[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 40, Number 7 (Monday, February 16, 2004)]
[Pages 221-227]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in a Discussion on Education and the Jobs for the
21st Century Initiative in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

February 12, 2004

    The President. Thank you all very much. It is nice to be back in 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Thank you for such a warm welcome. Behave 
yourself. [Laughter] I--we're going to have an interesting dialog today 
about how our economy works, how we can make sure people are prepared to 
take advantage of a growing economy. I hope that the students here at 
this very fine high school are able to have a better understanding about 
their future and how to seize opportunities.
    Before we begin the discussion, I do want to thank the high school 
for welcoming me and quite a large entourage. [Laughter] Rich, thank you 
and your staff. I appreciate the teachers of this fine high school. I 
want to thank you all for teaching. Teaching is such a noble profession.
    I've come to this high school--it's a high school that's willing to 
raise the bar, challenge what I've been calling the soft bigotry of low 
expectations, that is willing to measure, willing to change if you need 
to change, willing to use curriculum that actually works, in order to 
make sure every child is educated, every child has a chance to succeed. 
This is a fabulous high school. I'm proud of the administrators and 
teachers and students who make it such.
    I also want to thank the parents who are here for paying attention 
to your sons and daughters, for caring about the quality of the 
education they receive. I often talk about the need for us to usher in a 
period of personal responsibility. Nothing is more responsible than a 
parent understanding that he or she is the first teacher of a child, and 
he or she must pay attention to the education of their children.
    I also want to thank our panelists, who we'll talk to in a minute 
here. But I also want to thank members of the mighty Pennsylvania 
congressional delegation for traveling with me today.
    The senior Senator--I try to downplay the senior part--[laughter]--
today is actually his birthday. That would be Arlen Specter, who is 
traveling with us. I look forward to working with him. Where is the 
Senator? He's somewhere around here anyway. Either that, or he knew this 
was going to be a long speech. [Laughter] We're working well together. 
We've got some challenges in Washington. I appreciate him working with 
my administration on issues such as judges.
    Speaking about friends and people who I think is doing a great job 
for the State of Pennsylvania, Senator Rick Santorum is with us as well. 
[Applause] Don't go overboard. [Laughter] I've got to fly back with him 
to Washington. [Laughter]
    I appreciate the Congressman from this district, Tim Holden. 
Congressman, thank you for accompanying us today. The Congressman kindly 
allowed others from the Pennsylvania congressional district to come into 
his district today, Members such as John Peterson, Joe Pitts, Don 
Sherwood, Todd Platts, Bill Shuster, and Jim Gerlach. Thank you all for 
coming.
    We've got senators here; we've got State representatives here; we've 
got mayors here. Thank you all for being here--city councilmen, a lot of 
citizens.
    I'm proud to be here to share with you some thoughts about how to 
make sure the American Dream shines brightly in every corner of the 
country. Before we have a little discussion about economics and of what 
we can do to make sure people are prepared for

