[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 15 (Monday, April 17, 2000)]
[Pages 819-828]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Education Writers 
Association in Atlanta, Georgia

April 14, 2000

    The President. Thank you very much, Kit. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm 
delighted to be here with all of you, along with Secretary Riley and 
Bruce Reed, my Domestic Policy Adviser.
    It has been over 20 years now since Dick Riley and I, as young 
Governors, first began to grapple with the need to reform education. 
It's been 17 years since the ``Nation At Risk'' report sounded the alarm 
about the state of education nationwide; over 10 years since the 
Education Summit in Charlottesville, which put us on a path to national 
action; and as Kit said, it was 10 years ago this month that I got up at 
4:30 in the morning to fly to Chicago to speak to this group. I hope 
you'll forgive me if I don't remember exactly what I said in the fog of 
that early morning. [Laughter]
    Doubtless, some of the veteran reporters here have been around long 
enough to have seen this whole fascinating drama unfold. Today I'd like 
to talk about the progress our public schools have made and the hard 
work still ahead. First I want to note something astonishing that I 
think everyone in this room should be proud of: 17 years after the 
``Nation At Risk'' report, over 10 years after Charlottesville, there is 
still a passionate sense of national urgency about school reform, about 
lifting standards, improving accountability, increasing learning.
    I can think of no other issue that has sustained to such an intense 
level of commitment from the public, elected officials, business 
leaders, and the press. If anything, the determination of the American 
people to improve our schools is greater than ever. That's a tribute to 
the love of our people for their children, to their understanding of the 
importance of education in the global information economy, to the 
realization that we have the largest and most diverse student body in 
our history, and to the enduring American belief that all our children 
can and must learn.
    It is also a tribute to the commitment and the enterprise of 
education writers in cities and towns all across this country who have 
kept the story of education reform in the news year after year.
    This intense national commitment has produced real progress. Today I 
am pleased to announce a new report by the Department of Education which 
documents the progress of the last 7 years, some of which Kit mentioned. 
The report makes clear that math and reading scores are rising across 
the country,

[[Page 820]]

with some of the greatest gains in some of the most disadvantaged 
communities. For instance, reading scores of 9-year-olds in the highest 
poverty schools rose almost an entire grade level on the National 
Assessment of Education Progress between 1992 and 1996, reversing a 
downward trend.
    The report also shows that 67 percent of high school graduates now 
go on to college, up 10 percent since 1993. This is a copy of it, and it 
will be available soon, and I hope all of you will read it and then 
distill it for the people who read you.
    Clearly, we're making progress. Our young people are getting the 
message they need a college education to have the future of their 
dreams. We've tried to make those dreams more affordable, with the 
largest expansion of college opportunity since the G.I. bill, including 
the creation of the HOPE scholarship tax credit, which over 5 million 
families have already claimed since 1998; education IRA's; more 
affordable student loans, which have saved students $8 billion--about a 
third of our student loan recipients are in the direct loan program 
now--they've saved students $8 billion, and the taxpayers $5 billion 
more. They have helped us to take the default level from over 22 percent 
to under 9 percent, and to triple annual loan repayment rates.
    We also have more Pell grants; we're up to a million work-study 
slots; we've had over 150,000 young Americans earn scholarships by 
serving in AmeriCorps, many of them in our public schools. And the GEAR 
UP program is now pairing college mentors with a quarter of a million 
middle school students who are at risk, to prepare them for college and 
convince them the money will be there when they're ready to go.
    College entrance exam scores are rising, even though more students 
from disadvantaged backgrounds are taking the test. And before the 
Congress this year is my proposal to provide a tax deduction for college 
tuition of up to $10,000. If we can do that, along with another increase 
in the Pell grants and the other proposals I've mentioned, I think when 
we leave, Dick and I, we'll be able to say that we have truly opened the 
doors of 4 years of college education to all Americans.
    We also see progress in the fact that about two-thirds of all of our 
classrooms are connected to the Internet, with the help of the E-rate 
program which the Vice President pioneered. That's up from only 3 
percent in 1993. Ninety-five percent of our schools have at least one 
Internet connection, including 90 percent of our poorest schools. And I 
think we'll be right at 100 percent by the end of the year for not only 
the schools but for almost all the classrooms, ``except''--and this is a 
big ``except''--in those schools that are literally too dilapidated to 
be wired for the Internet.
    We see progress in falling class sizes in the early grades, and 
we're trying to help that with our program to hire 100,000 new highly-
trained teachers, 30,000 of whom have been funded, and we're trying to 
go to 50,000 in this year's budget. We see progress in the very large 
increase we've had for preschool--and I've proposed the largest in 
history for this year--and in the fact that 1,400 of our colleges and 
universities are providing volunteers for the America Reads program to 
help make sure all our third graders can read independently by the time 
they finish that year.
    And we see progress in the growing public consensus about what must 
be done to reach our ultimate goal, providing a world-class education 
for every child in America. I think this consensus can be summed up in a 
simple phrase that has been our mission for the last 7 years: Invest 
more in our schools; demand more from our schools.
    When I became President in 1992 the education debate in Washington, 
I felt, was fairly stale and predictable and unfortunately divided into 
what I thought were partisan camps with false choices. On the one side 
were those, most of them in my party, who believed that money could 
solve all the problems in our schools, and who feared that setting high 
standards and holding schools and teachers and students accountable to 
them would only hold back poor children, especially poor minority 
children.
    On the other side, there were those, mostly in the other party, who 
fundamentally did not think the public schools were fixable and 
therefore didn't want to spend much money trying. Also they felt 
education was a State responsibility and therefore should not have

