[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.

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    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.