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the new jobs of the 21st century, I do want to herald a Lauren Simkulak. 
Lauren is a senior at this high school. She came out to meet me at Air 
Force One. She was invited to do so because, you see, she is 
volunteering her time. She's taking time out of her busy life. If you're 
a senior in high school, your life can be very busy, sometimes with 
studying, sometimes with other things, but nevertheless--[laughter]. 
She's involved with the Four Diamonds Fund, a fund to create awareness 
for cancer. She is a volunteer in the army of compassion.
    The reason I bring that up is that oftentimes, you hear our 
country's strength is defined as our military might. We're going to stay 
strong. You hear people talk about the might of America being the size 
of our wallets. We want more citizens having bigger wallets. But the 
truth of the matter is, the strength of this country is the heart and 
souls of the American people, people who are willing to love a neighbor 
just like they'd like to be loved themselves.
    Here's my message to the high school students who are listening, and 
to anybody else: Find somebody who hurts and surround them with love. 
Governments--you can do so in all kinds of ways. You can do so in the 
Boys or Girl Scouts. You can do so in the Boys or Girls Club. You can do 
so through your church or your synagogue or mosque. The strength of 
America is the fact that we're a loving, compassionate, decent people 
who are willing to help save America, one soul at a time. I appreciate 
the service of people in this--[applause].
    I want the students here to understand we've been through historic 
times in this country. You hear me often say, I'm optimistic about the 
future. Well, one reason I'm optimistic is because I've seen what we 
have just been through as a nation. Remember, this country has been 
through a recession, an attack by an enemy which clearly hates what we 
stand for. We had some corporate scandals, and by the way, we expect our 
citizens in positions of responsibility to tell the truth. We passed 
tough laws, by the way, to send those corporate criminals to justice, 
which is exactly where they belong because they betrayed the trust to 
employees and shareholders. And then I made the tough decision about 
dealing with threats by committing some incredibly brave citizens into 
harm's way to remove a danger, to remember the lessons of September the 
11th and remove a danger before it became imminent and before it could 
conceivably strike America again. All that affected our economy.
    Think about what this economy has been through, recession, an 
attack, a national emergency, corporate scandals, and war. And yet, the 
economy is growing. The numbers are good, see. The numbers are good, but 
I don't worry about numbers. I worry about people. There are still some 
people looking for work because of the recession. There are people 
looking for work because jobs have gone overseas, and we need to act in 
this country. We need to act to make sure there are more jobs at home, 
and people are more likely to retain a job.
    I've got some ideas that I'd like to share with you, before we get 
to making sure we educate people for the jobs that are being generated 
in the 21st century. The first idea is to make sure there's certainty in 
the Tax Code. As you know, we acted by cutting taxes. We saw all the 
challenges to our economy. We cut taxes, which basically meant people 
had more money in their pocket.
    It's kind of a simple Crawford, Texas, economic lesson. When you 
have more money in your pocket, you're likely to demand a good or a 
service--an additional good or a service. And when you make a demand for 
an additional good or a service, in our economy, somebody will produce 
the good or a service. And when somebody produces the good or a service, 
somebody is more likely to retain a job or find a job. In other words, 
the tax cuts stimulated growth.
    The tax cuts also made it more likely that the small-business sector 
of our country would be strong and vibrant. Seventy percent of the new 
jobs in America are created by small businesses. And that's why much of 
the tax cuts, the individual tax cuts as well as the encouraging of 
investment--those tax cuts which encourage investment, were aimed at 
small businesses.
    The tax cuts are making a difference, but unfortunately, they are 
set to expire, which means if Congress doesn't renew the tax cuts, the 
child credit will go down. So, in other

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words, if you're now getting a bigger child credit because you're a mom 
or a dad, you're going to pay more taxes. It's a tax increase. The 
marriage penalty will go up if Congress doesn't act. In other words, 
they'll be raising your taxes. In order to make sure people can find 
work or retain a job, we need to make the tax cuts permanent. There 
needs to be certainty in the Tax Code. People need to be able to plan. 
Small businesses need to be able to plan. Individuals need to be able to 
plan. We do not need a tax increase right now in our country.
    Health care costs are too high. It's going to be hard to increase 
jobs with health care costs going up. I put out a plan to address health 
care costs, associated health plans, health savings accounts. But one of 
the interesting components of making sure we control the rising costs of 
health care is to make sure our judicial system doesn't run docs out of 
business and run the cost of medicine up for patients. We need medical 
liability reform in the United States.
    We've got too many lawsuits in America. It's one thing to be taking 
a lawsuit based upon a real claim. There's too many junk lawsuits which 
are running up the cost of doing business. It makes it hard to increase 
the job base. It makes it hard for people to retain a job when people 
are getting sued right and left. We need tort reform at the Federal 
level. We need class-action reform. We need asbestos reform. We need to 
get less regulations on people who are trying to create jobs. Washington 
oftentimes poses too many mandates, which makes it hard to retain a job.
    The other day I met with an entrepreneur from Philadelphia. She runs 
a small foundry. She said, ``I've got some issues. I'm worried about 
jobs.'' She said, ``I'm worried about the taxes jumping up and down.'' 
She said, ``A lot of my customers are getting sued, which makes it hard 
for them to buy products from me.''
    She also said something very interesting; she said she's worried 
about reliable energy supplies. You see, when you have blackouts or 
brownouts, and you're trying to employ people, it's awful hard to have--
to do so. In order to get jobs back, in order for people to retain jobs, 
we need an energy plan in this country. We need to modernize the 
electricity grid. We need to become less reliant on foreign sources of 
energy.
    Listen, Pennsylvanians are great entrepreneurs and farmers. We ought 
to be opening up markets for Pennsylvania products. In other words, 
there's a lot of things we can do. But I'm confident about the future of 
this economy because I've seen what we've been through. I know the 
spirit of America. I know the entrepreneurial spirit. I know the fact 
we've got the best workers in the world. Productivity increases are 
high. This is a fabulous country. There's nothing we can't overcome, and 
we are overcoming it. And as we overcome the recession and war and 
emergency, we better make sure we've got a workforce that is prepared 
for the higher-paying jobs of the 21st century. And that's what we're 
here to talk about today.
    A good education system begins at the early grades. We passed what's 
called the No Child Left Behind Act. It basically says we trust local 
people to chart the path to excellence. We're going to spend more 
Federal money, but we want to know whether or not the children are 
learning to read, write, and add and subtract. This business about just 
shuffling kids through the system has got to end. It's got to end.
    We've got to make sure that as we focus on primary and secondary 
education, we never forget the fact that we can strive for higher 
standards at the high school level. One of the things you hear people 
talking about is reading programs to make sure that those kids who have 
been shuffled through now have a chance to learn to read before it's too 
late and, by the way, using curriculum that actually works, not 
curriculum that sounds good, not curriculum that may be based upon some 
interesting theory, but curriculum that actually makes a difference, so 
that when we measure, we can see clearly that children are learning to 
read.
    We need to expand AP courses. We're going to talk a little bit about 
AP. One of the interesting things about AP courses, it says clearly that 
we expect the best from our children. AP courses challenge our kids. It 
also means that they're more likely to go to college and strive for 
higher goals. Too many of our minority students aren't getting AP 
classes. I've got a plan to make sure AP is