[[Page 821]]

a comprehensive national response. Some of them, you'll remember, even 
tried to get rid of the Department of Education.
    Vice President Gore and I believed both those positions were wrong. 
There was plenty of evidence, even then, that high levels of learning 
were possible in even the most difficult social and economic 
circumstances. The challenge was to make the school transformation going 
on in some schools available and active and real in all schools. And we 
sought to do it by investing more in our schools and demanding more from 
our schools.
    This did not require, as some have charged even recently, 
micromanagement of our schools by the Department of Education. Indeed, 
under Secretary Riley's remarkable, steady leadership, Federal 
regulations on schools K through 12 have been reduced by two-thirds. In 
addition, we made ed-flex available to all 50 States, which makes it 
possible for them to reduce even further Federal regulations on the 
details of how Federal dollars are spent.
    In 1993 we passed a new economic plan that cut hundreds of programs 
in order to reduce the deficit and improve the economy. But even in that 
harsh budget year, we boosted education spending. Over the last 7 years, 
we've nearly doubled investment in education and training, even as we've 
turned record deficits into record surpluses.
    In 1994 we overhauled the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 
requiring States to set academic standards for what their students 
should know. We passed the Goals 2000 legislation, which provided States 
with more resources to create and implement strategies to achieve 
standards. Since then, we've gone from only a handful of States having 
standards to nearly every State with them.
    Forty-eight States also have assessments in place to measure student 
progress in meeting those standards--although, as Kit noted, I have been 
unsuccessful so far in convincing the Congress that we ought to have 
national standards and a voluntary national test to measure them. But 
because we insisted in 1994 that Title I funds be better targeted, 95 
percent of high-poverty schools get them today, up from 79 percent 7 
years ago. And I think it's very important that this progress not be 
undone as Congress looks at Title I again this year.
    In 1994 we began encouraging more competition and more choice for 
parents within the public school system, including magnet schools, 
schools within schools, worksite schools, and the creation of public 
charter schools. We also invested the resources necessary to get the 
charter school movement off the ground. When I became President, there 
was just one charter school in all of America, in Minnesota. Today, 
thanks in part to our investments, there are over 1,700. Vice President 
Gore has called for tripling that number.
    I think the spread of the charter school movement is one of the 
great underreported stories in education, one that makes the whole 
debate over vouchers into something of a sideshow. Charter schools 
provide choice and competition that proponents of vouchers say they 
want. And unlike private schools, charter schools are accountable to the 
public for results. They all haven't succeeded, although most of them 
have done quite well; but then they can be shut down, if they don't. I 
think we should be working to make all public schools more accountable, 
not diverting much-needed energy and money away from them.
    The strategy of greater accountability and greater investment 
continues to guide everything we're fighting for in education. I have 
sent Congress an ``Education Accountability Act'' to fundamentally 
change the way the Federal Government invests in our schools, to support 
more of what we know works and to stop supporting what we know does not 
work.
    We want quality teachers in all classrooms; report cards to parents 
on school performance, for all parents and all schools; no social 
promotion, but help for students, not blaming them when the system fails 
them; a plan to identify failing schools and improve them, or shut them 
down; a systematic effort to make our schools safe, disciplined, and 
drug-free.
    I've also asked Congress to make a range of other investments to 
make accountability work. Yes, we must end social promotion. But I say 
again, we need more investments in after-school and summer school 
programs.

