Governor Bill Clinton Education Reform Address to AFT Delegates Opening Remarks and Introduction by Al Schanker August 12, 1992 Fellow delegates, during the next few days, we in the AFT will be discussing many issues. We'll be discussing education, the condition of American's children and their families, health care, the labor movement and much more. And we're going to pass a many great resolutions that commit us as an organization to certain courses of actions over the next two years and beyond. But you and I know that how successful we will be in making our resolutions a reality will depend a great deal on who is in the White House next year. And that's why the next President of the United States must be Bill Clinton. Now the reason that I and one hundred and ten other AFT Delegates arrived at the Democratic Convention personally committed to Bill Clinton is not because he agreed with us on all issues in the past. He's agreed on some but we've also had our differences. The reason the AFT endorsed Bill Clinton early on is not because he will agree with every position he will adopt at this convention or in the future. But his issues are our issues and both the AFT and Bill Clinton, we think independently, we'll have our own positions but there's reason for us to be together in this fight. We're going to work so hard to elect Bill Clinton president because when he looks at us he doesn't just see a big and powerful organization. He sees our members as they are: teachers, para-professionals, school bus drivers, secretaries, state and city employees,nurses, as ordinary people who are struggling to stay middle class. Ordinary people who do extraordinary things everyday to help our fellow citizens realize their dreams and to hold on to what they have and to advance. And the that reason that Bill Clinton should be and must be president is because when he talks about putting people first he's talking about us and the people we serve. He's talking about all Americans...people of all races, creeds, backgrounds, and incomes. And all these people, so long, in this age of cynicism, and division. Its and age we want to be over and he's helping us to come together and move forward again. And the reason that Bill Clinton should be and will be elected our next president is that he has the vision, the intelligence, the record, and the plans to get this great nation back moving again to fulfill our most worthiest ideas. Now one of those great American ideas is public education. And one of the main reasons this pluralistic democracy is held together and so many us who started off with little or nothing managed to succeed is public education and Bill Clinton knows that as well as anyone here. He grew up poor in Hope, Arkansas. His hope was public education. And he used his education well. And he now gives this nation the greatest hope its had in a long, long time. And I can tell you that after more than eight years of experience that I've had working with him , Bill Clinton didn't just take from education and he has forgotten those who weren't as fortune. His first priority as governor of Arkansas was education. Now, Arkansas as you know is a poor state. A state with a history of neglect in the field of education. And the statistic, when he came in, Arkansas and education, just last in everything. Well, Bill Clinton staked out a course and he stayed on it. He didn't cut and run out on education as so many governors in more prosperous states did when the going got tough. And he didn't invest in business as usual in the schools as he was often pressured to do. And it worked. Is Arkansas now first in everything? Of course, not. But I can tell you it was first in getting to and making progress on reform. And I can tell you that the reason that this country has education goals and is moving toward them is not because George Bush figured out to be education president. It was because Bill Clinton was there. The day before the Summit, Bill Clinton came to Washington and met with a number of us in the field of education to plan a common course of action. And as head of the National Governor's Association pushed and prodded those national goals and made sure that they were the right goals. And made sure that the goals didn't vanish with a flash of a presidential photo opportunity. The real education president is the man who will win the election in November and his name is Bill Clinton. Our common schools. Our common school. The schools in which all Americans can come together as equal citizens are in serious need of improvement and both Bill Clinton and George Bush know that. But the difference between them could not be more fundamental. George Bush has no commitment to and no plan for improving our public schools...our most fundamental democratic institution. Bill Clinton is passionate about the role of public education in a democracy. And he has the ideas that will make schools work for all children....all of them. And we're proud and deeply honored that Bill Clinton has chosen to deliver a major educational address here at the AFT Convention. I am proud and deeply honored to introduce the next president of the United States, Bill Clinton. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, President Schanker and ladies and gentlemen. It is wonderful for me to be here with you. I'm glad you still have a few rowdy people here. You know, usually when people talk about education lately, they made fun of the Vice President's unusual spelling of potato. But I want you to know the other day there was an illusion to it. I think to what Mr. Schnaker said but the President Bush said, "That I came from a small state somewhere between Texas and Oklahoma." Now, I want the AFT to do something for this administration. I want you to promise that as soon as the November election is over, that you will personally offer the finest course in geography available to former President George Bush. The Republicans are having their trouble today. They're trying to write a platform and they can't agree on how to characterize their record. The President said, "Read my lips," in 1988. Then in 1990, he signed that hugh tax increase. Then earlier this year he said it was a mistake. And so the platform writers thought that they suppose to say it was a mistake. And then they decided it might be embarrassing to say that it was mistake to make, to break the principle promise of the 1988 campaign. So they