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spread throughout all segments of our society.
    We've got to make sure that math and sciences are--we've got to 
focus on math and science. We've got to encourage people who have got 
expertise in math and science to come into classrooms. Oftentimes you'll 
hear school districts say, ``We're pinched for teachers. We need extra 
help with math and science.'' We've got a program to encourage people to 
come in and teach part-time to help out. In other words, we're focused 
on making sure that secondary and elementary education works well and 
that high schools work well.
    And another interesting part of our society which oftentimes gets 
overlooked is the fabulous community college system in America. You've 
got a great community college here in--[applause]. Community colleges 
are available and affordable. They're particularly affordable because 
the Federal Government wants to help people go to community college with 
all kinds of different scholarship programs, including Pell grants, 
which we intend to expand, particularly for those students who are 
willing to take rigorous academic programs, are willing to set their 
sights.
    The community college system is flexible, and you're going to hear 
an interesting and innovative program that deals with your health care 
system here in Harrisburg and central Pennsylvania and the community 
college and the high school, to prepare folks for the jobs which 
actually exist.
    Listen, it used to be in job training that they never asked the 
question whether jobs--do the jobs exist for the training programs. The 
way I used to put it is, you used to train 500 hairdressers for 10 jobs. 
And yet we satisfied our requirement at the State level, because they 
didn't ask whether or not the jobs actually existed. They just asked, 
were you training somebody. Now we're beginning to ask the question, 
when you train somebody, is there a job, and does the curriculum make 
sense for the job.
    So what you're about to hear is, educational excellence here in 
Harrisburg exists; innovative programs exist. People who are listening 
in different communities around Pennsylvania and the country might want 
to pay attention to what is happening in this community.
    Rich--I appreciate your hospitality--is the principal of the mighty 
Rams.
    Richard Mazzatesta. You're more than welcome here, Mr. President.
    The President. I guess I should have said, you're the head Ram. 
[Laughter]
    Mr. Mazzatesta. Well, Dr. Hasson might think that I'm the second 
head Ram. [Laughter]
    The President. You can call her a Ram. I'm not. [Laughter] I'm going 
to call her, ``Ma'am.'' [Laughter]
    Barbara Hasson. Barbara.
    The President. Barbara, that's right.

[Richard Mazzatesta, principal, Central Dauphin High School, made brief 
remarks.]

    The President. Well, I'm here to help. [Laughter] However, 
educational excellence will only be found at the local level. And by 
that I mean, is that it's important to have local control of schools so 
that good superintendents and good principals are able to be--adjust 
according to the circumstances. The Federal Government can write checks, 
and we are. Federal funding is up. What's changed is we're finally 
asking the question, ``Are we getting any results for our money?'' Good 
schools don't mind answering that question.
    Rich said something interesting about the No Child Left Behind Act. 
What's interesting in this piece of legislation is that because of 
measuring, you're able to determine whether or not a child can read or 
write and add and subtract early. And what the measurement system allows 
you to do is, one, analyze curriculum. You know, is it working? Is the 
reading program we've got working? But also, it enables you to focus 
attention on a particular child that might slip behind, which will make 
it easier, by the way, when this law is fully implemented, for high 
schools because you'll have a more literate population coming your way 
at some point in time.
    We've got kind of a gap in the pipeline. There's been a--because we 
haven't focused that intensely on measurement, there's some kids who are 
just being shuffled through, and you're having to remediate. But we're 
going to correct that by having high standards early,

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enough money to help--provide remedial help so that no child is left 
behind. That's why we called it that law. We don't want anybody left 
behind in America.
    Barbara--listen, I've been listening to Barbaras all my life. 
[Laughter]
    Dr. Hasson. And as I told the President backstage here, he's going 
to listen to one more Barbara. [Laughter]

[Dr. Hasson, superintendent, Central Dauphin School District, made brief 
remarks.]