[[Page 822]]

It is wrong to blame the students for the failure of the system.
    We had the first Federal support for after-school programs in 1997, 
at a million dollars a year; $40 million in '98; $200 million in '99; 
$453 million in 2000; and we're asking for a billion dollars in 2001. If 
we get it, we will soon be able to provide after-school programs to 
every student in a poor-performing school in the United States.
    We must also invest in modernizing our schools, to get our kids out 
of overcrowded classrooms or classrooms where the walls are too old to 
be wired for the Internet or where it's so stifling hot in the summer 
that students in summer school can't learn. There are many cities in 
this country where the average school building is 65 years of age or 
more. There are schools in New York City that are still being heated by 
coal-fired furnaces. There are literally school buildings all across the 
country that cannot be hooked up to the Internet--they simply can't be 
wired. And we all know the stories of how many of our kids are in 
trailers. The largest number of trailers I have seen behind the smallest 
school was 12, outside an elementary school in Jupiter, Florida, a 
couple of years ago. So I think that is very important.
    We have also worked on this for a long time. For 4 years I have 
tried to get the Congress to approve my tax credit to help to build or 
modernize 6,000 schools. I have made the proposal again this year, along 
with an appropriation that would allow us to do renovations on another 
5,000 schools a year for the next 5 years, in districts that are so poor 
it is simply unrealistic to expect that they could float a bond issue 
and raise the money, even with a tax credit.
    Six years ago we passed legislation calling on States and school 
districts to identify and improve low performing schools. States have 
now identified some 7,000 low performing schools, and they're working to 
improve them. The education budget that I have presented last year--that 
we passed, excuse me, we passed last year required States that failed to 
turn around their low performing schools to let their students transfer 
out of those schools to other public schools.
    I've asked Congress now to double our investment in the educational 
accountability fund, so that we'll have adequate funding to help more 
schools turn around or be shut down. School districts can use this money 
to make the sweeping systematic changes that have proven so effective in 
turning around low performing schools, from Dade County to Kentucky to 
Chicago.
    Last year, for example, I gave a Blue Ribbon Schools award to 
Beaufort County Elementary in Beaufort, South Carolina. Classified as 
one of the State's worst performing schools 5 years ago, Beaufort 
embraced accountability and higher academic standards and started after-
school and summer school programs for students who were lagging behind. 
Today, their math and test scores exceed the State average, and local 
parents are pulling their children out of private school and putting 
them in the city's public schools.
    If, for whatever reason, a school doesn't turn around, our 
educational accountability fund can be used to allow parents to transfer 
their students out of these schools into better performing ones, 
including charter schools.
    The standards movement is making a difference. I believe when we 
passed Goals 2000 and provided funds to help States develop standards 
and strategies for meeting them, we made a contribution. Now, the real 
key is--and I think it's embodied in the topic of your conference--is if 
we have standards in all the States, how do we get them in the 
classroom? And how do we make sure they're making a difference in the 
lives of the students? That, to me, is the real key.
    And you have to begin, I think, with improving the capacity of 
principals and teachers to do their jobs. We have $40 million in our 
budget to help States improve school management and school leadership, 
instructional leadership, by principals. I have proposed a new teacher 
quality initiative to recruit more talented people into the classrooms, 
to reward good teachers for staying there, to give all teachers the 
training they need. This will build on the strong support we have given 
for incentives for people to go into inner-city and other underserved 
areas, that we've given to the National Board for Professional Teacher 
Certification.
    There were no board-certified master teachers when I took office; 
there are now 5,000. We've done everything we could to

