    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 1 (Monday, January 11, 1999)]
    [Pages 14-17]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Funding for Quality After-School Programs

    January 7, 1999

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. I want to thank all those
    who have spoken before and all of you who are here. I say a special word
    of appreciation to the Members of the Congress who have come, the
    members of the education community, the employees of the Department of
    Education.
        I want to thank Congressman Ford for his stirring speech. I was
    looking at Congressman Ford, thinking, you know, I was 28 once.
    [Laughter] And when I ran for Congress at that age I got beat. I see why
    he got elected. [Laughter]
        I thank Senator Kennedy for his lifetime of literally an example of
    unparalleled service in the United States Senate and Secretary

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    Riley, who has been my friend since we started our governorships
    together over 20 years ago now. And I'm glad to see Mrs. Shriver here,
    and I thank the family of Congressman King for coming, my colleague in
    the Irish peace process. We're glad to see all of them.
        But most of all, I want to thank Lissette Martinez and Leonard for
    showing up and reminding us while we're all here today, because they
    were great. When she held her children's pictures up here, I thought, if
    those kids and their parents are the future of America, we're going to
    be just fine. We're going to be just fine.
        Even though the definition of well-educated was very different over
    200 years ago when this country was founded, our Founding Fathers
    thought it was of pivotal importance. In 1787, they declared that all
    new territories set aside land for public schools, establishing the
    principle that public education, though a State and local
    responsibility, must always be a national priority.
        In 1862, President Lincoln signed the legislation creating the land
    grant college system. In 1944, the GI bill gave millions of returning
    veterans tickets to what became the first mass middle class in the
    history of the world. In 1958, the launch of Sputnik led to Federal
    funds to improve science and math education in our country. In 1965,
    Federal support for education expanded further to bring minorities and
    the poor, long shut out of the classroom, inside to the full benefits of
    public education. At each of these turning points in our history, our
    country strengthened public education to match the challenges of the
    times.
        Now in our time, as others have said, we face another challenge, the
    emergence of a global economy that is fast-paced, technologically
    sophisticated, driven by information and, at the same time, the
    emergence in our country of a breathtakingly diverse group of young
    people, diverse by race and ethnic background, by religion, by culture,
    by income, by circumstance.
        We now have an economy in which the workplace is no longer just for
    men but also for women; the work day is no longer bound by the hours of
    9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and the workplace is increasingly at home. When I
    became President 6 years ago, only 3 million Americans were earning
    their living at home. When I ran for reelection, the number was 12.
    Today there are about 20 million Americans earning their primary income
    out of their homes. This is a stunning statistic.
        To meet the challenges of this new economy with our new society, we
    have to rely on our old values, but we have to make sure that we
    manifest them in modern ways. That means our public schools must change.
    They must teach our children while reflecting the way we work and live
    now and will work and live in the 21st century.
        In the last 6 years we have worked hard on this, with the help of
    all of you in this room and those whom you represent throughout the
    United States. Forty-eight of our 50 States have now adopted tougher
    academic standards which we called for when the Goals 2000 program
    passed back in 1994. Thousands of schools have become safer, better
    learning environments, cracking down on gangs and guns, violence and
    discipline, adopting school uniforms and other systems designed to
    create a better, more equal learning environment.
        The percentage of students who report being threatened or injured at
    school nationwide is down. We've begun to organize an army of tutors to
    help elementary school children learn to read and middle school and high
    school students to prepare for college. And I'm very proud of all the
    young people all across America who are working in these tutoring and
    mentoring programs.
        We've dramatically increased our investment in early childhood
    learning through the Head Start program. We're making real progress in
    connecting every classroom and library to the Internet by the year 2000.
    And as Secretary Riley said, the e-rate for which the Vice President
    fought so hard means that we've not only hooked up those classrooms, but
    they can actually afford to log on.
        Last fall, we fought for and won from Congress a downpayment on
    100,000 new highly trained teachers to reduce class sizes in the early
    grades, and we made a beginning on our proposal to offer to pay off the
    college costs of young people who will go into our most underserved
    areas and teach for a few years when they graduate from school. I hope
    the new Congress will keep up the payments

