    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 36 (Monday, September 8, 1997)]
    [Pages 1276-1280]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks to Oak Bluffs School Teachers in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts

    September 3, 1997

        The President. Thank you very much, Dr. Cash, Mr. Binney, all the
    teachers who are here. I am delighted to have this chance to come by and
    visit with you. I know I'm on vacation, but when school starts, if I
    don't participate in some start-of-school event--[laughter]--I begin to
    have a nervous twitch, and I--[laughter]--and I was delighted to be
    invited to come by and spend a few moments with you.
        Let me begin by saying, as you know, our family has been on vacation
    here now for a little over 2 weeks, and we have until the end of this
    week. This is the longest time we've been away together in a very long
    time, and it's been a wonderful opportunity for us. We love it here. And
    it's especially important this year because this is the last family
    vacation we'll have before our daughter begins her next big educational
    adventure. So it's been great.
        You know, every start of a school year is special because, as you
    well know, teachers come together with a new sense of dedication and
    energy and students show up wide-eyed in anticipation and parents pour
    all their hopes into what they hope will come out of the next year, that
    they're all truly wonderful. And I think they reflect the central
    premise of what you do for a living, and that is that our most important
    common enterprise as a people is clearly education. It's necessary not
    only for young people to grow up and be

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    able to earn a good living but, perhaps more importantly, to be good
    citizens and even beyond that to live their own lives to the fullest,
    with a high degree of self-awareness and an ability to learn and absorb
    and grow throughout a lifetime. So it's always important.
        But this year, I think it's especially important. For one thing, we
    have the largest class of students in America, ever. We finally now have
    a student body, in the whole, in America, of over 52 million, bigger
    than the largest years of the baby boom, which is a great burden for all
    of us aging baby boomers to have on our shoulders. [Laughter]
        For another, we have the most diverse student body we have ever had.
    We now have 5 school districts in America that have children from over
    100 different racial and ethnic groups. And within a couple of years,
    we'll have a dozen school districts that have children--but as you know,
    here in Martha's Vineyard, we're also diverse in other ways. We have
    massively huge school districts and we have very, very small school
    districts. And somehow, some way, we expect you, all of you--you and
    your counterparts throughout the country--to work with our children and
    give them a world-class education and give them a shot to make the most
    of their own lives.
        We also know that as we move closer and closer to the turn of the
    century and to the beginning of a whole new millennium, we're super-
    attuned to the fact that we're living increasingly in a global society
    as well as a global economy, where children in the smallest school on
    Martha's Vineyard, either now or someday soon, will be able to hook onto
    the Internet and do research in libraries in Australia or Asia, or talk
    to schoolchildren in Africa. And that's going to change the way we live
    and our perspective, and we have to be prepared for that.
        It also means, frankly, that educational excellence at world-class
    standards is now more important than ever before. I can see a lot of
    very young teachers out there and then some of you who may be almost as
    old as I am, and those of you who have been teaching for a long time
    know very well that about 15 years ago, with the issuance of ``A Nation
    At Risk'' report in 1983, our country began a serious national effort to
    reexamine the premises of public education and what needed to be done to
    make education better in our country.
        And it's really been quite a moving thing for me both to observe and
    to participate in, even more when I was Governor than now as President,
    because the States of our country have constitutional responsibility for
    our public schools. But I have seen the recommendations of that report
    back in 1983 slowly but surely and steadily making their way into the
    lives of schools all across America. Our schools are offering broader
    and deeper curricula now; our students are taking more challenging
    courses now; our schools, by and large, are much better run now. There
    tends to be more participation and cooperation between principals and
    teachers. More of our school districts are pushing more and more
    educational decisions down to the school level, and our school districts
    tend to be better run now. And there's a whole different sense I get in
    school districts of all sizes as I go across America, and that's all
    very, very encouraging.
        We also have begun to puncture some myths, and that is that you
    can't get an excellent education in a small school, or if you live in an
    urban setting in a difficult neighborhood, the kids really can't learn.
    We know that's not true, either. We have seen all these sort of fears
    that people had about coming to grips with the idea that we could
    establish a real uniform commitment to excellence in education basically
    evaporate with this school reform movement.
        In 1989, I had the privilege of being one of the Governors to meet
    with then President Bush at the University of Virginia and--when we
    articulated six national education goals--and I was sort of the
    designated hitter for the Democrats, and we stayed up all night long,
    drafting these goals which then all of the Governors voted for and the
    President embraced, which basically were a lot like what Dr. Cash said.
    We started with the premise that everybody ought to have an opportunity
    to have a good preschool experience, that we ought to have a very high
    and uniform requirement for a curriculum that encompassed all of the
    things that all children should study, that we ought be achieve
    international excellence in math and science,

