[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 42 (Monday, October 25, 1999)]
[Pages 2112-2118]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
October 22, 1999
Thank you. Thank you so much.
I was thinking how much help I need in trying to get what I say to
certain people in the Congress not to go in one ear and out the other.
[Laughter] And that maybe I
[[Page 2113]]
should go through this training program. [Laughter] I believe everything
Carole Moyer said, except the part about having been a teacher for 32
years. She looks like she was about 12 when she started. [Laughter]
I want to thank Carole and your chair, Barbara Kelley. Thank you,
Jim Kelley and Bob Wehling and Betty Hastert and all the others that are
involved with the board. I'm glad to see the president of the National
Education Association, Bob Chase, here. Thank you for coming, sir, for
your support.
And I have been honored to support this endeavor, since before I was
President, as has been said. But the person who deserves all the credit,
in my view, without whom none of us would be here today, is Governor Jim
Hunt from North Carolina. Thank you. Thank you.
I've told this story before, but I probably wouldn't be here today,
either, because in 1979, Jim Hunt, who was a far senior Governor to me
then, decided that I should become the vice chair of the Democratic
Governors' Association. And then I became the chair. Then I became the
youngest former Governor in history, but that wasn't his fault.
[Laughter] But it was sort of my board certification in national
politics that Jim Hunt gave me. So I might not be here as President
today if it weren't for him, either.
This has been a great week for me and for our administration. We
celebrated the fifth anniversary of AmeriCorps, our national service
program. And we've now had 150,000 young people serve and earn credit
for going to college. It took the Peace Corps about 23 years to have
that many volunteers. So that's been really great. And we also, I might
say, have been able to get from the Congress the largest expansion in
the Peace Corps in a generation, as well. That's been a very good thing.
Today Hillary and I are sponsoring a White House Conference on
Philanthropy. And we're going to try to find ways not only to increase
the aggregate level of private giving in the aftermath of the vast
amounts of wealth that have been generated in our country in the last 7
years but to target it in the right way, in ways that I hope it will
help your children and your concern.
I even had a pretty good meeting with the congressional leadership.
[Laughter] We're actually working to try to work through our differences
on the budget, and I'll have more to say about that in a few moments. A
couple of them who weren't there persist in trying to accuse us of doing
what they have done on the Social Security surplus. But I'm committed to
turn the other cheek until we see if we can work it out together. I
guess it's easier when you're not running for anything to do that.
[Laughter]
You might find this interesting, as a sort of a prelude to what I
want to say. Hillary had this great idea that we should do some special
things for the millennium, that we shouldn't build a big building or
anything like that; we should try to preserve as many of our big,
national treasures as possible, like the Star Spangled Banner and the
Bill of Rights and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,
all of which are in danger--and so we have been working to raise the
funds to do that--that we should go around the country and help people
in every community preserve their own piece of our national heritage;
that we should have a big--then we should think about the future we want
and make a big effort to increase research dollars, which we have done;
and that we should sponsor at the White House an unusual set of what she
called Millennium Evenings, where we would talk about topics that were
either important to the last century, the one we're leaving, or
important to the next century.
It has been an amazing experience, an amazing educational
experience. C-SPAN covers all of these. Sometimes CNN takes a big chunk.
But the main way by which we communicate with the rest of the country
and the rest of the world is through the Internet, and at the end of our
little programs, we take Internet questions. They always come in from
all over the world. It's just an amazing experience.
We started out with the great professor of American history and
constitutional history Bernard Bailyn, from Harvard, who talked about
our past and our institutions and how we got started and how that will
be relevant to the 21st century. We've had all kinds of other
fascinating topics. We had the three
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last poet laureates of America come with inner-city kids from Washington
and just ordinary citizens, read poetry and talk about what it meant. We
had the great Wynton Marsalis, the only living musician from New
Orleans--he is the only living musician who is both the best classical
and the best jazz musician in his instrument in the world, come and talk
about the history of jazz as a uniquely American art form in the 20th
century.
