A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

                            ************                              REMARKS OF                           RICHARD W. RILEY                      U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION                      ***************************           EDUCATION ISSUES BEFORE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC - 1994             GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC                      Thursday, October 13, 1994

The election cycle is now upon us and voters who are looking for answers are beginning the arduous task of sifting through the many campaign ads to find common sense and good solutions.

This isn't very easy. So many of the ads seem to be drumming on the negative. It's a sorry way to look at the world and then we wonder why the American people get to feeling so low, like they just ought to go out and kick the dog for no good reason at all.

You look at the political ads and all you see are attack ads, cell doors slamming and sirens wailing. You listen to the radio talk shows and America -- a nation with real problems but so much goodness to it -- is just about always written off as a nation near a sudden state of collapse.

Now, our country has its problems and I won't make light of them. But if the only way to get a rise out of the American people is to get caught up in this cynical, negative, political dog-eat-dog attitude -- well, in my opinion, we aren't going to get where we need to go as a country. There isn't going to be much left to our ideals.

I believe that we need to challenge the American people instead of beating them down. Let's quit only drumming the negative. We Americans can lose our focus and get hoodwinked by the slick commercial, but by and large we are a thinking people with a good nose for what is important and what is not.

So I want to urge all the candidates to be a little more high minded -- to stop packaging people's fears and frustrations into 30-second sound bites. And I urge all of us who are in the business of education, public service, and politics to go out and challenge the American people with some practical, positive solutions.

Let's also remember that our children and young people are not learning as Democrats or Republicans. They are learning as the Americans who are the future of the Country. Parents are desperately worried about their children's safety, about academic standards, and about how to pay for their children's college education.

So the vital issues that concern you, your parents and the faculty of this university are very close to home -- even if they seem far, far away from the campaign agenda of campaign consultants.

Now, education is not a hot issue when it comes to 30-second attack commercials. And that may be a blessing. Education is a complicated process which takes time, and there are no simple solutions.

If a candidate, Democrat or Republican, tells you that the solution to our education problems is simply more money for teachers or that the only way to get anything done is to support private school vouchers using taxpayer dollars -- I will be the first to tell you that they are both wrong.

There is no panacea when it comes to improving American education. Improving American education is hard, steady work, something that is done day by day, student by student, teacher by teacher, family by family, community by community.

There is no one silver bullet solution -- be it throwing more money at the problem or chipping away at our unique heritage of free public education ... a heritage that has done so much good for generation after generation in this Country.

Public education has always been, and remains to this day, the open door to American success and good citizenship -- the American way to achievement and freedom for all people ... and I mean all of the people.

Many of you here are graduates of public schools, and while there may have been days when you thought you would never survive the experience, you all seem to be turning out all right to me. As I have said many times before -- some of our public schools are excellent, some need to get better, and some schools should not be schools at all. Private and parochial schools are also a very important part of our American fabric of education.

But public education is always on the front line. Public schools all over America are dealing with violence and drug use, family breakup, racial tension, the continuing need for AIDS awareness, and the influx of new immigrants. They are also producing hundreds of thousands of graduates who are making the grade at some of the finest colleges and universities in America, including this one.

So perhaps the first and most fundamental question that the American public should be asking this fall is whether or not each and every candidate for public office -- Republican, Democrat or Independent -- will reaffirm his or her commitment to the basic American tradition of free quality public education.

Will they roll up their sleeves and work with us to make public education better across the board? Our critics say public education is hopelessly broken. They are wrong. I believe that they have simply been swept away by the latest magic bullet of the moment.

Now, I also believe American education cannot stand still. Our schools need to teach the skills for the 21st century using the best technology. They need to show flexibility and be open to good ideas like public school choice, and support parents who believe that character education is important to their children's future.

They may also test new concepts such as charter schools and privatization of some services so long as they are focused on high standards and public accountability, and don't keep out students who may need the most help of all.

Above all, our schools need to recognize that there is a longing for the restoration of standards, a return to excellence at every level of American education. I am, for example, one of the strongest proponents of more time in the school day for the basic core academic curriculum. The national average is now just over 40 percent of the day, and that just isn't good enough. And then we wonder why sales clerks can't make change and why colleges spend millions of dollars every year teaching remedial classes.

So we need to be a lot more tough-minded about how the school day is used -- we need to think creatively about using new technology - - and we need to end the practice -- once and for all -- of permitting young people to just drift through school simply to move them through the system without expectations early on, and without challenge throughout..

At the same time, every child and young person in this country is going to have to learn skills that we didn't even anticipate 10 or 15 years ago. They must be computer-literate, understand how to use the Internet, and -- with skill and confidence -- be able to get on line to the Information Highway.

When I was appointed Secretary of Education by President Clinton, I told people that we needed to stop studying every problem to death and move from being "A Nation at Risk" to "A Nation on the Move." We had bemoaned the fact that we had problems long enough; we needed to start to do something about them.