[[Page 823]]

support that program. There are 10,000 teachers who are in the 
application process at this time. Our goal is to provide funding enough 
to get up to 100,000 teachers that are board-certified master teachers, 
with the idea that there ought to be one in every school building in 
America. When that happens, I think it will significantly change the 
culture of education in our country, because of the rigorous 
certification process and the work that is done to make sure that the 
teachers are actually effective at teaching our children.
    We're also trying to help deal with some of our teacher shortages. 
Secretary Riley has established a commission on math and science 
teaching, and Senator John Glenn has taken that on as his next mission. 
In October they will give us a report which I hope will spur further 
action in that area. The Secretary has also called for the creation of 
more dual schools, that provide English plus education in at least one 
other foreign language, which could, I think, help to moot the whole 
English-only debate, show that we're interested in teaching all of our 
kids English and teaching them in English, but recognize the vast 
diversity we have in the country and the need we have to have more 
teachers who are bilingual and who can teach in an effective manner the 
students who come to our schools whose first language is not English.
    I would also like to mention that in our proposal to create 100,000 
new teachers for smaller class sizes, the teachers are required--every 
new teacher under that proposal is required to be fully qualified. And I 
think that this whole movement to improve teacher quality is really 
catching on. I know that you know that today the American Federation of 
Teachers is proposing a national standard and a national test for all 
new teachers. And I applaud them for it. I've been fighting for testing 
for higher standards, for better pay for teachers for almost 20 years 
now. In 1993 Hillary and I passed a law that made Arkansas the first 
State in the country to test teachers. That was a really popular law at 
the time. [Laughter] It was an interesting experience. But because our 
teachers performed, I might add, better than anyone anticipated, it 
happened that the children began to perform better, as well. Today, I 
think Al Shanker would be very proud of the AFT, his successor, Sandy 
Feldman, and all of them. And I think all of you should be proud of 
them.
    We need to demand more of our teachers, but we need to reward them 
better. We're going to have a couple of million teachers retiring in the 
next few years. We already have the largest student population and the 
most diverse one in our history. We're going to have to work very, very 
hard to get more qualified teachers in the classroom. There are already 
too many teachers teaching classes for which they're not fully 
qualified, and this problem is going to be dramatically exacerbated by 
the size of the student population, combined with the retirement plans 
and just the ticking of the time clock for many of our teachers. So we 
have to focus more and more and more attention on this.
    And in that connection, let me say I have repeatedly challenged 
States--I'd like to do it again today--to spend more of their budget 
surpluses on raising teacher pay. Most of our States are in terrific 
shape today, but they, too--every one of these States is facing the 
prospect of too many teacher retirements. With very low unemployment, 
they're having the same problem recruiting teachers that we're now 
having in some of our military positions, recruiting and retaining. But 
they don't have any of the sort of supplemental benefits that you get if 
you're in the military.
    Everybody says this is the most important thing in the world. Most 
of the money still comes at the State level. When the budget surpluses 
are there, when the money is there, now is the best time most States 
have had in a generation to make a dramatic increase in teacher pay, and 
I hope they will do so.
    Now, let me just make a couple of points about where we are and 
where we're going. The fundamental lesson of the last 7 years, it seems 
to me, is that an education investment without accountability can be a 
real waste of money. But accountability without investment can be a real 
waste of effort. Neither will work without the other. If we want our 
students to learn more, we should do both.
    The strategy is working. But again I say, with the largest, most 
diverse student body