We had the great British scientist Steven Hawking, who has lived
longer with Lou Gehrig's disease than anyone else, come and talk about
black holes and undiscovered galaxies in space and how our notion of
time will alter and our understanding of it will alter in the 21st
century. Elie Wiesel came and talked about the price of indifference,
from the Holocaust forward, and all the racial and ethnic turmoil we've
had. It's been amazing.
But last week we had a man named Vint Cerf there, who was sort of
the creator of the architecture of the Internet, who sent the first E-
mail, 18 years ago, to his profoundly deaf wife, who had been deaf from
early childhood and so deaf that no hearing aids would help her. So the
E-mail got started as a way of communicating. He was there, along with a
professor from Harvard of genomics, named Lander, who was talking about
our efforts to complete the human genome project, to break down all the
secrets of the gene.
Now, what they did was, they talked about the interconnection of the
computer revolution to the genomics revolution. And both said, ``Look,
we couldn't be unlocking the mysteries of the gene if it weren't for
computer advances, because that's really what enables us to map out the
gene, chart it, and see what's going on. And it will also enable us to
actually find practical applications for the challenges we find when we
look at the human gene structure.''
And then Mr. Cerf, who was the Internet fellow who did the E-mail 18
years ago to his wife said, ``Now, for example, my wife was profoundly
deaf for 50 years. And a very small digital device has now been inserted
deep within both her ears, and she can hear after 50 years of total
deafness.'' And he introduced her, and she stood up, and she talked
about what it was like. She said, ``I went to a James Taylor concert the
other night''--[laughter]--some of you are too young to appreciate this.
[Laughter] And she said, ``I'm quite sure I'm the only person who heard
`Fire and Rain' for the first time in the late nineties.'' It was an
amazing thing. She talked about what it was like to hear the birds sing
in the morning.
But the point is, digital technology combined with medical science
made this possible. And they speculated that--we've been spending a lot
of time in the medical research trying to help people with spinal cord
injuries. And last year we have a nerve transplantation in a laboratory
animal from the legs to the spine in a way that for the first time ever
in the lab with an animal allowed an animal with a severed spine to
recover movement in its lower limbs. Stunning! These people were saying,
what we may be able to do now is to develop digital technology, key to
the genetic breakdowns in the nerves, that we can insert--we can
actually insert a device in the spine that will replicate the normal
spine and give people movement without having to figure out whether the
nerve transplants will take.
What does all that have to do with you? First of all, it means that
it's important that all of our children learn and that we develop a
level of comfort with basic technology and basic scientific concepts
that most people didn't need in times past.
The second point I want to make to you, which will be important to
you because you know we have the largest and most diverse student
population in history, is the genomist said--a fascinating thing--he
said we've got these 100,000 genes and billions of possible
permutations, but what you should know is that all human beings,
genetically, are literally 99.9 percent the same.
He said the second thing you should know, which he said was to him
even more amazing, is if you take any given racial group--let's say you
had a bunch of Hispanics here and a bunch of Asians here and you had
people from the Mediterranean countries and Europe here, and people from
an African country over here--he said, if you get 100 people in each of
these separate racial groups, the
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genetic differences of the individuals within the group would be greater
than the genetic differences from group to group.
Very interesting--providing scientific support for what you try to
do every day, which is to convince your kids that all children can
learn, that there is no reason for us to fight with one another because
of our differences, that all these troubles that are gripping the world,
all over the world, the racial, the ethnic, the tribal, the religious
differences have to be somehow overcome by understanding and teaching
people that our common humanity is more important than the differences
and that once you accept that, then the differences become interesting
and make life more fun. But it is a very important thing, and it shows,
again, the importance of learning to our common progress on this Earth.
