Remarks at the National Education Summit in Palisades, New York

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 4, 1999

And it will happen everywhere in America. But we all have to commit the truth about this. And we can't pretend there will never be any painful consequences. But where there are painful consequences, all the Governors can do a world of good by going into those schools and say, "I'm doing this because I want you to have a good life. I'm doing this because it's not too late for you. This is just the beginning of your life. I'm doing this because your teachers and your principals and your parents and the business leaders in this community, we care about your future, and we're going to make this work." And I hope we can do that.

Let me just say very quickly, I think we have to have these basic standards in every State, and we have to make it possible, as Achieve has recommended, not only know whether the standards are being met but to give the parents some comparative information about how children in other States and other nations are doing. I think we have to recommit ourselves to extra support.

And Congress, when I sent this Education Accountability Act to Congress, saying that school districts accepting Federal money must ensure that teachers know the subject they're teaching, have reasonable discipline codes, empower parents with report cards, have a strategy - and I think this is very important - to turn around failing schools or close them down and, finally, a strategy to end social promotion that empowers children who aren't making the grade through the after-school programs, the summer school programs, and all the rest.

Now, we're having a big argument in Washington on the budget today. I don't want to get into a partisan rerun of that, but let me just say this: We can have the kind of budget we need that will help you to do what you need to do without - and we can meet the budget targets without coming up short in education, whether it's for Head Start or more teachers or the initiative to help States build and modernize 6,000 new schools or the American Reads program or this Gear Up program, all of which the Congress supported last year, by the way, to help mentor kids that are in trouble in junior high school, to try to get them into college by getting them over that rough patch. So I hope we can get that done.

I also wanted to say, emphasize something that I think is very important, our budget would provide $200 million to help you turn around low-performing schools. I believe that it is not enough to say, no social promotion, strict accountability, and even summer school and after-school programs for kids, unless there is a strategy to turn around the low-performing schools. And I know that in North Carolina and in several other places where this has been done - I mentioned them earlier, Houston, Dade County, Chicago, and there are other places - but there is evidence now - we don't have to question this either - there is a lot of evidence that these low-performing schools can be turned around.

I went to an elementary school in Chicago, in the Robert Taylor housing project, where the reading scores had tripled and the math scores had doubled in 2 years. Were they on a low base? Yes. Were they where they ought to be? No. But does it prove you can turn things around, even in the most adverse circumstances? Absolutely. So I think that if we're going to have genuine accountability for standards, it is important that we have something to turn the schools around.