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    so we can keep the teachers going. And I hope they will work with me to
    build or modernize 5,000 schools.
        The charter school movement, which I have championed since 1992, is
    growing. When I took the oath of office as President, there was one
    charter school in the whole United States, a public school organized by
    parents or teachers within the school system but free of a lot of the
    bureaucratic limitations that are on so many schools. In 1996, there
    were 700. There are now about 1,000. We are well on our way to our goal
    of having 3,000 by the year 2000.
        All these efforts and others are beginning to show up in SAT scores,
    which are up; math scores, which have risen in nearly all grades
    nationwide; even on a lot of the international tests, when we didn't do
    so well for years and years, our younger people are tending to do better
    and better.
        We should be pleased and thankful, but we should not be fooled into
    complacency. Why? First, reading scores have hardly budged and many of
    our foreign competitors are improving their schools faster than we are.
    Secondly, while our children do very well on these international test
    scores in elementary school and reasonably well in middle school, by the
    time they're in high school they're rankings have dropped dramatically.
        We know we have more to do. We know that a majority of our schools
    have not kept pace with the new family patterns and work patterns which
    dominate America. We know that more and more parents are being drawn
    into the work force. On any given day, as many as 15 million school
    children are left to fend for themselves at home, idle in front of the
    television or out on the streets, vulnerable to gangs, drugs and crime.
    On any given day when school lets out, juvenile crime goes up, and also
    the number of children themselves victimized by crime. On any given day
    when school lets out, tens of millions of working parents look nervously
    at the clock, hoping and praying their children will be okay.
        It is no secret that I believe that the best way for our Nation to
    meet these challenges is to expand the number and improve the quality of
    our after-school programs. With quality after-school, parents and
    educators will be given the tools they need to succeed; students learn
    their lesson in the schoolhouse, not on the street; youth crime and
    victimization plummet. Quality after-school programs both enhance
    opportunity and bolster responsibility. In so doing, they strengthen our
    communities; they honor our values; they benefit our nation.
        That's why I've supported grants for these kinds of quality programs
    through the 21st Century Community Learning Center Initiative, first
    introduced by Senator Jeffords from Vermont, championed by Senator
    Kennedy and Senator Boxer, Congresswoman Lowey from New York and others.
        Two years ago, this program received $1 million from Congress. Then
    it grew the year before last to $40 million, and then last year, to $200
    million, in the budget I signed, serving a quarter of a million
    children. Yet, the demand for quality after-school programs, the
    bipartisan support it has gained, and its potential to transform public
    education in America and the futures of our children far, far outweigh
    the investment we have made to date.
        Therefore, today I am pleased to announce that in the new budget I
    will present to Congress this year, we will triple our investment in
    academically enriched after-school programs to give over 1 million
    children across America somewhere to go.
        Now, you heard Lissette talking about the Chicago system. It's one I
    particularly favor. And last year I asked the Congress to set aside some
    funds that we could give to other school systems to help to adopt the
    comprehensive approach they have there. That is, no social promotion;
    more parent involvement in the schools; high standards but don't flunk
    anybody because the system is failing the kids; don't say the kids are
    failing; give them the after-school programs; give them the summer
    school programs; give them the tools they need to succeed. So we are
    going to give priority to communities that end social promotion in the
    right way.
        She talked about that eighth grade test. Hillary and I, when we were
    working together in Arkansas on education, made our State the first
    State in the country to have an eighth grade exit exam. But I never saw
    it as a way of identifying children who were failing. I thought it would
    identify the schools

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    that were failing and give the children a chance to succeed. And that's
    what they believe in in Chicago, and what we should believe in
    everywhere.
        So I'm looking forward to working with all the Senators and House
    Members who care so much about this, both to improve after-school
    programs and to end social promotion but to do it in the right way. We
    have to do everything in our power--after school, smaller classes,
    better teachers, modernized facilities, Internet hookups, summer
    programs--to help our kids succeed. We have to have high standards not
    only for students but for the preparation of our teachers and for the
    performance of our schools. And I'll have more to say about that later.
        Scarce dollars should not be spent on failed policies. If we've
    learned anything, Hillary and Dick Riley and I, after 20 years and more
    of working at this, listening to teachers and parents, going into
    schools, it is what Congressman Ford said: We do believe all children
    can learn. And that gives a much greater urgency to this work.
        Look, this is not really just about making the American economy
    strong or even making sure that when we baby boomers retire we'll be
    supported by two workers that made Bs or better instead of a 1.7.
    [Laughter] It makes a good point. But that's not really what this is
    about. Everybody just gets one chance. Everyone just has one life. This
    is about giving people a chance to make the most of that one life. This
    is about the sure knowledge we have that the rest of us will just be
    fine; everything is going to work out all right if we give our children
    the chance to make the most of their lives.
        I watched Harold Ford up here giving that speech, and I thought,
    there's a 28-year-old young guy with his whole life ahead of him. And I
    knew that he had a family that told him he had to show up in the
    morning, that his work was school, that he was expected to learn. And I
    want that for every child.
        You know, I go to a lot of schools. Today when I speak to children--
    I was out in Maryland or Virginia not long before last November, and I
    was talking to this group of kids, this wonderful group of kids. And
    they said, ``You know, all the parents are going to come, and we just
    only wish we had time to translate your remarks into Spanish and into
    Arabic, because there are so many parents who can't understand you.''
    That's the America of tomorrow.
        In a global society where we're trying to get other people to put
    aside their hatreds, to lay down the burdens of the past, to embrace one
    another, to reach across the lines that divide them, that's a great
    resource. But the challenge of giving all of the children from whatever
    backgrounds they come from the chance to make the most of that one life
    is more formidable than ever. Because of these after-school programs, a
    million kids will have a better chance. That's really what this is all
    about, a million more stories like those two beautiful pictures that
    Lissette showed us today. And that's what we should always, always
    remember.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:28 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    Hose. In his remarks, he referred to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder,
    Special Olympics; and Lissette Martinez, parent-mentor, Frederick
    Funston Elementary School, Chicago, IL, and her husband, Leonard.