Now, that's why I think what all of you have done with the board
certification is so important. I remember when you came to the White
House with only 177 board-certified teachers. Some of you were there
then. Now there's not enough room to keep you all in the White House,
and the next time we might have to use RFK Stadium to have a meeting of
all of you, and I would like that very much. [Laughter]
I am very grateful for the progress that our country has made
economically, socially, and in education. I am grateful that we've got
the longest peacetime expansion in history and 19\1/2\ million new jobs,
the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the lowest welfare roles in 30
years, the lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest crime rates in
26 years, lowest murder rate in 31 years, first back-to-back budget
surpluses in 42 years, and the Government is the same size it was when
John Kennedy was here in 1962, 37 years ago. We have worked at this.
But it's not enough. I am glad that we have virtually opened the
doors of college to all people with the HOPE scholarships and the
expanded Pell grants. I am glad we probably will succeed in connecting
all of our classrooms to the Internet by 2000, except in the places
where the school buildings are literally too decrepit to accept the
wiring. I am glad that we have dramatically increased our investment in
after-school programs. But there is more to do.
I am very proud that the idea of standards is now taking root around
the country. In 1996--listen to this--in 1996 there were only 14 States
in the country that had measurable standards for student performance.
Today there are 50. But there are still only about a dozen that have
genuine accountability measures when the standards aren't met and
aggressive strategies to identify failing schools and to turn them
around. North Carolina does; that's one of the reasons they've had the
best increases in student performance in the country. But all over the
country, you see test scores going up even in the poorest inner-city and
rural schools.
Now, I say that--and I gave you all this introductory information--
to try to set the proper context for the present budget debate. To most
Americans, it's a lot of numbers and a lot of noise. To most Americans,
it's the Republicans making the absurd claim that the Democrats want to
spend the Social Security surplus, which has nothing to do with anything
that's really going on up there.
But there are things going on in the budget debate which are, in
some ways, different from the ones we've had in the past but still very
important. When it comes to education, the debate is not so much about
money anymore as it is about values, priorities, and direction, not just
about how much we spend but how we spend it. And a big part of this
debate is about honoring our obligation to our children and our future.
I was glad that you said your classes were smaller but still not small
enough. [Laughter] There are many, many tens of thousands of teachers
who can make that statement because we had the biggest class, biggest
student load in history.
So last year, right before the election when everybody said--you
know, there was so much acrimony in Washington; we can never get
anything done--we passed this remarkable education budget that provided
more funds for after-school programs and a big downpayment on my
commitment for 100,000 more teachers to lower class sizes, first in the
early grades and then, when those class size numbers are met, the
districts can have the money to use it elsewhere.
And it was wonderful. The money we appropriated was enough for about
30,000 of
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those 100,000 teachers, which is a lot in one year. It took us, for
example, 5 years to get to our goal of 100,000 police officers. So I
look forward to coming back this year and taking the second tranche. And
imagine my surprise when the leadership of the Republican Congress, who
had gone home and happily campaigned on this, and how it might have been
a Republican program because there was no bureaucracy--we just gave the
school districts the money and they hired the teachers--all of a sudden
voted to do away with it, not only not to expand it above 30,000 but to
take away the requirement that the money that was going to the teachers,
go to them.
Now, I don't understand exactly what's going on, but I do intend to
stop it if I can because I think that's a mistake. That's bad
educational policy. We need to help the school districts hire more
teachers. Last year we agreed, and we should do it again. So one of the
things the budget debate is all about is whether we will continue our
commitment to help our schools hire 100,000 well-qualified teachers. And
we have to reject the idea that we can't raise both the numbers of
teachers in the classroom and the standards we hold them to.
Our budget invests in improving teacher quality. We know one of the
most important factors in a child's educational success is a trained,
dedicated, talented teacher. And through your good work, we're adding
more and more, and I intend to keep supporting you in every way I can. I
wish and I hope that as time goes on we'll get more explicit support
from the majority in Congress for this program, because it's so
important.