just said it caused a recession. They took out their no-new-taxes pledge in this platform. But that wasn't enough for the right wing. They want them to promise to add four or five hundred billion dollars to the deficit over the next four years with another round of trickle-down economics where you've get a little and the wealthiest Americans would get a loud. And they can't figure out what to do with that. Well, Al Schanker was right, I haven't always agreed with the AFT On all issues. I once had a very bracing debate in Chicago at an AFT sponsored event on some issues relating to the testing question. And Joyce Elliot whose here from our chapter in Arkansas can tell you that. But we both believe in education and we both believe in the laws of mathematics. And we pretty much learned to add and subtract. And I wish I could say the same for our adversaries in this election. I will say this, no serious student of the last decade, and our common efforts in education, could doubt the steadfast commitment of the AFT for higher standards in our country for students and our teachers. For the belief that all children can learn. For the commitment to try to maintain a qualified and committed and highly motivated core of teachers who know they'll never be rich but ought not to have to be poor to pursue their vocations. My opponents on the other side, many of whom have worked with me for years in the cause of education reform, are trying to convince the average American taxpayers and parents that because you are for me and because the NEA has endorsed me. And because most people who have worked in education are for me that some how I am not for reform. They think the only way you can be for reform is that nobody who teaches kids supports you. Now, I think we all recognize that none of us has all the answers, that our problems are highly complexed. And that we ought to have a continuing and vigorous debate over what we should do. But there are some things which are perfectly clear. Some tests that we ought to have for someone who says that he wants to be an education President. And that applying those standards, we need to make a change in the White House so that we can make some changes in the school houses of the United States of America. If I were you with all the problems of your work and they are many more violence in our schools, more poor children, more children from poor, more children from troubled homes with difficult circumstances in their lives. The changing composition of our society and the increasing burdens on our school. The financial problems of some many school districts. By the way, let's have a parentheses here and correct one misapprehension that this Administration continues to push. The United States does spend a higher percentage of its income on education than any nation in the world. If but only if you include higher education. In kindergarten through twelfth grade education, we are no where near first. There are eight or nine or ten countries that spend a higher percentage of their income than we do on education. And it does not serve our debate on what we ought to do and what changes we ought make. Very well, to have this Administration continuously say that we are over spending on public education compared to other nations. The numbers simply don't bare it out. I think we're misspending a lot of the money we have and so do you. So do you. But let's have a debate on that without clouding the issue. Well, what is the President's job in education? What is the responsibility of the President? To lead. He ought to go down to Houston next week, maybe they'll listen to you. We all know that the real magic of education is what goes on between the teacher and the students in the school. That's where the magic is . And we all hope that the magic is reenforce by what goes on between the student and the parent at home. And that sometimes they are all together in the school. We all know that most of the money for education comes from the state and local level. Regrettably, a much higher percentage now that was the case a dozen years ago before this crowd got in. But there is a national responsibility to lead, to set standards, to create opportunity, to resolve the incredibly complex issue of pursuing excellence and equity at the same time. These are the things that the President must take a lead in. Now, this President has got some pretty good people working in the Department of Education. But there whole deal in life is to tell the rest of us what we ought to be doing and to minimize their own responsibility or accountability for any of the results. And that is consistent with what they do in every other area . Maddest I've been in the last several weeks was when Mr. Darmon, the Head of the Office of Management and Budget went up to the House Budget Committee the other day and ask why do we have the poorest economic performance in fifty years, the worst economy since the Depression? The first decline in industrial output in the history of the country? The worst job growth rate and economic growth rate in fifty years? Why do we have it? And do you know what he said? He said, "Well there are four reasons, the banks aren't loaning enough money and the federal reserve didn't lower interest rates quick enough and Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait." Somebody else paid for that war. I don't know where he got that but anyway, that's what he said. And he said Congress won't do what we want them to. So the Chairman of the Budget Committee said, "Well, how about the President?'' Are you the President? Do you have any responsibility for what has happened?" Silence. He said what about five percent. You know, just anything. And they refused to accept any responsibility. Can you imagine where this country would be today if Harry Truman would have had a sign on his desk that said, " The buck stops somewhere else." If Franklin Roosevelt had said to a nation beleaguered by the Great Depression would have said," The only thing we have to fear is my opponent and their nutty ideas." This crowd has been in the blame game so long they can't imagine what it would be like to take responsibility and establish partnerships and binds up the wounds and heal the division of the country and move us ahead together But that's exactly what we're going to do in 1993. I believe in the national education goals that I work so hard to write. I believe in the call for national standards of what I children should know and a meaningful way of measuring whether those kids know it or not. You know it as well as I do that most of the national testing we have today is a hoax. And that once you give these test, these so called norm reference tests...two or three years, every child in America is making above the national average and we go around blubbering happy talk about it. But that does not mean we shouldn't have standards. It does not mean we shouldn't measure them. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't know the hard truth about whether we are providing the kind of educational environment and producing the kind of learning that our people will need to go into a global economy. Where its far more important to be able to learn than even to be able to know. Where memorization is not as important as the ability to be literate an reasoning to write and discuss, and to grow, to have basic mathematics and calculating skills, to understand the world we're living in. So we do know have to know what the target is. And we have to recognize that its a moving target and we have to be willing to summon ourselves to the rigor of achieving it. But we have to also, be very honest about what the best strategists are for doing that. We do need less bureaucracy and more school-based management, more decision-making for teachers, and principles, and parents in the school. It is true. It is true that the administrative costs of public education are too high in most districts. It is true and you believe that too. But it is also true that some of those costs which look so bad when compared to private schools are directly related to the fact that we take everybody, with all their problems. And that we have to deal with them. So, let us have an honest debate about how we can cut these administrative costs. How we can put that money back into programs back into program, and teachers, and services for children. Let us say, "We know we're not spending all this money as well as can be spent. Let's have some hard analysis and some cold truths. And some real political pressure to change the spending priorities within public education." We can do that. And I think the teachers of this country want that to be done. I think you ought to have a Department of Education that supports reform at the state and local level. And that recognizes that people ought to have some measure of choice in the public schools they attend. Most every big city school system in the country, now, provides a wide range of choices for children and their parents. But that doesn't mean in the present circumstances with the school system that is already under-funded with radical inequalities among school districts in this country that we ought to go to the private voucher system. I am oppose to that. And I. Let me say. I love that. Let me say that I'm glad America has a strong system of private school. I glad that people who have religious convictions can send their children to religious schools that also can teach them. When I moved. When I was a small boy, I moved from Hope, Arkansas to Hot Springs. We were living way out in the country and my folks didn't know anything about the schools that were out there. For two years I went to a Catholic school. It's an experience that I will always treasure. I'm glad I did it. I learned a lot. We didn't have much money. But I'm darn glad the taxpayers didn't have to foot the bill for me going. My parents paid. That was a choice they made. A choice they made. And we were not wealthy people. I have signed a bill in my state that gives parents the opportunity under rigorous conditions of accountability to home- schooling because it exist in every state in the country anyway. And we thought we ought to have standards for it. I am not opposed to competition for public school systems. I think that's a healthy thing. But I do not believe in a country which already is straining the financial resources of the public school system that we ought to divert them when we know we can make reform work in the system if we got the discipline to do it. That's my position and that's the position, I'll stick with as president. I want to give you an Education Department that really works more helping you to promote reform and spurring you to reform and seeing that reform ideas travel across district and state lines. And just as an engine of paperwork and regulation. I feel very, very strongly. And you know this as well as I do. and maybe better that there are examples after examples after example of people solving problems in American education today, virtually every problem you can mention has been addressed extremely effectively by somebody somewhere in America. Let's tell the truth. What the real reason we don't need vouchers is there is public schools taking difficult situations and doing the best job of educating kids anybody has done anywhere. But the problem is. Let's identify what the problem is that we have not yet found a way to make ideas that work travel very well across district and state lines. We haven't done that. And that is our burden and our responsibility. I have seen stunning things in schools....in Chicago, in Boston, in Los Angeles, in the District of Columbia. All across this country, I have seen things that any American, parent of any income, of any racial background, any social condition would be proud of. But we don't do a very good job of making those ideas travel. The bureaucracy, the resistance to change is profound. And one of the things that the Department of Education ought to do is provide incentives for continued teacher training, continued principal training. Have an extension service to help these ideas travel across district and state lines,really work, so that all of us are comfortable in embracing the notion that we can learn from one another. We should be proud to learn from one another. The Founding Fathers of this country set up state governments as laboratories of democracy. And I remember once a couple of years ago, I told a reporter, I was always prouder to be the second state that adopted a reform, than the first. Cause that meant that I was stealing somebody else's ideas first and that was what the laboratories of democracy what was all about. And that's the way we ought to view our schools. That is our challenge. We ought to have answer to our parents and our taxpayers. If