I said then that we needed to get beyond the status quo of accepting mediocrity for some students -- be they gifted and talented or behind in reading -- and, at the same time, we needed to avoid getting caught up with every new fad of the moment -- like new math in the 1960's and 1970's. For too many years, education has been driven by the latest quick fix and it has never done us any substantial good. We need to recognize that making our schools better has to be done in a meaningful and consistent way. Kids needs to learn how to read and write well to reach the high standards, and they need to be safe. First things first.

So I believe it is so important to lay out for the American people a clear summation of what has been achieved to date and to define what I think are the essential questions that we need to ask ourselves as we approach Election Day.

So what has been accomplished?

I can tell you that in the past 20 months, nine education-related bills were sent to the Congress by President Clinton and eight have been signed into law. And next week, President Clinton will sign number nine -- the $12.7-billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act -- making it nine for nine.

The list is impressive, but it is much more than just a list. It is a coherent package that fits all the pieces together -- that tells the parents of a four-year-old just starting school or the non-traditional student going back to school at age 38 that we have an educational system that can help people learn what they need to learn at each stage of their life. This is what we mean when we talk about creating a way for Americans to be lifelong learners.

Let me describe very quickly these nine initiatives:

1. New funding for and the strengthening of Head Start.
2. The first real funding for taking technology into schools and reshaping the classroom of the future.
3. A national service program for 20,000 young Americans that can help you pay for college, which is already larger than the Peace Corps was at its peak.
4. A redirection of our research arm based on a National Academy of Sciences Report.
5. A new commitment to high standards and excellence with passage of the GOALS 2000 Act. This extraordinary act is centered on state academic standards of excellence, which gives all communities the support to help them reach their standards.
6. The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act, and new money in the Crime Bill to support safe after-school programs. We want the guns out of our schools. We simply aren't going to tolerate a 14- year-old out to prove his manhood by putting other students in harm's way.
7. The seventh bill is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which I already mentioned -- and it is an act that places a great deal of new emphasis on high standards and on giving teachers better training -- and opportunities for real professional development.
8. One of the most exciting things we have done is to pass a School-to-Work initiative that connects what young people are learning to the world of work. We want to jump start young people into thinking about their careers, into entering very demanding apprenticeships, into getting a focus on real life.
9. Finally, we recognize that the burden of paying for a good college education can be overwhelming. College tuition has been on the rise and, at the same time, people need to get their education. But how do we pay for it? We have created a new direct-lending program that will give many more of you the opportunity to pay back what you can afford when you first get out of college.
   You won't get socked with a very large payment schedule the minute that you take off your cap and gown. Now, being responsible to yourselves and your grandchildren means you shouldn't take 30 years to pay it off, either. But the direct-lending program is now operating in 100 colleges -- and next year will be operating in over 1,000. I will also tell you that we will continue to support raising the level of the Pell Grant program, even as we remain tough on defaulters of college loans.

This Congress repeatedly dealt with some of the most important but contentious social issues -- sex education, rights of privacy, student testing, and voluntary school prayer -- and in each and every case this "solid center" of Republicans and Democrats kept its focus on the essentials -- teaching and learning.

All this is to the good. And I believe it is so important to consider what is at stake in passing this broad legislative package and how it will sit with the American people. We hear a lot of talk, unfortunately negative, about the political agenda of this country. So this is a good time to talk about education in the broader public context.

For I believe that passing all this good legislation won't amount to a hill of beans unless we get people thinking differently about how we educate the young people of this Nation and how we share that responsibility. So, I want to raise three essential points.

First, the issue of basic civility and setting an example. I believe there is an enormous desire on the part of the American people to have new rules of public engagement when it comes to how we relate to each other. But we seem, at the moment, to be increasingly stuck in the old politics of fear and narrowness.

What troubles me the most about the current sour mood of American politics is that in its essence -- this dog-eat-dog attitude -- tells us that there are no rules of civic rightness -- no rules of civic discourse. The values that are increasingly defining the "public estate" are just about the direct opposite of the values we want our children to learn. We adults have lowered our own standards. Listen, in contrast, to these words from a pledge that young people take every day at school in Independence, Missouri.

I heard this pledge recited for the first time last Friday at the White House Blue Ribbon School ceremony by Pat Henley, the wonderful principal of Cler-mont Community School. Each morning, these elementary school students say together:

I am the one and only person who has the power to decide what I will be and do. I will accept the consequences for my decisions. I am in charge of my learning and behavior. I will respect the rights of others and will be a credit to myself, my family, my school, and my community.

So what does this mean for those of us who are part of the public dialogue about the future of American education? It seems to me essentially this: we really do need to get beyond the idea that everything in America is the politics of special interests. We need to lower our voices and make sure our schools, as I have said before, do not become an ideological or political battleground.

I know, for example, that there are many conservative-minded Americans who have legitimate questions about the Goals 2000 Act. They are concerned that Goals 2000 will federalize American education.