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    that everybody ought to have a chance to get education beyond high
    school, and that we ought to have a system of lifetime learning, that
    our schools all ought to be made safe and disciplined and drug-free.
        There was another part to the national education goals that was
    often overlooked because it was either inconvenient or in some cases
    outright opposed, and that is there was a long section that I had stayed
    up half the night writing and, therefore, had been a little bit peeved
    to see ignored all these years--[laughter]--which basically said that
    one of the ways that we have to implement these goals is to set up a
    system of uniform national standards, not Federal Government standards
    but national standards, that reading and mathematics and basic science
    is the same in Montana as it is in Martha's Vineyard and that we should
    not pretend otherwise and that we should not be afraid to be held
    accountable.
        For years, the Governors tried to do something about that, but the
    effort sort of fizzled out, because there were all kinds of people who
    were opposed to it. Now, we fast-forward: The Congress has just passed a
    budget which will bring our budget into balance for the first time since
    1969, but also has the biggest increased investment in education from
    the Federal level since 1965, everything from Head Start to access to
    college. It has the biggest increase in aid to people that go on to get
    a college education, people of all ages, including people that go back
    and get graduate education which could benefit many of you in this room
    today, since the GI bill was passed in 1945. It is an astonishing
    educational document. And that leaves out, therefore, in my view, the
    one major thing that we've been sort of skirting since the National
    Education Goals were issued in 1989, and that is the whole question of
    national standards in measuring our children by them.
        In the State of the Union Address in January, I challenged all of
    the States to adopt standards that were national and indeed
    international in terms of their quality, and then to participate
    voluntarily in reading tests for fourth graders and math tests for
    eighth graders to measure these standards in 1999. The National
    Education Goals actually call for 4th, 8th, and 12th or 11th grade exams
    at the choice of the schools in a whole range of subjects.
        But I thought we ought to begin here. And the response has been
    quite encouraging. I made clear that this was voluntary; nobody was
    going to be required to do it, that the Federal Government would not
    develop or administer the test but would only help to pay for it, and
    that the test should not be misused but neither should we pretend that
    it's not needed. Almost every school in every State has a lot of tests
    that children are given. But some of the State tests really do measure
    national standards, and some don't. A lot of the individual achievement
    tests tell you where you rank on a percentile, but that's really not
    relevant. If we have national standards, 100 percent of the children
    ought to clear the bar. And if nobody clears the bar, the child who made
    the highest grade shouldn't be considered to have done enough. That is
    the difference.
        There are certain basic things that all of our children should know.
    I've been very heartened at a large number of States, the Defense
    Department schools, which educate a lot of children around the country
    and around the world, and something that would have been unheard of even
    in 1989--15 big-city school districts have come forward and said, ``We
    want our children to be a part of this even if our States don't join,''
    including the school districts in six of the seven biggest cities in
    America have said, ``We are tired of being told our children can't
    learn. We are tired of being told we can't overcome our obstacles. We
    expect to be held accountable, and our kids, if anything, need a good
    education more than anybody else, not less, and we don't want to make
    any excuses anymore.''
        To me, this has been an overwhelming thing, especially in light of
    the long effort we've had since 1989 in trying to get this off the
    ground. That's the good news. And it is very good news, indeed. But now
    there are some people in Congress and in the country who don't want this
    to happen. They either say we've got enough tests already or the Federal
    Government's making a power grab or they're afraid that the tests won't
    be fair to people who don't do well on it.