    The President. Let me see here--[laughter]--I think we're doing our 
responsibility here at the Federal level. Most funding should be at the 
State and local level, in order to make sure you've got local control of 
the schools. We've increased the Federal funding at the--for elementary 
and secondary school programs up by 49 percent over the last 4 years.
    I think--let me say a couple of things Barbara said. First, because 
you measure, you know whether or not children are learning. I hear 
people say, ``Well, I can't believe you're making people measure.'' 
Look, I didn't like to take tests either, but that's too bad. You see, 
we've got to know. If you don't know whether a child can read and write 
and add and subtract, it's likely that child will be just shuffled 
through. And guess who gets hurt? Guess who gets hurt? A lot of inner-
city kids get hurt. We want the American Dream to be everywhere.
    A lot of kids whose parents may not speak English as a first 
language, they're easy to quit on. Let's just move them through, see. 
But we're through with those days in America. Every child has worth. I 
believe every child can learn, and our systems must challenge mediocrity 
when we find it, must be willing to raise the bar.
    Barbara, that's why I'm here. You're willing to raise the bar. She 
said, ``We accept the challenge.'' It's not my challenge. It's a 
national challenge to make sure every single child can learn. If you 
can't read, there is no way you're going to be able to take advantage of 
the fantastic opportunities being created in America. If you can't read, 
you're going to be left behind when it comes to these unbelievable job 
opportunities that are going to exist.
    And so what we're talking about really here is the basics of job 
training, aren't we? And that's to give the people the skills necessary 
to take advantage of a changing, dynamic, exciting economy.
    Schools can't survive without good teachers, and we've got one with 
us right here. Rebecca is a--shall I tell them 31-year teacher? No, I 
won't say that. [Laughter] It might give away our age. [Laughter] She's 
been in the classroom for 31 years. She is an incredibly dedicated 
professional who told me that after 31 years, she still loves walking 
into the classroom. Rebecca is in charge of the English AP. Would you 
share with us your story?

[Rebecca Deitman, teacher, Central Dauphin High School, made brief 
remarks.]

    The President. I appreciate your dedication. You're leading with 
your heart, and you've got to be. See, the issue with AP is whether or 
not teachers know how to teach AP. That's one of the bottlenecks, to 
make sure more advanced placement--AP means raising the bar, is what it 
means. It means challenging students to the max, which is what we want 
to do in society, don't we? And part of the money that we're going to 
spend out of Washington is to make sure that there is teacher training 
money.
    Another bottleneck is--you know, a kid goes home and says, ``Mom, I 
want to take the AP exam. How much does it cost?'' And it's quite 
costly. And so, therefore, a lot of students say, ``Well, I'm not going 
to take the course, because it's too much money to take the exam.'' 
We've got to help, particularly, low-income students pay for the exam. 
We cannot allow the cost of a test to prevent students from reaching 
high. And so part of the AP program--[applause].

[Ms. Deitman made further remarks.]

    The President. What Barbara mentioned, for example, is not only 
training AP teachers how to teach AP, which is essential, but if you 
remember, Barbara said, ``We're making sure our teachers have been 
retrained in the curriculum we're now going to use for reading at the 
primary level.'' Teacher training is an essential aspect of making sure 
our children get the best education possible.

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    And one of the reasons you measure, by the way, is to test whether 
or not the curriculum is working. And if the curriculum is not working, 
you need superintendents and principals and teachers bold enough to say 
it's not working. And so then you pick what you think will work, and 
then you've got to train teachers to teach that curriculum. That's what 
the No Child Left Behind Act also does.
    And you've got a vibrant school district here. You see, if you 
listen carefully, what people are saying is, ``We're going to challenge 
every child.'' And that's the beginnings of educational excellence. And 
we need to challenge every child because the jobs of the 21st century 
are going to require a lot of smarts. People have to have the capacity 
to think. It used to be, you know, crank somebody out of high school, 
and if they could run a backhoe, that's going to be fine. And there's 
nothing wrong with backhoe drivers. We're going to need them. But we're 
also going to need computer programmers or people working in the health 
sciences.
    There's some exciting new fields coming, and therefore, the 
education system must start early, make sure the high schools continue 
to raise the bar, and our community colleges must be flexible enough to 
have a curriculum that actually meets the needs of the local 
communities. In other words, you don't need to be training people for 
jobs that don't exist.
    And somebody who understands that is Edna. She runs the Harrisburg 
Area Community College, which as I understand it, is the oldest 
community college----
    Edna Baehre. That's correct.
    The President. The youngest leader with the oldest college.
    Dr. Baehre. Don't I wish. [Laughter]
    The President. Tell us about your school. Tell us how you've made 
the curriculum relevant. Tell us what you're doing.