[[Page 824]]

in history and the educational premium rising every year in the global 
information society, we must do more. I've been very pleased at the 
proposals that Vice President Gore has made and the education plans he's 
put forth. I'm also pleased that, after some struggle, we have had 
bipartisan majorities for the education budgets of the past few years. 
Unfortunately, it's still a fight every year. Yesterday the House 
Education Committee passed a so-called reform bill that eliminates 
after-school programs, abandons our class size effort, which is totally 
bipartisan, and fails to modernize a single school in yet another year. 
This comes on top of the Senate's education bill, which rolls back 
reform even more.
    I believe that the majority of people in the other party in Congress 
are still resisting the investments our schools need. In the name of 
accountability, they are still pushing vouchers and block grants that I 
believe would undermine accountability. And both bills greatly underfund 
education.
    There's an even bigger problem with many of the plans being 
discussed in this election season, and many of them apparently 
appealing. But the problem is, even the apparently appealing plans 
advanced by Republicans are in trouble because of the combined impact of 
their proposed tax cut and defense spending increases. You know, one of 
the things--somebody asked me the other day, ``Well, Mr. President, what 
was your major contribution in your economic reform package to this 
longest expansion in American history?'' And you know what my answer 
was? ``The return of arithmetic. We brought arithmetic back to the 
budget. We replaced supply-side economics with arithmetic.'' [Laughter] 
And lo and behold, it worked.
    And so when anybody says anything--they're for this, that, or the 
other thing--you have to say, ``Well, how does all this add up? Here's 
the surplus; it's going to be reduced by X amount, depending on what 
your tax cut is. Then it's going to be reduced by Y amount, depending on 
what you require for defense. Now, what are your plans for the 
retirement of the baby boomers? How will you deal with the fact that 
Social Security today is slated to run out in 2037, before the end of 
the baby boomers' life expectancy? What about Medicare? What are you 
going to do with education?'' Arithmetic is a very important element in 
politics and public life. And it is often ignored--you're laughing, but 
I'm telling the truth, and you know it. [Laughter]
    And so here's the problem with some of these education proposals. If 
you take over $1 trillion out over 10 years for a tax cut, and you 
increase defense even more than I have--and I've been a pro-defense 
Democrat; we've increased defense spending every year I've been 
President--there simply will not be the money left to fund a lot of 
these education and other proposals. I think it's wrong to spend about 
$100 of the surplus on tax cuts for every dollar you spend on education. 
I just don't think that is consistent with our national priorities.
    A study came out last week showing that the percentage of income the 
average American family is paying on income taxes is the lowest it's 
been since 1966. And it is true that income tax for lower income working 
Americans is now largely negative, because of the impact of the earned-
income tax credit. It is true that people in the highest 20 percent are 
paying higher rates, but because of the way the economy has grown, their 
after-tax income in real, constant dollars, even with higher rates, is 
24 percent higher than it was 12 years ago.
    So I support, as I think all of you know, I support a tax cut. But 
mine is considerably more modest. I want the $10,000 deduction for 
college tuition. I want a refundable child care tax credit. I want an 
increase in the earned-income tax credit. I want families to have a 
$3,000 tax credit for long-term care, to care for an elderly or disabled 
family member--it's becoming a huge problem, and as the aging of America 
progresses, it will be a bigger and bigger problem.
    I want to give people with money, upper income people, financial 
incentives to increase philanthropy and to invest in the poor areas of 
America--the new markets of America that have been left behind--and to 
invest in new technologies that will help us clean the environment and 
combat global warming.
    But I have applied arithmetic to my proposal. And I think it is very 
important that we think about this, because it would be tragic if, after 
we're finally beginning to really