For all the good work you're doing, the fact is, a quarter of all
secondary school teachers don't have college majors or even minors in
the subjects they teach. Students with the highest minority enrollment
have less than a 50-50 chance of having a math or science teacher with a
license or degree in the field. Now, we can do better than that. And we
have to.
I think we should require States and school districts receiving
Federal funds to stop the practice of allowing children to be taught by
uncertified teachers. School districts should do that. So when we
reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, one of the
things we ought to do is to say, if you want the Federal money, this is
one of the things you have to do. I think it's important. That's one of
the things that our debate is all about.
But we also have to invest. I've asked Congress to invest in
recruiting, training, and supporting high-quality teachers in high-
poverty areas. We have offered scholarships to a number of people that
go to school and then, in effect, wipe off the cost of their education
if they will go into areas where there is a high need. I have asked for
an expansion of the troops for teachers initiative, which has already
helped 3,000 active duty soldiers, who were planning to leave the
military anyway, find rewarding second careers in teaching in our public
schools.
The budget bill, even though it has quite a lot of money in it--for
reasons I don't understand--underfunds the teacher quality initiatives
and doesn't provide a single penny for the troops for teachers programs.
We need more and better teachers. The skills that a lot of these career
military people have are desperately needed in a lot of the places where
there is a significant teacher shortage. So that's what I am fighting
for. It's not about money. It is about things that we know will work
that will help our kids. That's one of the things this budget debate is
all about.
It's also about accountability. Where there is rising accountability
to go with rising standards and a strategy to help people meet the
standards, not just define them as failures, we have seen progress. Two
years ago, North Carolina sent assistance teams to their 15 lowest
performing schools. A year later, 14 of them had met their goals and
were taken off the list--one year. We have seen the same kind of
improvement in Chicago, Dade County, many other places. I was in one of
the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago, in the large Robert Taylor Homes
project, where they had an elementary school with terrible performance.
In 2 years--2 years--they doubled their math scores and tripled their
reading scores.
So we can, by the same sort of concentrated effort--remember, if
we're 99.9 percent the same genetically, we owe it to
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these kids to give them their chance at the brass ring of their life.
Our budget has $200 million to help States and school districts
identify, turn around, or shut down the lowest performing schools. For
example, districts could send board-certified teachers to help students
and teachers get their schools back on track. Unfortunately, this
Republican budget bill doesn't put a dime into the strategy of turning
around low-performing schools. This is not just about saying, ``Well, I
put that money up there, and they'll figure out how to spend it.'' If
you know what works, based not on what somebody in Washington thinks
works but based on what you proved works at the grassroots level, we
have an obligation, in a world of limited resources, to spend the money
on what you have told us and what you have demonstrated to us, works.
That's what this budget debate is all about.
That's why we've invested in after-school and summer school
programs, providing extended learning time so that school districts can
say, ``Okay, we're ending the practice of social promotion, but we're
not branding the kids failures. We're giving them a chance to succeed.''
And let me say another thing that I think will be increasingly
important as we try to come to grips with the dropout rate and the
consequences of it, is to reach young people at an early age to get them
excited about academic achievement and to give them the sense that they
have a personal possibility in the future.
That's why we have worked hard to establish last year this GEAR UP
mentoring initiative which allows college students and others to go into
middle schools and show young people that if they do their work and they
learn their subjects that they can all go on to college. Explain to them
the HOPE scholarship. Explain to them the Pell grant. Show them, let
them take home to their families exactly what kind of assistance they'll
be able to get, so that they will know it is actual reality. It isn't
enough to open the doors of college to all Americans. People have to
know they've been opened. They have to be aware of these things.
We do things in Washington; I sign a bill; we just assume everybody
knows about it. That is the beginning, not the end. If nobody knows
about these things, they might as well have not have been done. So
that's a big part of what this budget is all about.