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        I would just like to reemphasize, number one, these tests are
    voluntary; number two, the results are not to be misused, but it's
    helpful to know whether the children, individually or in a class or in a
    school or in a school district, do or do not perform at acceptable
    levels in reading and mathematics at the very least.
        Today, we have basically two tests that measure us--our kids by
    national and international standards. One is the so-called National
    Assessment of Educational Progress, the NAEP test, which I'm sure a lot
    of you are familiar with; over 40 States participate in that. But only
    representative samples of the students do it, and the scores are given
    by school district, so they don't really address how the children are
    doing.
        The other is the third international math and science tests, the so-
    called TIMSS test, which is only given to a few thousand students every
    year. But it should be very encouraging to us. This year for the very
    first time since those tests have been given, our fourth graders scored
    well above the international average in math and science, and the few
    thousand kids who take it are representative by race, by region, by
    income of the American student body, once again demonstrating that if
    you set a high standard and go after it, you can achieve it.
        Now, also, to make full disclosure, our eighth graders are still
    below the international average, but that's, I think, because in large
    measure so many of the worst problems in our society hit kids when they
    reach adolescence, and in bigger school districts, so many of our middle
    schools are still organized around the family and community structures
    that existed in the 1950's and the early sixties when, in fact, they
    probably ought to be as small as a lot of grade schools are today to
    really meet the needs and the challenges these kids are facing.
        But the bottom line is, we know from this example, that we can make
    it. And I think it would be a terrible mistake for people who are afraid
    our children can't measure up or who have a misguided notion that
    somehow the Federal Government is trying to take over the direction of
    education in America to persuade Members of Congress not to fund the
    tests. And that's basically an issue we're going to be fighting out over
    the next few weeks.
        We have agreed and feel strongly that a nonpartisan board which has
    been established by Congress for over 20 years now should be in charge
    of the development of the exam. All we want the Department of Education
    to do is to have the funds to pay for it and to help the States or
    school districts who need it, to give it. And now that we've got all
    these kids out there whose educators say they want to participate, I
    think we have to do it.
        I said in the State of the Union Address that if there's one place
    politics ought to stop in America, it's at the schoolhouse door. And I
    have been gratified that we've had Republicans and Democrats from all
    over America supporting this effort.
        Just yesterday, the Secretary of Education went to Philadelphia,
    which has a remarkable superintendent named David Hornbeck, who used to
    be the superintendent of schools in Maryland, the State of Maryland, and
    he left the job to go to Philadelphia to prove that you could run a big-
    city school district and give educational excellence to all kids. And
    they've established a very rigorous standards program, and student
    achievement has risen among all students at all grade levels from all
    backgrounds in the Philadelphia school system. So it's just like
    everything else. Setting a goal means you're more likely to meet it than
    if you don't set it.
        And those who say we shouldn't measure--if I were to say, ``Well, we
    ought to stop testing airline pilots because it might be offensive to
    some people,'' we would be reluctant to fly. If I were to say that we
    should end the rigorous evaluation techniques that the United States
    military has because it might be offensive to some people, you would
    say, ``You must be out of your mind.'' The military is a place where
    more people from more different backgrounds, more different racial and
    ethnic backgrounds, have found a way to achieve excellence than any
    other institution in our life. And besides that, they protect us better
    than anybody else is protected in the world. Why would you stop setting
    high standards in measuring to see if we meet them? That's all that I am
    trying to do.

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        So I hope that since Massachusetts is one of the first States to
    agree to voluntarily participate, I hope all of you will support this,
    and I hope that if you have the opportunity, you will encourage the
    Members of Congress and your Senators to support it, because to me, it's
    the last major step. I have done all I could to push more decisions down
    to the school district into the school level. We have dramatically
    reduced paperwork in the Department of Education. We have dramatically
    increased the ability of local school districts to spend Federal money--
    and States--according to their own designs, within the general framework
    of the intent of Congress. So I want more decisionmaking done at the
    local level, but I still think we ought to have national standards that
    give our children a chance to do well in the global economy. And I
    believe that they all can do well.
        And I believe that the poorest of our kids, the kids that come from
    the most difficult backgrounds, need it more than others, because they
    look to you, they look to the schools to give them the chances that
    their own parents didn't have. I know it's harder for you, and I know a
    lot of you have to contend with problems that these children bring from
    home that weren't there a generation ago, but every single thing you can
    mention just means that they need it more, not less.
        So I expect this to be one of the major debating issues of the next
    few weeks when I go back home to go back to work. And I came here to
    thank you for what you do, to ask you to continue to support the
    educational excellence, and to send a clear message that you believe
    that excellence and accountability and high aspirations are for all our
    children, because we know they can make it. And we know that for their
    sakes, we have to expect them to do so.
        Thank you, and bless you.

    [At this point, Oak Bluffs Selectman Richard Combra presented a gift to
    the President.]

        The President. Let me say, I actually believe I could pass a history
    exam on Oak Bluffs. [Laughter] This is one of the most interesting
    communities that I have ever heard anything about, and its history over
    the last 100 years, particularly, is fascinating to me, and I always
    spend a lot of time here when we come to the Vineyard, and I'm grateful
    for this.
        I also should tell you that someone gave Hillary and Chelsea and me
    that huge 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle--[laughter]--and we did it. So I am
    now prepared for a detailed geography examination on Martha's Vineyard
    in general and Oak Bluffs in particular.
        I also want to say this is a magnificent school and just before I
    came in here, I was offered the chance by your principal to actually
    decorate one of the tiles. I have no doubt that mine will not be nearly
    as good as the students' or the staff's, but I'll give it my best shot.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:53 a.m. in the library. In his remarks,
    he referred to Dr. Kriner Cash, superintendent, Martha's Vineyard
    Schools; and Laury Binney, principal, Oak Bluffs School.