[[Page 825]]

make some nationally measurable progress in education here, not just in 
the inputs but in the outputs; and we know so much more about how to do 
it than we did when ``Nation At Risk'' was issued; so much more than we 
did in 1989 when the national education goals were written, in that 
wonderful all-night session in Charlottesville I'll never forget--we 
know so much more today. And we're able to invest in what works.
    But the American people, their wealth, and their welfare will be far 
more greatly enhanced by making uniform excellence in education, proving 
that people, without regard to their race, their income or their 
cultural or linguistic backgrounds, can learn what they need to know and 
keep learning for a lifetime. That will do so much more for the American 
economy, for the strength and coherence and fabric of our national 
community, than a tax cut which cannot be justified and which will 
either throw us back to the bad old days of deficits or require big cuts 
in domestic programs, including education, or both.
    So one of the things that I hope education writers will talk about 
is old-fashioned arithmetic.
    Now, finally, let me just say, I think when all is said and done, 
there are only about three things worth focusing on. Do you believe that 
all children can learn or not? Do you believe that it's more important 
than ever before, for the quality of an individual's life, for the shape 
of a family's future, for the strength of the Nation? And do you believe 
we know how to do that now, with more investment and more accountability 
for higher standards?
    If the answer to all three of those questions is yes, then I will 
consider that the work that the Secretary and I have done, even though 
we haven't won every battle, will have been more than worth the effort.
    Thank you very much.

[At this point, the question-and-answer session began, and Kit Lively, 
president, Education Writers Association, read questions from the 
audience. The first question was from a journalist with the Los Angeles 
Times, who asked what the President could do to head off a growing 
backlash against testing and standards.]

    The President. Well, one of the things--Dick and I were talking 
about this on the way in today--one of the things that we thought would 
happen, if we could actually get some accepted national standards and 
then a voluntary national test that would measure against that, is that 
would provide an organizing principle, if you will, which we thought 
might allow some of these other tests to be dropped. I think it is 
absolutely true that in some districts there may be too many tests. And 
what are they measuring, and what do they mean?
    I also think that on all this testing business, every few years you 
have to have kind of a mid-course review. You have to see where you are 
and where you're going. And I think I've earned the right to say that, 
since you know I believe in them. I mean, I've got a pretty long record 
here on this subject.
    I think we shouldn't obscure the major point, which is, it is very 
difficult to make progress that you can't measure. There must be some 
way of measuring our movement. On the other hand, you don't want our 
children and our teachers to spend 100 percent of the time teaching to a 
test that does not encompass all the things our students need to know 
and our schools need to provide. You don't want the test to be so easy 
that the whole thing is a mockery and looks like a bureaucratic fraud. 
You don't want it to be so hard that it crowds out all the other 
endeavors that a school ought to be doing.
    But all of that, it seems to me, argues for looking at the number 
and the types of tests, what you want to measure, and whether you goals 
are sharply focused. It's not an argument against testing and 
accountability. I see no possible way to continue to reform all our 
schools without some sort of testing and accountability.
    Look, if none of us had ever come along, ever--including me--you 
know, it's hard to admit this, especially when you can't run again, but 
if none of us had ever come along, a lot of the good things that have 
happened in education would have happened. I've been saying for 15 
years, every problem in American education has been solved by somebody 
somewhere.
    How many times have you gone to a school and then you've written 
this gripping story

[[Page 826]]

about, oh, my goodness, look at this school in this high-crime 
neighborhood with all these poor kids and all this terrible 
disadvantage, and the kids have--they live in these little apartments, 
and they have to go into the bathroom to study at night in the bathtub 
and read all their books--I mean, how many of those stories have you 
written? Every one of you have written those stories, right? And look 
what the kids are doing.
    What is the problem in American education? It is not that nobody 
does this; it is that we still have not figured out how to make 
achievement universal.
    Every one of you has written this story about somebody succeeding 
against all the odds, about a great teacher, a great principal, a great 
school. What is the problem? We have not devised a method to make 
learning occur at a universally high level.
    And that's what the voucher people argue. They argue that that's 
because public schools have a monopoly on revenues and customers. So we 
sought to break the monopoly without losing the accountability by 
promoting school choice, charter schools, and other alternatives. But 
you still have to have standards and measurement.
    And let me just say this--I realize I'm talking this question to 
death, but this is pretty important because it really gets to everything 
else. If I were to suggest to you that standards and measurement are 
quite distressing and troubling, and so--and I'm worried about the 
anxiety they cause, so I think we'll ease up on them in the military--
there would be a riot in the country, right? Thank you very much; send 
them back to the training.
    And so I do think it's time to review all this; I think there are 
too many of these tests and some are too easy; some are too hard; some 
are too off-beat; some may crowd out other educational missions. But 
that's why we tried--Dick and I did--to have a set of generally accepted 
national standards with a voluntary national test to measure them and to 
have it done by a nonpolitical group and sort of modeling on what the 
NAEP people do, which I think is quite good, by the way.
    And so, anyway, that's my answer. Just because there may be too much 
or wrong, doesn't mean you don't have to measure. You do have to 
measure. Might as well not have standards if you're not going to measure 
whether you're meeting them.

