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I am so pleased to join all of you here in Washington, and the many teachers and educators who are with us from around the country at different downlink sites. Terry has told me that there are over 250 downlink sites for this opening session which gives you some sense of the depth of your commitment.
All of you could be home with your loved ones on a Sunday taking a well deserved rest but here you are -- and that, I think, is surely a testimony to your love of learning and love of the children you teach.
I want to thank Terry Dozier for her kindness and enthusiasm in introducing me. I have known Terry for a good while now. We both hail from South Carolina. I want to ask you to join me in congratulating Terry for passing her final oral exam last week, the final step she had to take before receiving her Ph.D. in education.
Now, Terry will tell you that when she first came to Washington and started being my "reality check" in meetings, that she sometimes got a case of nerves. I want to assure you that those days are over.
Terry Dozier makes sure that everybody keeps their feet on the ground when it comes to developing educational policy. Terry is the voice of the classroom teacher, the voice of common sense, and I assure you a very strong voice when it comes to developing our nation's education policy. I am so pleased to have Terry on my staff as a senior advisor.
Now, Terry is not the only person who helps me keep my feet on the ground. As Terry said, I do a lot of flying. I have been in 31 states this year, and I do get to meet with a great many teachers, parents, and students. The story I am going to tell you is a true story.
This summer our Family Involvement Partnership began a national reading initiative. It was a great success including over 400,000 young people and 100,000 volunteers.
You see, Terry isn't the only person who makes sure that I keep my feet on the ground. And that is fine with me because the only way we can move forward together is to speak directly to the issues that confront American education. And that is what I want to do today.
If I have one message for you, it is simply this -- improving American education will only take place when you, as teachers, stop being objects of reform, and instead, become partners in reform and leaders in reform.
As teachers, you need to find your public voice. You need to speak out on behalf of American education. And we need you at the table when people come together to decide the future of American education.
Everywhere I go, there is an enormous amount of energy that is starting to make a difference when it comes to education. Your meeting here is a wonderful example of this energy. But it must be focused energy, energy that is harnessed from all parts of the community.
President Clinton may have said it best a few weeks ago when he was talking about the difference between a crowd and a community. A crowd, he said, "is a group of people that occupies the same piece of land, but really has no particular connection to one another. So they elbow and shove and go to and fro until the strongest win and the others are left behind."
"A community," he went on, "is a group of people who occupy the same piece of land, and recognize their obligation to each other; people who believe they're going up or down together; people who believe they should help protect children and do honor to the elderly; people who believe in freedom and responsibility; people who believe that we have an obligation to find common ground..."
Now that is your President talking and I believe that he has it about right. But for a "crowd" to become a "community," it must have leaders. And I believe that you have a special leadership role in the process of improving American education.
You know what is going on from firsthand experience. More importantly, you have something to offer that we need. For twelve years now, good people like you have been planting seeds for excellence. It started when Ted Bell released the very important report, "A Nation At Risk," and it has been going on ever since.
There have been a lot of peaks and valleys in this effort. And too often the pundits -- people who do a lot of writing and talking about education but never seem to visit your classrooms - - have written off American education. But you haven't. I haven't. And I assure you, the President of the United States is not about to write off American education either.
We have a long way to go before we can say honestly to the American people that every child is getting a quality education of high standards that they deserve. But, at the same time, we need to recognize what we have achieved, learn from our mistakes, set our sights high, and get on with the business of rolling up our sleeves and improving American education.
Let's first recognize the progress that we have made. SAT scores are up and many more students are taking the tougher core courses that prepare them for college. As a result, the national scores in math and science have gone up one full grade. And many more high school graduates are going directly on to college, an increase of 13 percent since 1980.
Young people are getting the message about the importance of education. But we still have a very long way to go. We are just turning the corner and we're not where we need to be when it comes to giving every child a first class education.
We also need to learn from our mistakes. Too often education reform has been driven by the experts, the consultants, and top- down leadership -- serious minded and dedicated people to be sure -- but a leadership too often disconnected from your day-to-day struggles in the classroom. This is the wrong way to go about getting things done. As I said, teachers became objects of reform instead of leaders of reform. We need to change this type of thinking, and this is one of the clear purposes of this conference.