[Dr. Baehre, president, Harrisburg Area Community College, made brief 
remarks.]

    The President. Now, what--let's see if I can say--kind of summarize 
what you just said. There's a lot of interesting job opportunities, 
whether it be forklift drivers or health care providers, and there are 
people who need to get extra training to be able to do those jobs. And 
you're helping them. And that's good. That's what we want our community 
colleges to do.

[Dr. Baehre made further remarks.]

    The President. All right, Roger. Roger is the CEO of PinnacleHealth 
System. He's here because you're looking for people to work. One of the 
most exciting fields is the health care field--one of the exciting 
fields to find work. But you've got to able to have some--got a skill 
set that makes you employable.
    And tell us what you've done with the community college. Tell us 
what kind of people you're looking for.

[Dr. Roger Longenderfer, president and CEO, PinnacleHealth System, made 
brief remarks.]

    The President. Thank you, Roger. Thanks for being innovative.
    The message I heard from Roger is if you're looking for work in 
central Pennsylvania and you're willing to retrain, willing to go back 
to school, you can find work, see. There's jobs in this part of the 
world that may require a different skill set than you have, but there is 
ample opportunity to retrain, particularly at the community college 
level. And I'm sure there's some people listening out there saying, ``I 
want to work. I'm worried about my job security, but I may be too old to 
go back to the community college.'' That's not the way it works. The 
community college accepts all comers. What Roger is looking for is 
smart, capable, hard-working people who need just a little extra 
training so that he can put them to work.
    Speaking about young workers, Athan's mother is here. Athan is 4?
    Cari Aftosmes. Four-and-a-half.
    The President. Four-and-a-half, yes. I want to make sure she's 4\1/
2\. Cari is a student at HACC. She's got an interesting story that I 
would like for her to share with you. By the way, for the Congress to 
understand, she got a $1,000 child credit for Athan, and if they don't 
make the tax cuts permanent, she's going to be paying taxes next year.

[Ms. Aftosmes made brief remarks.]

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    The President. It's a fabulous story. Cari, first of all, 
understands her most important responsibility is to love her child with 
all her heart and, therefore, to be able to provide for her child. She's 
also willing to say, ``I can do better. I want to do better. I want to 
serve my community, and I understand it's going to take a little extra 
time to get the skills necessary.'' So she actually became 
entrepreneurial. She said, ``How best to improve?'' And she researched 
and she found a good company willing to pay for her tuition, a community 
college system that was able to develop a curriculum that matched her 
desires. And here she is on the cusp of a new career, one that pays 
better, with better benefits.
    See, education enables our workers to be more productive. When you 
hear about productivity increases, what you're really hearing about is 
better-paying jobs. But it requires a certain spirit, doesn't it? It 
requires somebody to seize the moment, some citizen to say, ``I want to 
do better.'' Government can't make you do better. We can provide the 
opportunities, and we all work hard to do so. But it requires the spirit 
of a person like Cari to rise up and say, ``I want to do my duty as a 
mom. I'm going to do my duty as a wife. I'm going to do my duty as a 
citizen to provide care and comfort for people in hospitals.'' She took 
advantage of the opportunity. For those of you looking for work out 
there, take advantage of the opportunities available to embetter 
yourself.
    Listen, I'm going to tell you something. We've been through a lot in 
this country. We're going to win the war on terror. We're going to 
promote freedom and peace. The world is going to be more free and, 
therefore, more peaceful. At home, we're going to be a society which 
understands the issues facing our fellow citizens, helps our fellow 
citizens realize great expectations of our society, encourages the 
entrepreneurial spirit of Americans, enables people to realize their 
dreams by having an education system which works and functions well.
    And as well this is a society where people who hurt and are lonely 
and hopeless can find solace, because there's a loving citizen with arms 
open, willing to do their duty as an American by loving their neighbor.
    I am so honored to be back here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I thank 
you for the warm welcome. I thank our panelists for this discussion. And 
may God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 11:06 a.m. at Central Dauphin High School.