[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 9 (Monday, March 2, 1998)]
[Pages 305-307]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the National Governors' Association Meeting

February 23, 1998

    Good morning. Governor Voinovich, Governor Carper, Mr. Scheppach, 
and to the members of the administration that are here, and all the 
Governors, let me welcome you back to the White House. Before I begin, 
let me say what I know is on all of our minds--our thoughts and prayers 
are with the people in central Florida where tornadoes have now killed 
28 people. Governor Chiles is going to visit with our FEMA Director, 
James Lee Witt, the area today, and they will have our concerns with 
them.
    I'd also like to say I'm sorry we're starting a little late, but 
I've been working on the situation in Iraq. The Vice President and I met 
with National Security Adviser Berger this morning. Last night, just 
before our dinner, I spoke with the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and I 
have called Prime Minister Blair this morning; we had a long talk about 
the situation. I still have to talk to President Yeltsin and President 
Chirac, and I may have to leave the meeting and then come back. But 
that's all I have to say now, but I'm sorry we're starting a little 
late.
    I'd like to confine my opening remarks--and I'll try to truncate 
them since we're starting late--to education. For 20 years now,

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Governors have been in the forefront of education reform in the United 
States. In the late seventies, I was working with Governor Riley and now 
Senator Bob Graham and Governor Hunt and others in the South who were 
trying to raise the standard of living in the Southern States to the 
national average, in part through an improvement in education.
    In '83, when President Reagan was here, Secretary Bell issued the 
Nation at Risk report. In '89, we had the education summit--some of you 
were there then--which produced the national education goals. In '93, we 
passed Goals 2000 here and the school-to-work program--I might say both 
of which have been implemented without a single new Federal regulation, 
something I'm very proud of.
    Last year, in my State of the Union, I outlined a 10-point program 
in education and asked that we leave politics at the schoolhouse door. 
And most of that program has now been implemented. I won't go over all 
of it, but I would just mention three or four issues that I think are 
important because they relate to many concerns that the Governors have.
    First of all, with the increases in Pell grants and 300,000 more 
work-study positions, with the education IRAs finally giving interest 
deductions for payments on college loans, the direct loan program, the 
HOPE scholarship, named after Governor Miller's program in Georgia, and 
the lifetime learning tax credit, which also applies to the second, the 
third, and fourth years of college and graduate school, I think we can 
finally say for the first time in the history of the country, we've 
opened the doors of college to all Americans. And that's an astonishing 
achievement for America. And I'm very proud of that. Secondly, we are 
well on our way to hooking up all the classrooms and libraries in the 
country to the Internet by the year 2000. And many of you have been very 
active in that. Thirdly--I'll say a little more about this in a minute--
the national standards movement is alive and well. Fourth, we had the 
America Reads program, which has several thousand college students in 
all your States going into elementary school classrooms to teach kids to 
read. And finally, we funded a huge expansion in the master teacher 
program, which Governor Hunt has been so active in, and which I think is 
critically important to the future of education. If we can get a master 
teacher, a certified master teacher, in every school building in 
America, it will change the culture and content and results of American 
education.
    Now, in '98, in the State of the Union Address, I asked the American 
people to focus on the fact that we could be happy that we'd opened the 
doors of college to everybody, because everyone accepts the fact that we 
have the best system of higher education in the world--everyone accepts 
that. No one believes America has the best system of elementary and 
secondary education in the world. And it seems incongruous. We know that 
we can have, and I think that should be our goal.
    So with a view towards standards, accountability, and expectations 
all being lifted, our budget in this year makes the largest commitment 
to K through 12 education in the history of the country--focused largely 
on reducing class size in the early grades to an average of 18--there 
are still a lot of classes with 30 kids or more in them--on--therefore, 
to do that, achieving--helping the States and helping local school 
districts to hire 100,000 teachers, and helping to build or remodel 
5,000 schools.
    It focuses on more emphasis on teachers, money for teacher training, 
and more money to develop a master teacher program. It focuses on 
standards and the continuation of the voluntary national test 
development for eighth grade math and fourth grade reading.
    I know that later today--and all of you may or may not know this--
but I know later today Secretary Riley is going to appoint Governor 
Engler to the NAGB, the independent board that is supposed to develop a 
test and that guarantees that the States' concerns will be taken into 
account. I thank Governor Engler for his willingness to serve. I think 
it is important that we say whether we use national tests that are 
somehow evaluated by a national standard, or State tests that are 
evaluated by a national standard, that we do believe that learning the 
basics is the same in every State in America, and we want to raise the 
standards in every State in America. I think that