A second mistake is the disconnection between parents and educators. If teachers have been forgotten participants in the process of reform, well then, parents are in the same boat as well, and a lot farther back. This, also, simply has to change.
Deborah Wadsworth from Public Agenda, who will be speaking to you later on in this conference, has released a very revealing report about what parents and other Americans are thinking when it comes to American education. I want to urge you to listen carefully to what she has to say and take note of several findings.
The first finding is that, while the American people have deep misgivings about the progress of American education, they do not have misgivings about you as teachers. They believe in the American teacher. They believe that you are dedicated, hard working, and doing all you can for the good of their children despite the odds.
A few weeks ago, I met a wonderful teacher who was receiving a very high award. The ceremony was wonderful and the teacher truly deserved the many accolades that were given him that night. But what struck me was what he said when he got up to receive the award. He told the audience quite simply, that "every teacher is a good teacher." And how right he is. The word "teacher" means "good teacher."
A few days later, I was visiting with Steven Spielberg, the movie director, who is using his considerable talent to document the stories of the remaining survivors of the Holocaust. As we talked, he told me about the three teachers who had played a crucial role in shaping his life.
Steven Spielberg's continued admiration for those three teachers reminds me of what the author Pat Conroy recently wrote in his new novel, Beach Music -- "A compassionate teacher," his chief character said, "can lead a person to do anything -- anything at all."
This is one very clear reason why it is so important for you, as teachers, to find your public voice, to move from the sidelines to the center of the ongoing debate about education. You have the trust of the American people and they need your leadership.
A second finding that Deborah Wadsworth points out in her study is that the American people remain very "unsettled" and "confused" about the future of public education in America. They want public education to work but they are deeply skeptical that it can when it comes down to the specifics. As the report notes, "the status quo in public schooling is unlikely to be acceptable to most Americans forever." We are being put on notice that it is time to get the job done, time to stop debating, time to start producing results.
Some of you may instinctively respond that schools can't do it alone. And you're right. Parents have got to re-connect to the learning process, and every element of a community -- the business, civic and religious leadership -- has to be part of a common effort to improve education. This is why Goals 2000 was set up the way it was, to involve everybody.
But to make that happen, you are simply going to have to find your public voice and take a strong leadership role in the process of improving American education. And there has to be a special urgency to your effort. In 1997 we will have more young people going to our schools than at any time in the history of the country -- 53 million. Demographers call this a "baby boom echo." We will actually surpass the record set by some of you baby-boomers back in 1971.
Our high schools are going to be a lot more crowded. Those of you from California -- and I'm sure in other states as well -- know firsthand what I mean. You are already feeling the pressure of crowded classrooms.
So this is no time to retreat from our commitment to excellence for all of our young people -- and I mean all of them. If ever there was a time to have a great era of American education -- it is now. If ever there was a time to make education a national priority for all the young people -- it is now.
This is why President Clinton is so committed to investing in education. If you want to cut the national deficit, as the President so often says, start by eliminating the education deficit. Put children first.
If you raise the education level of the American people, they'll find a way to keep this country moving forward. And that's what we have been trying to do by supporting grassroots initiatives through Goals 2000.
People often ask me what Goals 2000 is all about -- why we are so committed to supporting it. And the answer I give them is simply this -- Goals 2000 is the extra money that schools never get to improve themselves in order to reach for excellence. Goals 2000 is the improvement money that allows a school to reach out to the community so that the entire community can come together for the good of all of its children.
Whether you use these dollars to get computers into the classroom -- whether you use Goals 2000 for quality professional development -- or whether you use it to get more parents involved -- that's your choice. And that's what makes Goals 2000 distinctive. It is a program that gives learning communities something they almost never have -- the opportunity to come together, to think ahead, to be creative, and make those connections that will restore public trust to the progress of American education.
You would think that Goals 2000, with all of its flexibility and commitment to bottom-up reform, would not be a political football. Unfortunately, there are some people out there who simply won't believe that you can create a program that has no regulations like Goals 2000 -- that insures flexibility and creativity.
Now every American citizen has a right to have their say. You have every right as a citizen to take exception, and all of us who are public officials need to respect the concerns of all Americans. Sometimes, however, I get blamed for everything from the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, to the death of Elvis, to last year's baseball strike ... and sometimes Goals 2000 gets the same treatment.
