Remarks to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute dinner

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 28, 1998

Second, we can't rest until all our kids in all our communities have a world-class education. Our budget - our balanced budget provides for hiring 100,000 more teachers to lower average class size to 18 in the early grades. All the research shows that does more to help children learn and have permanent learning gains than anything else we can do.

It provides funds to build or repair 5,000 schools with kids - the largest they've ever been in our classroom - the largest number of students. It provides funds to hook up all of our classrooms to the Internet, not just those of the wealthiest school districts.

It provides funds to reward school districts who undertake sweeping reforms like Chicago has. In Chicago today the summer school - the summer school - is the sixth biggest school district in America. Over 40,000 children every day during the school year get three square meals at school. Yes, have high standards; yes, end social promotion; but for goodness sakes, do something for those kids that deserve a better shot and need more help to succeed in life.

And our budget provides funds to hire 35,000 teachers to go into troubled inner-city and other isolated neighborhoods by saying to the brightest young people, we'll pay your way to college if you'll teach off the cost by going into those tough neighborhoods and giving those kids a world-class education.

No community in America has a bigger stake in this than the Hispanic community. That's why I established an advisory commission on educational excellence for Hispanics, and why I have proposed a special $600 million Hispanic education action plan to transform schools with high dropout rates, to support Hispanic colleges, to help adults who want to learn English or get a high school diploma, to help all Latinos, young and old, to reach their dreams.

And you and I know, yes, our children must master English. That's why I fought for a 35 percent increase in bilingual education, to help 1,000 school districts improve teacher training and add extra classes for students who haven't yet mastered English. You know, when people go around and tell me all about the failures of bilingual education, I say, "We'll, look at the number of school districts who have so many more children whose first language is not English that don't have any teachers who have been certified to teach them English." Let's solve the problem instead of making it a political issue.

The Hispanic action education plan would help to train 20,000 teachers to help children with limited English. This is not just a Hispanic problem anymore. Just across the river here in Fairfax County, there are children from 150 different national and ethnic groups. Being able to speak more than one language is a gift that more of us need. But in America, unless one of those languages is English, our children can never reach their full potential. This is not the subject of a divisive political battle. Let's look at the facts, put our children before our politics, and do what's right for the country, and actually give people the chance to speak this language.