someone solved a problem we haven't solved, with a group of kids with the same level of problems that our kids have, in whatever district to the country, the burden is on us to change but your national government should be helping to facilitate that. That is the sort of change that I seek and that I will push. And that regard, let me say that I have grave reservations about raising all this money for five hundred and thirty five star schools which is the administration main initiative in the education 2000 program. The idea that we ought go out here and put one new school in each congressional district and then two others in every state---one for each senator, I guess. One for every Congressman and one for each Senator. And build them up from the ground up. It'll be interesting, but it's going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy. When we know today, that there are strategies that work, why should we be trying to have bottom up education reform instead of trickle down education reform. There are clearly some areas of federal responsibilities to provide opportunity equity in excellence. One recognized by the President but not fully funded is Headstart. Still only thirty- six percent of the eligible kids are in it. But I want to do more than fully fund that program, I want to do what I can to spun environment in which every child in this country which needs to be in preschool program can be in one--either Headstart or school-based program or parent-based program. One that is most appropriate. I want to try to do what we can at the national level to alleviate those savage inequalities that Jonathan Codezel wrote about to refunding the Chapter I program in ways that focus on smaller classes in the early grades and greater flexibility for the teachers to spend the money in the most effective way. I want a safe school initiative that will help all of our schools to be safe and drug-free and gun free in orderly environment. One of the things we're going to do is provide an initiative that will put another hundred thousand police officers on the streets to prevent crime from reoccurring not just to catch criminals. To help schools--areas around schools to be safe. To provide security equipment to schools but also to try to help people to do those thing that will make children want to be in a school that is a good school. I visited a school in Chicago in the primary and made a profound impression on me--The Beasley Academic Center, a junior high school in Chicago. I want you to know, the fact that the principal was my from my home state had nothing to do with my going there. Here these kids in the neighborhood with the highest murder rate, in the state of Illinois, consistently in the top ten percent in all their test scores. No drop-out rate. No drugs. No violence. Dress code. Seventy-five fathers in that school every week volunteering. Fathers, not just mothers. And we had a little meeting there and asked the kids. I said, "Well, many guns in this school? They said, "No." "Any drugs in this school?" "No." Any drop-outs?" "No." I said, "Why?" "We like coming here. If we bring drugs or guns , we have to go. Nobody wants to get kicked out of this school." We like being here. We want to be here." They also had security outside and support. We can do that and we have to it everywhere. And one other thing I like to say about the schools. Our children today are under more threat and more temptation and more duress than any generation of children before them. And some of the things are a matter of life or death. There have been many number of studies in the last few years which have shown that youthful sexual activity is not measurably greater in the United States than European countries but our teen pregnancy rate is twice as high. And there, now over one million Americans who are HIV positive with the number going up extensively, and more among traditional American populations rather than its no longer confined to IV drug users and gay men, In fact, the rate is going up fastest among women. Two chilling cover stories in two of our major magazines just in the last month on this. We have got to have an aggressive program of health education and prevention in our schools. We have got to provide basic health services in our schools. Its the only place a lot of these kids can ever, ever get basic health services. And this is not just a city problem. In some of our poorest counties in my state, an enormous percentage of the children go to school with infected teeth or gums because they have never seen a dentist. We're trying to get those clinics out there to them. It is not just an urban problem its an American problem...in the rural areas, in the suburbs, in the small towns. We've got to do it. And I want to ask you to think about just three things that go beyond public schools which will involve the public schools. First, we got to do something for the majority of the American kids who either don't go on to or don't graduate from four year colleges. We've got to do something for them. The countries in which we compete against for high wage, high growth jobs, almost all of them keep up with all of their students and they try to see that they get at least two years of further training after high school. If you look at the census data, our country, our young people who got at least two years of training after high school in the community colleges or vocational programs are working on the job in a training program, tended to get jobs where their incomes went up. Those who dropped out of high school or graduated from high school but went no further got jobs where there incomes went down, markedly. Markedly. We owe it to the children of America and to our own economy to establish the linkages necessary between the public school system and the vocational and community college network and the employer community can have a world class apprenticeship system that restores the dignity to blue collar work in this country. We've got to do that. And for those. And for those who do want to go on to college, I say we ought to the doors of college education to everybody. We ought to make access to college universal. Perhaps the most exciting idea that I have propounded in this election in terms of how it might effect other people's lives has been my notion of a national trust fund...kind of a domestic Peace Corp..out of which anybody can borrow the money to go to