Remarks in a teleconference on education and an exchange with reporters

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 18, 1995

September 12, 1995

The President. Can you all hear me?

School Superintendents. Yes, yes.

The President. That's great. Well, I'm on the phone here with Secretary Riley. And I want to thank all you superintendents for joining me today on this conference call to discuss the importance of continuing our national commitment to education. All of you know better than I that America has just started back to school.

Over the last week I have met with chief executive officers from major corporations, such as IBM and TRW, with mayors and county executives from large and small cities, and yesterday with college students from 10 different universities in 5 States. And I have just come from a meeting with some of our young national service corps, AmeriCorps, participants, along with college presidents and business leaders who support their involvement. And everywhere I go, when I deal with people who are working with Americans who are struggling to make the most of their own lives or trying to help our country adjust to the global economy, I hear the same message: It is wrong for our economy to be growing with so many hardworking Americans' incomes not growing. And everywhere I hear the same response: The answer is to give people a better education, to give our young people the tools they need to learn and to give all Americans a chance to build better lives.

That's why I presented to Congress a balanced budget, which shows that we can get rid of the deficit and still invest more in education and training, to put our young people and our future first. That's why we have committed ourselves to a greater investment in Head Start, to the Goals 2000 program that many of you are very familiar with, to decreasing class sizes through programs like Title I, to the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program.

These are not bureaucratic programs. These are programs that relate to the future of our children, the strength of our economy, and therefore the future of all the rest of us in America.

I know that it is easy to cut these programs here in Washington. We are a long way from the schools and the grassroots. You're a long way from the human consequences of those cuts. But these things actually mean something where all of you live and work. And that's what I want you to talk about.

For example, four schools in Portland, Oregon, helping 9th and 10th graders to reach higher standards in math and science, will lose their funding, just at the time when we know our young people are taking more advanced courses, doing more homework, and trying harder to measure up to global standards of excellence. Four hundred and fifty teaching assistants and other staff who help children with basic reading, writing, and math skills will have to be laid off in Miami. There are examples like this all across the country. That's why we've had such incredibly strong bipartisan business support for our education budget.

Joe Gorman, the chief executive officer of TRW, said last week that, and I quote, "Goals 2000 is critically important. Far more than dollars are involved. It provides incentives to States to change themselves within their educational systems." Lou Gerstner, the CEO of IBM, said, "Goals 2000 is the fragile beginning of the establishment of a culture of measuring standards and accountability in our country. We have to go way beyond Goals 2000, but if we lose Goals 2000 it is," and I quote, "an incredibly negative setback for our country."

So I think that we've got good, bipartisan support in the grassroots for continuing to invest in education. We are only helping people who are willing to help themselves. We are not giving anything to people who don't need it, and we are not giving things to people who won't use it. We're just making an investment in America's future. And I hope that together all of us can succeed in securing both a balanced budget and an education budget that will be good for America's future.

I'd like to ask Secretary Riley to say a few words, and then I'd like to hear from all of you. Mr. Secretary.

[At this point, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley described the progress made in education and the need for greater investment. ]

The President. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Now I'd like to call on the superintendents to speak. And I'd like to emphasize one more time something that--the American taxpayers always say that they don't want us giving anybody something for nothing. They don't want us giving people things they don't need. And they're right about that.

But we're talking here about a student population that we now know is working harder, doing more homework, investing more in their own future, and understanding more about education. And as I said, I was--just yesterday, I was at Southern Illinois University. And I met with 11 recipients of student aid. And every one of them was a working person struggling to get a good education to make their own lives better and this country stronger. So that's what we're talking about here. And it's a good expenditure of our tax dollars.