I may strongly disagree with their belief, but I respect the sincerity of those who hold it. To date, 40 states and territories have already submitted their applications to participate in the Goals 2000 Act. We are off to a strong start. Next year, Goals 2000 will commit 90 percent of all of its funding directly to the local level. We don't need the federal government sending you a FedEx telling you how to manage your schools.

But I want these skeptical parents, these concerned Americans -- many of them religious-minded -- to know that I will always extend myself to hear their point of view. As I travel around the country, I am meeting with parents, religious leaders, educators, business leaders, and others trying to build bridges. I may not be able to persuade them of the rightness of my side, but I will always go more than half way to meet them. They need to be at the table.

I urge these skeptical parents, by the same token, to pull back from making public schools a political football and give the process a fair chance. And I encourage them to actively participate in the school improvement process. Only by participating in the process will they come to understand that high standards are designed to make sure that parents, teachers, and principals stay in control of the process.

Second, violence. Our society is being crippled by violence. When people ask me why I am passionate about education, I tell them one clear reason is that a vast majority of the people in America's prisons are high school dropouts -- minds and lives that are wasted. I believe that education has been and remains the way out of this lifestyle.

I am particularly troubled by the idea that so many young boys in fourth and fifth grades are giving up on life. The American historian, John Hope Franklin, has written extensively about this searing problem. It is "no small wonder" he writes, "that the number of black males in penal institutions is greater then the number of black males in higher education." What a sad and tragic statement. Dr. Franklin, who is African-American, was speaking about the specific problem of young African-American males, but this is not just their problem alone.

This is why the President did not give up on the Crime Bill which includes (in addition to tough enforcement and punishment measures) support for safe after-school programs, and it is why this Administration is committed to high academic standards for all students. About the fastest way I know to create an unthinking, angry 19-year-old dropout who is spiritually numb and heading down the road to violence is to give that young person a watered-down curriculum from first grade on.

This is why we have just announced a major new initiative in conjunction with Howard University here in the District and Johns Hopkins University to begin a five-year, $27.7-million effort to determine just how we can help to put an end to the cycle of student failure among at-risk youth. So for me, improving education is not just an exercise in how we raise test scores. The issue is how do we create, in our time, a positive moral climate that ends the violence, which leads me to my third point.

Young people -- and not just at-risk young people -- are searching for authentic adult connections. Just recently, a very thoughtful college president, Richard Hersh, wrote an article in the "My Turn" column of Newsweek.

He didn't mince words. He said that more and more young people -- his students and mostly middle-class students -- are growing up without direction or any sense of personal sense of responsibility. Why? Because they have "experienced few authentic connections with adults in their lifetime."

It is a rather stunning statement -- "few authentic connections with adults in their lifetime." He went on to write that we have created a "culture of neglect" rather than a "culture of responsibility" for our young people and in doing so we have absolved our young people of "any notion of obligation or responsibility." I suspect that there is a great deal of truth to his assertion.

Too many adults are becoming disconnected from our children and we need to recognize that the responsibility of parenthood is being taken too lightly by too many people, and young people are suffering.

To my mind, it is important to say up front that our schools simply can't fix what parents won't do. And, our schools can't solve problems that a community ignores or allows to fester. Our schools can and often are at the center of the solution, and I have seen many of them first hand, but they cannot be left alone to handle community crisis after community crisis.

We have to stay connected to our children and give up the notion that the television is the good babysitter. Our children shouldn't be growing up in a vacuum without values. This is why I am making such a strong effort to reconnect families to the learning process and encouraging all of us to think through how we find new ways to help parents and other adults to get back into the lives of their children.

For it is my very strong belief that the family is where expectations and attitudes about learning are formed, nurtured and set. To create a "culture of responsibility," we have to start with the family, be it the traditional family, the single parent, the caring grandparent or the stepparent who willingly steps in.

And, if we are going to give the coming generation the best education possible, we need to set our sights high. We need to commit ourselves to high standards, make our schools havens of order and discipline, recognize that teachers are at the heart of our effort to reach for excellence, reconnect the family to learning, and find new, concrete ways to help all of you finance your college and other postsecondary education. That, in a nutshell, has been and remains our education agenda.

As the election comes closer, I urge Americans not to get to caught up in the steady drumbeat of the negative. Recognize that easy solutions are often false solutions and don't solve anything. So if we want to get beyond the sound bites and the negatives we need to start asking political leaders the questions that are on the mind of the American people.

They just aren't talking about the real issues in education. As a parent, grandparent, and U.S. Secretary of Education, I have 10 critical questions that you should demand answers to. This is the essence of our democracy and I urge you to take your citizenship seriously.

Many of you will be the teachers that will have the responsibility of teaching the coming generation of children. I urge you to stay committed to your ideal of teaching. That's the type of service that is so necessary if we want to have a real chance to educate America.

Thank you.