college and then pay it back with two years of a service to our country here at home. Think about it. Everybody. Everybody could borrow the money and pay it back... as police officers, as nurses, as teachers working with kids in trouble. I mean we can solve the domestic problems of America with the brightest of our young people and educate a whole generation of American. People could began to think of college as a right. And you can start telling kids in the fifth grade in the sixth grade, in the seventh grade, in the eight grade, hang in there, looks what ahead for you. You can have a future. Do this. It can be yours. We could really, profoundly change the attitudes of our young people. We could restore hope to millions of children who can not even imagine the life that we want them to live now. And I want you to support that. Last point I want to make about that, is if we really want to raise per capita income in America in a hurry, quickest and cheapest thing we could do is teach every American with a job to read and give every American with a job a chance to get a GED. (Inaudible....) You would raise the per capita income in the country You would raise the productivity of the work force. WE have invested an enormous amount of money in that in my state. I have only two point four million people in Arkansas and it does border Texas but it's not between Oklahoma and Texas. And we now spend as much money on adult education as Texas does because its money well spent. And I know its beyond the (inaudible..) education but it will lift the productivity of the country as well as restoring dignity and esteem to millions of American workers. Now let me say that, that's my agenda....if you embrace the agenda. And you know that and I know that and we're going to have a wonderful time if I win this election....even when we debate and disagree we're going to have a good time because you're going to know that everyday I'm going to get up with a burning desire to improve education in America. But that's what I care about. But one of the challenges we're all going to have in this election, and this is what I want you to think about as I close is to get over the enormous dimensions of skepticisims, cynicisms, and disbelief that exist in this country. There are so many people out there who live in your school districts, who basically don't think things can't be better. Isn't that right? And who are going to be very vulnerable to candidates who play on their fears instead of their hopes, who try to puncture any agenda that really offers the prospect of change. Let me tell you something, I've worked for a dozen years in my state. When we put in those new standards, we became the first state for example, that required eighth graders to pass an exam to go onto to high school, they said, "Boy, this'll balloon your drop-out rate." Guess what? The drop-out rate went down and we got the highest graduate rate in the region. I know we can make a difference. I've seen the college-going rate go up by thirty-five percent. I've seen just by scratching and clawing a poor state like ours, we're fifth in the country now in the ratio of computer to kids in the public schools. I have seen the enrollment in foreign languages and computer science triple, advance mathematics, triple, physics and chemistry go up. I know change can occur. And what I want to ask you to do, cause I know how easy it is for teachers to get- burn out and beat-down and ground-down and come to these meeting and wonder what's going to happen to help me just get through tomorrow. What's going to help me to feed my children? What's going to happen to help me educate my children? I know how easy it is for all of us to be so ground-down and so defensive that we just look right here, just in this far in front, of our noses. I want to ask you to leave this convention today with a commitment to go back home and talk to your friends and neighbors who aren't teachers about the possibility of change in America. I don't care what these polls say today. What these polls mean that people long for change. They ache to believe in America again. But you know what's going to happen. Down in Houston--at that Republican Convention, they're going to say, "If you elect Bill Clinton and Al Gore, those two kids are crazy. They're going to tax all your income away. They're going to take your guns away. They're going to stump on traditional American values." Oh I know, "They're from Tennessee and Arkansas, but they're just great fakers, they're hiding their true feeling for twenty years, waiting for this moment when they can burst upon the American, political seen and crush the traditional values under some left wing radical scheme of theirs. They're just be hiding." You know that's what they're going to do in Houston, Don't you? It'll be ridiculous. You know, its kind of funny. They don't even know what to say. They just got to say their same old deal, they're too liberals too(inaudible...) But,the American people, if they do not believe that things can not be better. If they will not permit themselves to hope, then they will be vulnerable to the fear tactics. I talked yesterday at the Southern Legislative Conference about this and Mr. Bush said my health care plan had the compassion of the KGB and the competence of the House Post Office. You know as a politician, I appreciate a good speech line, and that's a good one. But it's just full of bull. And, But, I'm telling you, they're a lot of Americans you can not imagine we could have an affordable health care system that covers everybody but other country's do it and I don't think we're dumber than everybody else in the world. I think we can do it. Don't kid yourself. There are a lot of Americans who have never been in any inner city schools, that works. They can not imagine that poor children, that African-American children and Hispanic children and that other minority children can really learn, can master the complexities of modern life, can go on to win Nobel Prizes, can lift this country up. They don't belief that and I'm telling you, if you really want to do something to help the Clinton/Gore Ticket prevail in November, you go home and tell people progress is possible. You go home and make sure you believe progress is possible because on election day if the American people believe that we can do better, we will win. That's what I want you to do. Thank you. And God Bless you all.