I believe that the attacks on Goals 2000 are one part myth, one part misinformation, and one part politics. At the extreme, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out in a front page story, Goals 2000 is depicted as a United Nations cabal, and through immunization shots, the U.N. was into mind control over our children, and even a plot to take children from families who had certain guns in their homes.
All this is a little much. Here we are in the middle of an extraordinary era of new knowledge and information -- and public leaders (who should know better) are listening to people who would lead us backwards to an age of ignorance. And this has real and immediate consequences.
Right now, for example, California is eligible to spend $42 million in second year Goals 2000 money. Money for professional development, for schoolwide computer networks, for good reading programs, and for the creation of parent resource centers and the like, in 1,600 different schools. But California schools can't get this money until Governor Wilson gives the green light and he hasn't yet because of all this misinformation out there.
So we really do need to hear your public voice loud and clear to help us get the message out about what Goals 2000 can really do in the long run for American education. And we need to hear your public voice here in Washington as well. For a great debate is shaping up in Washington about the future of American education. The new Congressional leadership, including Speaker Newt Gingrich, wants to cut back on education.
I don't understand this type of thinking. It is short-sighted, a sort of "green eye shade" mentality. The House Republicans, for example, want education to take a $3.8 billion budget cut next year. Now that's hard to believe, but true. Cuts in Head Start. Cuts in the school lunch program. A $1.1 billion cut in Title I funding. Cuts in our Safe and Drug Free Schools program and cuts in our efforts to get technology into the classroom.
They also want to cut $5 billion from college student loans. It seems sort of shabby to me that members of Congress who got to go to college with the help of student loans -- who were able to go on to law school or to get Ph.D.'s with help from Washington -- now want to pull up the ladder behind them.
Over the course of seven years, the new Congressional leadership wants to reduce federal support for education by $36 billion. This stands in sharp contrast to the President's plan to balance the budget while investing $40 billion in education.
This is why the President is so determined to hold the line when it comes to the current budget negotiations. The Congress is going too far and that's bad for children. I simply don't see how you plant seeds for the future by cutting back on education today. And it saddens me that the historic bipartisan commitment to education is rapidly being frayed. We always need to remember that we are not raising our children as Republicans, Democrats, or Independents, but as Americans ... the future of our country.
Now we must balance the budget. We have made a good start by cutting the deficit from around $300 billion down to around $160 billion. America really does need to continue to get her house in order. But we must balance the budget by always putting children first -- by putting education first. Our young people did not run up the deficit. And they should not pay for it with their education.
So I want to close now by urging you again to find your public voice. With so many Americans unsettled about the future of American education, and with the Congress led by leaders who do not see the long term value of education, we are going to be hard-pressed to move forward unless you find your public voice.
I want to encourage you, then, to go forward, to recognize that the power to help the great cause of education is here in this room with all of you. For you define, in so many ways, that which is best about America -- you honor learning and seek to cultivate the learning process. You plant the seeds. In that spirit, I want to close now with the words of a country and western song by Kathy Mattea.
I come from South Carolina and I grew up on country music. Last Christmas my children gave me a new C.D., just after Tunky and I had gotten used to using tapes. Now I have two C.D.'s. Kathy Mattea is one of my favorite singers. The song is called "Seeds" and it goes like this.
"Sometimes I stop on my way home, and watch the children play,
And I wonder if they wonder what they'll be someday.
Some will dream big dreams and make it all come true,
And others will go on dreaming things they'll never do.We're all just seeds in God's hand.
We start the same -- but where we land
It's sometimes fertile soil and sometimes sand.
We're all just seeds in God's hand."
It seems to me that the children we are educating all across the country are the seeds of greatness for this great country of ours. Some of them land in rocky soil, others land by the weeds, and sometimes even in the weeds, and still others land in fertile soil. But, to my mind, they all have potential. They all are important.
Our task, then, is to help all of them grow wherever they land ... to give them a sense of hope and purpose for the coming times. And if we have high expectations for all of them, I am sure we can help them grow up straight and tall. For here in America in 1995, there should be no weeds in the gardens of our schools.
Thank you.
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