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is terribly important and I think we can do it. And I thank you, 
Governor, for your willingness to serve.
    One other thing I'd like to say about standards. There's an 
interesting effort underway in America in many States, and in some 
cities like Chicago, to find a way to end the practice of social 
promotion in a way that lifts children up instead of putting them down. 
In Chicago, they have mandatory summer school, for example, for children 
that don't perform at grade level. And it's, among other things, led to 
a dramatic drop in juvenile crime in the summer in Chicago, that more 
and more people are involved in constructive activities.
    Before the next school year starts, Secretary Riley will issue 
guidelines on how schools can end social promotion and boost their 
efforts to ensure that more students learn what they need to learn the 
first time around, and then to help those who don't with extra tutoring 
and summer school.
    I also will send to Congress this year legislation to expand the Ed-
Flex program. That's the program that frees the States from Federal 
regulations so long as they set high academic standards, waive their own 
regulations for local schools, and hold schools accountable for results. 
There are, I think, a dozen of you now who are part of the Ed-Flex 
program. The legislation that I will send would make every State in the 
country eligible to be a part of it, which would dramatically reduce the 
regulatory burden of the Federal Government on the States in the area of 
education.
    One last thing I'd like to mention, as all of you know, we have been 
involved now for about 8 months in a national conversation on race. This 
race initiative, I think, has produced a number of results both in terms 
of specific programs and in terms of elevating the dialog in the country 
about how we can deal with our increasing diversity as one America in 
the 21st century. I'm delighted that this initiative is also working 
with the YWCA and with Governors to convene statewide days of dialog on 
race on April 30th. And I want to thank the YWCA--the CEO, Dr. Prema 
Mathai-Davis, is here today with us this morning--for helping us to 
launch these dialogs.
    Several of the Governors have already agreed to participate in this, 
and I hope all the Governors will support the days of dialog. Judith 
Winston, who is the Executive Director of my initiative on race, is also 
here today and will be happy to talk with you or your representatives 
more about this effort.
    Now, there are a lot of other issues that I know that you want to 
talk about, but I'll just end where I tried to begin. I think if we get 
education right, the rest of this will all resolve itself. As I look at 
where we are with the unemployment rate in the country, with the growth 
rate, and I ask myself how can we continue to grow, how we can lower the 
unemployment rate, how can we do it without inflation, the only answer, 
it seems to me, is to provide higher skill levels to the people in the 
places that have not yet fully participated in the good times America is 
enjoying.
    I think it is a democratic obligation on us--small ``d''--to make 
our democracy work, and I think it is an economic imperative. So I hope 
that we can focus on that, but I'm more than eager to talk about 
whatever else you'd like to discuss.
    Governor.

Note: The President spoke at 10:04 a.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Raymond C. Scheppach, executive 
director, National Governors' Association; Gov. Lawton Chiles of 
Florida; United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Prime Minister 
Tony Blair of the United Kingdom; President Boris Yeltsin of Russia; 
President Jacques Chirac of France; former President Ronald Reagan; 
former Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell; Gov. Zell Miller of 
Georgia; Gov. James B. Hunt, Jr., of North Carolina; and Gov. John 
Engler of Michigan. The President also referred to the National 
Assessment Governing Board (NAGB).