[Ms. Lively read a question submitted by a journalist from Catalyst 
Magazine, which asked if the Chicago school system's approach to 
retention and promotion should be a model for the Nation.]

    The President. Read the first part of the question again. I didn't 
understand.

[Ms. Lively repeated that research showed students retained had not 
benefited and were more likely to drop out.]

    The President. Well, in order to answer that question, I would have 
to know the answer to something I think is equally important, which is, 
what happened to the kids that weren't retained because of their 
performance in summer school? Are they doing better than they were? Are 
they learning more? Are they more likely to succeed and stay in school?
    Keep in mind, in the Chicago system, if you fail, you get retained 
only if you either don't go to summer school, or you go to summer school 
and you don't make the grade there. So most of the people--Chicago's 
summer school is now the sixth biggest school district in America. It's 
one reason that the juvenile crime rate is way down there. And it's the 
sixth biggest school district in America.
    So I can't answer that question without knowing whether those kids 
did better and are more likely to stay in school and learn more, because 
it wouldn't be surprising that kids that are retained get discouraged 
and drop out. But there was a study a few years ago, and I haven't kept 
up with the literature as much as I should have since I've been 
President, which showed that one big reason for dropout after the middle 
school years was that kids weren't learning. If they weren't learning 
anything and they were being passed along, they got bored and dropped 
out, too.
    So I don't want to disparage the study, but I don't know if it's 
right or not. And neither does the person who asked the question, until 
you follow what happened to the kids that weren't retained because they 
went to summer school and made the grade, and what are the percentage of 
those who made

[[Page 827]]

the grade as opposed to those who were retained.

[A participant cited studies showing that kids in the Chicago system who 
went to summer school and passed did indeed stay, but she clarified the 
question by pointing out that 10,000 students were retained in the last 
several years and, despite efforts to help them, became increased 
risks.]

    The President. But let me ask you this. Does it follow that they 
would have been helped by being promoted, or that it's worth promoting 
them even if they couldn't be helped, because the social stigma of being 
retained and dropping out makes them more likely to turn to crime? I 
mean, I think that's the answer.
    I don't believe--I guess, fundamentally, what I'd like to see done 
is--and you may be right--let me go back to that. My answer to your 
question is, I don't know, so I'll start with that.
    But you may be right. But what's hard for me to believe is that we 
can't help these young people. I mean, one of the things that I thought 
would happen with the Chicago system, sooner or later--and may be 
happening sooner, rather than later, from what you say about the study--
is that we would identify young people who might not measure out to be 
special ed kids, for example, but who, for some reason, even though they 
showed up in class and seemed to be trying, just weren't learning, even 
though the teachers were trying, everybody was trying.
    And I think there may be some of those kind of kids in virtually 
every district, but in a district, a town as big as Chicago, you'd have 
a larger number. And one of the things that I would like to see is, 
before the principle is abandoned, I would like to see some new and 
different efforts made to see if different kind of strategies would help 
those kids to learn.
    One of the reasons I like the potential of this whole computer 
revolution in the schools--even though I think it can be oversold and 
there are a lot of computers being unused because either the software is 
not good or the teachers haven't been trained or whatever--but one of 
the things that I do believe is that there is quite a bit of evidence 
that people of more or less equal intelligence may learn in dramatically 
different ways and that some of the people who seem to be impervious to 
the best efforts of education, but they would like to learn, may be able 
to learn in radically different ways. And Chicago may have enough people 
to identify a class of folks that we ought to make a special national 
effort to see if there are some other strategies that would help them.
    I don't know the answer to that, but I'd be willing to try if they 
are, if they want to do it, if they want some help from us.

