. But it is a very important start. To truly renew our Capital 
city, we clearly have to start with our children. With the creation of 
this new DC Reads partnership, thousands of college students and 
volunteers will help our public school children learn to read. In so 
doing, they'll be taking more responsibility for their city that has 
given them an opportunity to get an education. They'll be creating more 
opportunity for the children who live here. They'll be building a 
stronger and a better-prepared community for the 21st century.
    I believe they will inspire this entire community to pitch in and 
work together to lift up the children of the District of Columbia and 
make this Capital worthy of its great heritage and the bright future of 
our Nation. We want to do more to improve education throughout the 
District. We'll offer more support to the Department of Education, to 
the District schools, sharing our expertise in a broad range of areas. 
Our Cabinet agencies will build on the many partnerships they've 
established over the past years. We'll continue to adopt schools, to 
donate computers and educational software and supplies, to become 
engaged ourselves as tutors and volunteers throughout the public 
schools. AmeriCorps will build on the work that it has done, not just in 
tutoring but also in repairing crumbling schools and correcting fire 
code violations so schools can open on time and recruiting even more 
volunteers.
    But the most important work will be done by parents and teachers, by 
students and volunteers, by government and business working together. 
The spirit of common cause is how we must meet this challenge, and 
indeed all the challenges of the District of Columbia in education, in 
building safe streets, in eco

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nomic development, in restoring the health of the city's finances, and 
the proper balance of responsibilities between the city and the National 
Government. We are committed to this task.
    Hillary and I are honored to be here with you today, and we thank 
every one of you for what you're doing to give our children the future 
they deserve.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. in the auditorium at Garrison 
Elementary School. In his remarks, he referred to Gen. Julius Becton, 
USA, (Ret.), superintendent, District of Columbia schools; Andrea 
Robinson, principal, Garrison Elementary School; Delegate Eleanor Holmes 
Norton and Mayor Marion Barry, Jr., of the District of Columbia; 
Benjamin Ladner, president, American University; Hilda Mason and Harry 
Thomas, Sr., members of the District of Columbia City Council; Eugene N. 
Hamilton, Chief Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia; 
and William E. Milliken, president, Communities In Schools, Inc.