We also have to ensure greater access of all kinds of students to a
successful and complete high school education. That's what our Hispanic
education action plan is all about. That's our fastest growing student
group. And the Hispanic dropout rate exceeds 30 percent. It's a big
problem. Last year, for all practical purposes, the African-American and
white majority high school graduation rates were identical. There was a
smidgen of a difference for the first time ever in our history. That's
very good.
I might say that I don't think either one of them were quite high
enough, but they're good. They're up in the high eighties percent. Our
national goal that we set 10 years ago was 90 percent on-time
graduation. But that's good. But the Hispanic dropout rate--I think
largely rooted in the fact that you've got a lot of first generation
immigrant families whose first language is not English, compounding the
fact that a lot of those kids may think they can get out and work for
their families because they all just got here. And all first generation
immigrant families, going back 100 years or more, have had a heritage of
people of all ages in the family working.
But the point is that long-term economic consequences to these
children, and therefore to their families, are far more adverse and far
more severe now than they would have been 30 years ago to dropping out.
And a 30-percent dropout rate is simply too high.
So one of my problems with this budget bill is that it underfunds
the after-school programs, the summer programs. The House bill actually
would have shut down the GEAR UP program that they created last year and
bragged about in the election, and it's way short on the Hispanic
education action priority. So we've got to give people the tools they
need to succeed.
Finally, this was mentioned earlier, but I am still fighting for our
bill to build or modernize 6,000 schools. There are too many kids in old
school buildings that can't be wired, too many kids in house trailers,
and too many school districts that can't undertake the costs of the
building program all by themselves.
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So here is where we are. The good news is that we have, I think, an
appropriate amount of money that has been set aside for education. The
good news is yesterday we had our voucher debate, and the public school
side won.
That's the good news. But we do not have anything like having--
because at this moment we have this surplus and we're at a moment of
prosperity, we were able to agree generally on what I think is an
adequate increase in funding. But there is no commitment yet for more
and better teachers, for smaller classes, for increased accountability,
for higher standards, for giving the tools out there that we know that
you know work.
So the good news is that the debate is not about dollars. But the
more important news is it is very much about direction. It is very much
about direction. And just as I fought to get a modest amount of Federal
money to support your program, because I do believe that when you are
certified and you go through this process, it is not only good for you
and good for your students; it's good for everybody that you come in
contact with in your school.
We were talking about, now you can see on the near horizon 25,000 of
them. The reason that I said 100,000--that I want at least 100,000
board-certified teachers is, I do believe when you are dense enough,
when there is one of you in every school building in America, there will
be an exponential increase in your impact, that it will change the whole
culture of virtually every school. And your skills and what your learn
and how you will impart it to your colleagues will then be exploding,
echoing across the country in a way that will embrace all the children
in all our schools.
But if you believe in what you've done, then I ask you to also
believe in this, and help us say, ``Okay''--to the Congress--``thank you
very much for not trying to cut out the money anymore. That's a big
first step. But it does matter how you spend it.''
And we're not trying to micromanage the schools. Dick Riley has
gotten rid of two-thirds of the paperwork requirement on States and
local school districts. We have scrapped more rules and regulations than
all the previous administrations who railed about the Federal Government
put together. But what we have not done is to abandon our responsibility
to take the research and the reports from the grassroots level and say,
if we're going to spend this money, since it's limited, we have to spend
it in ways that it will have the highest impact--more teachers, higher
standards, the tools that you need to do what you're out there trying to
do.
So I ask you to support it and help us, and I think we will prevail.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 10:25 a.m. in the Yorktown Ballroom at the
Hyatt Regency Washington. In his remarks, he referred to Carole D.
Moyer, National Board Certified Teacher, Salem Elementary School,
Columbus, OH; Barbara B. Kelley, chair, James A. Kelley, founding
president, and Robert L. Wehling, vice chair, National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards; Betty Hastert, wife of House Speaker J.
Dennis Hastert; and Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president for Internet
architecture and technology, MCI WorldCom, and his wife, Sigrid; and
Eric Lander, director, Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome
Research.