    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 17 (Monday, May 3, 1999)]
    [Pages 761-763]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Signing the Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999

    April 29, 1999

        Thank you. Let me say, first of all, I thank Dr. Metts for being
    here, for giving us a first hand and concrete expression of what this
    bill will mean to the States of our country and to the local school
    districts. I thank the Members of Congress who have spoken: Senator
    Wyden, Senator Frist, Congressman Roemer, my old colleague, Congressman
    Castle.
        We're delighted to have the Vermont education commissioner here,
    Marc Hull, along with Senator Jeffords and Senator Kennedy and a very
    large delegation of Republicans and Democrats from the United States
    Congress from the Senate and the House. I'd like to ask the Members of
    Congress just to stand so the rest of you will see how many people here
    worked on this bill.
        You know, there have been days in the last few years when I'm not
    sure we could have gotten this many Members of Congress to agree that
    today is Thursday. [Laughter] This was a truly astonishing effort, and I
    want to thank them all.
        I want to say, too, a special word of appreciation to Governor
    Carper, and a very profound thanks to Secretary Riley. He and I started,
    as I have told many people, working on education reform together 20
    years ago this year. And over the last 20 years, we have done our best
    to sort out what we ought to do and how we ought to do it and where the
    responsibility for what particular action ought to lie.
        And I suppose, if I could put it into a sentence, I would say that
    insofar as possible, when it comes to the education of our children in
    kindergarten through 12th grade, the beginning of what should be done,
    should be done by the States. And ``how'' should be decided by the local
    districts, but basically, whenever possible, by the local principals and
    teachers and parents involved in the schools. That the Federal
    Government is called upon to meet the needs that States can't meet on
    their own, the needs of poor children, children with special needs, or
    to fill in the gaps when there are crying national needs unmet, and that
    when substantial Federal dollars are involved, it's okay for the Federal
    Government to say ``what,'' too. But we should all be singing out of the
    same hymnal insofar as possible, and we should all remember that all
    education, in the schools at least, occurs in the classrooms, in the
    libraries, on the schoolyards, among the students and parents and
    principals.
        I think it is quite remarkable to see the places where you're really
    seeing a turnaround, now, where you have high expectation, high
    standards, discipline, and genuine accountability for the students and
    the teachers and the principals. You also see a dramatic attempt to cut
    the cost of education where the money's being wasted and to increase the
    investment in education where more is needed.
        One of the things I'm very proud of that Secretary Riley has done
    is, independent of this bill we're signing today, is to slash the
    paperwork burdens on State and local officials by well over 60 percent
    since he has been the Secretary of Education, while putting an even more
    ambitious agenda before the educators of America.
        Now, the Founding Fathers understood that this would be a big
    debate; we'd always be having this debate. Thomas Jefferson once said,
    ``Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we
    should soon want for bread.'' I may have liked that even more when I was
    Governor, but it still sounds pretty good to me. [Laughter]
        But the Framers understood something else, too. They understood that
    the country

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    had a right to decide and had to decide from time to time what we were
    going to do, maybe not when and how but what. They believed, for
    example, in 1787, that education was an important national purpose and
    declared that all new territories must put aside land for public
    schools, thereby establishing the fact that education, though a State
    and local responsibility, must be a national priority.
        This Education Flexibility Partnership Act exemplifies, I think, the
    Founders' vision of how a properly balanced Federal system of government
    can work, providing freedom from Federal rules and regulations. This new
    law will allow States and school districts not just to save
    administrative dollars, with less headache and redtape, but actually to
    pool different funds from different sources in the Federal Government.
    But by demanding accountability in return, it will make sure States and
    school districts focus on results.
        Now Doctor, you mentioned one example. I'll give you an example from
    my own life that made me so strongly for this bill. In 1990 or '91 when
    I was Governor, the Department of Education under President Bush gave us
    permission in a very small, very poor rural school district to take all
    of our Federal funds at elementary schools, including the Chapter I
    funds and some of the special ed funds, and put them together and take
    class size down to 15 to 1, in a district where the test scores were low
    and the learning was tough.
        And this little district had a formula--they also actually had an
    idea that even 6-year-olds could be used to teach other 6-year-olds to
    read and to learn their alphabet and do basic writing.
        And I should tell you that in this first grade class--they had a
    rough means of testing the children in the first grade, to test their
    basic competencies--and there were four children in these four first
    grade classes that had been held back for a second year. Everybody else
    was in the first grade for the first time.
        And so we did this. Here's what happened. The four kids that were
    held back scored 4 times as high on their basic competencies as they
    did. All the Chapter I kids scored 3 times as high, and the overall
    classes did twice as well as the previous year's class.
        It was a wonderful thing, except I couldn't do it everywhere in the
    State. And I said to myself--I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. See,
    here we had discovered something that is profoundly important. I got all
    the help that I think the Federal Government could give me at the time.
    And we did the best we could to take those lessons, in the absence of
    the Federal funds, and apply them.
        We want to produce results. We want our children to learn. We want
    all of our kids to be able to learn to the maximum of their ability,
    which means that they can learn at a world-class standard. And we need
    to give people who are on the ground, working with the kids and
    committed to that, the chance to do it. And if they're not, and the
    money's being misspent under this law, then we'll revert to another
    system.
        But that is the meaning of this. This can change children's lives.
    And again I say, I am profoundly grateful to everyone who had anything
    to do with it.
        I hope that--now, we're getting off to a good start, and we'll keep
    on doing this. Last year, at the end of the year, we made our first big
    downpayment on providing 100,000 more teachers, so we can have smaller
    class sizes. We're going to have to hire 2 million new teachers in
    America in the next few years, with a growing student population and
    increasing retirement among teachers. This is an important contribution
    to that effort.
        I hope we can pass the bill to modernize or build 6,000 new schools,
    because we've got a lot of schools that are too old, some of them even
    too old to take the computer hookups that have now been made everywhere
    in Delaware, as you heard the Doctor say.
        I hope that we will reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary
    Education Act to reflect the lessons learned in Chicago and elsewhere
    and ask the schools that receive these Federal funds to end the practice
    of social promotion but to increase the efforts to help children through
    after-school and summer school programs and mentoring programs, to turn
    around or shut down failing schools, and to ensure that we do more to
    see that our teachers know the subjects they're charged with teaching.

    [[Page 763]]

        The greatness of this country has always been the promise of
    opportunity for everyone who is willing to work for it. Today you not
    only have to be willing to work for it, you have to know enough to
    achieve it. Therefore, there is no important responsibility that should
    have greater weight on our minds as Americans, without regard to party
    and without regard to whether we work in the National Government or the
    State and local government or the smallest rural school or the biggest
    inner-city school or whether we're just taxpaying citizens, with or
    without children in those schools--there is nothing more important for
    us to be focused on today than making sure that very early in the next
    century we can look at each other, straight in the eye, and say--and
    believe and be right about saying--that it is possible in America, in
    every community, to get a world-class education.
        Thank you very much.
        Now, I'd like to ask the Members of Congress to come on up, and
    we'll sign the bill. Come on.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:04 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Dr. Iris T. Metts, secretary of
    education and Gov. Thomas R. Carper of Delaware. H.R. 800, approved
    April 29, was assigned Public Law No. 106-25.