Remarks at the National Education Summit in Palisades, New York

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 4, 1999

September 30, 1999

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Governors, education leaders, business leaders. I am delighted to be here. I thank my good friend, Governor Hunt, for his remarks. This year marks the 20-year anniversary from the time you and Secretary Riley and I started working together on education.

I want to thank Governor Thompson for his interest in this, and so many other issues. Tommy Thompson is the first Governor who told me that he thought that he could really move, literally, every able-bodied welfare recipient in Wisconsin to work. And I think they've had a 91 percent drop in the rolls. He nearly got it done. Congratulations, that's an amazing achievement.

And I want to especially thank Lou Gerstner and all the business leaders here, because you kept the idea of the summit alive and understood the importance of consistent and systematic followup with the Governors, with the educators. I am very grateful to you for doing this. Most people like you do a project like this for a year or 2 and then they forget it and go on to something else. And you haven't done it, and I'm very grateful.

And for all of you who were here 3 1/2 years ago, who stayed involved in this, I thank you.

Governor Hunt - I was watching him on the monitor outside - talked about the issuance of the "Nation At Risk" report 16 years ago, the meeting we had 15 years ago. The first National Education Summit was in Charlottesville 10 years ago this week. And some of us were there then. President Bush, his Education Department, education leaders from around the country, we were all together. And we came together to embrace the concept and specifics of national education gores.

At the second summit, here in Palisades 3 1/2 years ago, we supported the idea that every State should set standards. At this third summit I hope we will embrace with equal fervor the idea of accountability, for only by holding educators, schools, students, and ourselves accountable for meeting the standards we have set will we reach the goals we seek.

We have made significant progress, particularly in the ideas governing the way we look at this. More and more we're leaving behind the old divisions between one side saying "We need more money," and the other side saying "We shouldn't invest any more money in our public schools, it's hopeless." By and large, there is a new consensus for greater investment and greater accountability, greater investment and higher standards and higher quality teachers to help students reach the standards; holding the schools accountable for the results. That's the agenda of Achieve, the agenda of our administration, clearly the right agenda for the United States.

I think it is another mark of progress and something that many of you in this room can feel profoundly both proud of and grateful for, that 10 full years after Charlottesville and now more than 16 years after the issuance of the "Nation at Risk" report, there is still a passionate sense of national urgency about school reform and about lifting education standards. And there are people who get up every day full of energy about it, not cynical, not skeptical, not jaded, not tired, still eager to learn. People in Governors' offices, people in the schools of our country, business leaders, education leaders of all kind.

This is quite an astonishing thing. You cannot think of a single other issue that has had this long a life at this level of intense commitment. And I think it is a tribute to the love of the American people for their children, a tribute to the understanding of the American people of the importance of education in the global economy, and a sense that we know that we have both the largest and the most diverse student population in our history.

But if you just think about how people get tired of political issues, how everybody is supposed to want to read something new in the paper or seeing something new on the evening news, month-in and month-out, and you think about how long ago it was when Governor Caperton there decided to make all of his elementary students computer literate; how long Governor Engler has been in office; how long ago it was that Secretary Riley and Governor Hunt and I started fooling with all this - and the country is as hot to do the right thing, to improve the education of our children today as it was the day after the "Nation At Risk" report was issued. And that's a great source of comfort to me, and reassurance. And the business leaders, the educators, and the political leaders here in this room and like-minded people throughout this country deserve a lot of credit for that.

When I came to Washington 6 1/2 years ago, all of you know that the number one problem I had to deal with was the deficit, because we quadrupled the debt in 4 years, interest rates were high, the economy was stagnant. We had to cut hundreds of programs, and we were determined to try to do it in a way that would increase our investment, not decrease our investment in education at the national level, and to do it in a way that, spearheaded by Secretary Riley, to give you more flexibility, but also to focus on the pressure points of reform that would likely give us the greatest returns.