[Ms. Lively read a question asking the President's position on gay youth 
groups in high schools.]

    The President. I think it ought to be decided by the school 
districts. I don't think the States ought to prohibit them. I think the 
school districts ought to make a decision based on what the facts are in 
every district.
    Look, I think the real issue here is a lot of parents, even parents 
that are fairly openminded on such matters, are worried that if you have 
these groups when children are still impressionable, that somehow 
they'll be sanctioning or encouraging people to adopt a lifestyle that 
they may have a choice not to adopt.
    On the other hand, there's a lot of evidence that a sexual stigma 
for gay kids is one of the reasons that they have high suicide rates and 
other associated social problems. And I think that the facts will tend 
to be different from place to place, and that's why I think it would be 
better if the people who are on the ground who care about the kids and 
who aren't homophobic--that is, they're not interested in bashing them, 
but they understand there's got to be at some point below which you 
would not go, probably an age--were able to make these judgments based 
on the facts. That's my thinking about it.
    Ms. Lively. Those are the three questions.
    The President. Go ahead.
    Ms. Lively. That's all we have.
    The President. Oh, that's all? [Laughter] This is the first press 
group I have ever been with that said, ``I'm sorry, we're out of 
questions.'' Where were you when I needed you the last several years? 
[Laughter]

[[Page 828]]

    Okay, go ahead.

[Ms. Lively read a question, by a journalist from the Savannah Morning 
News, who asked if the President remained in favor of charter schools 
despite studies showing they were not meeting their original goals and 
were draining funds from local systems.]

    The President. Yes, but what I think the studies show is, some work 
and some don't. And the idea is that, unlike--when we started them, 
there were two ideas behind charter schools, let me remind you. There 
was an upside idea and a downside idea. The upside idea was that if 
teachers and parents and others organized these charter schools, either 
to deal with a certain kind of kids or to meet a certain mission or 
whatever, they would be more likely to succeed.
    The downside hope was, if they failed, unlike other schools, the 
parents and kids could leave immediately and the thing could be shut 
down--that is, the school district, in return for letting the charter 
schools be free of a lot of the rules and redtape that other schools 
would be under, should have the discipline to shut the thing down if it 
had had enough years to operate to see that it wasn't succeeding. And I 
think the evidence is, a lot of them are doing quite well. And the ones 
who aren't, the thing I'm worried about is that the ones that aren't 
will become just like other schools that aren't doing so well, and 
nobody will want to shut them down either.
    I mean, the whole purpose of the charter school was to bring the 
sort of hope--the concept of empowerment of the parents and the students 
into the public education system, and it would work on the upside. And 
if it didn't work on the upside, it would at least work on the downside. 
And that's where I think we need to focus.
    But I think that some of them have done very well, and some of them 
have not done so well. And what we need is to make sure the downside 
potential is present as well. But yes, I do still favor them, based on 
the ones I've been in and the kinds of things they've been able to do.
    And I don't think it's fair to say they drain resources. If you 
don't spend any more per kid in a charter school than you do per child 
in another school, and you've got to have those kids somewhere, I don't 
think it's fair to say that, especially if you're not--unless you're 
paying for physical facilities you wouldn't otherwise pay for.
    Ms. Lively. I've been told that was our last question. So, thank 
you. We know you have a busy day, and we appreciate you coming.
    The President. Thank you again for your interest. I've enjoyed this 
very much. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:35 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom North at 
the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to
Sandra Feldman, president, American Federation of Teachers.