Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/004a/telcoma1.zip/AM20001.TXT

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                     U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

                             AMERICA 2000

                         AN EDUCATION STRATEGY

                       "...making this land all
                          that it should be."

                         President George Bush

A MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY

On April 18, 1991, President Bush released AMERICA 2000: An Education
Strategy. It is a bold, complex, and long-range plan to move every
community in America toward the national education goals adopted by the
president and the governors last year.

This sourcebook is a collection of documents that together offer a
comprehensive description of AMERICA 2000. Also included in it are the
national education goals and the joint statement from the historic
Charlottesville education summit.

In his address to the nation, reprinted in the pages that follow, the
president offers a striking vision for our schools. He challenges us
all to join him in a populist crusade to make America ─ community by
community, school by school─all that it should be.

Lamar Alexander
Secretary of Education


                Contents

             President's Remarks

             AMERICA 2000

             I.      For Today's Students:
                        Better and More Accountable Schools

             II.     For Tomorrow's Students:
                        A New Generation of American Schools

             III.    For the Rest of Us
                        (Yesterday's Students /Today's
                        Work Force): A Nation of Students

             IV.     Communities Where Learning
                     Can Happen

             Who Does What?

             Glossary of Key Terms

             Some Questions and Answers

             The President's Education Strategy

             The National Education Goals

             The President's Education Summit:
             Joint Statement


REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT THE PRESENTATION OF THE
NATIONAL EDUCATION STRATEGY

Thank you all for joining us here in the White House today.  Let me
thank the Speaker for being with us, and the Majority Leader, other
distinguished members, committee heads and ranking members and very
important education committees here with us today.  I want to salute
the governors, the educators, the business and the labor leaders, and
especially want to single out the National Teachers of the Year.  I
believe we have 10 of the previous 11 Teachers of the Year with us here
today, and that's most appropriate and most fitting.

But together, all of us, we will underscore the importance of a
challenge destined to define the America that we'll know in the next
century.

For those of you close to my age, the 21st century has always been a
kind of shorthand for the distant future─the place we put our most
far-off hopes and dreams.  And today, that 21st century is racing
toward us─and anyone who wonders what the century will look like can
find the answer in America's classrooms.

Nothing better defines what we are and what we will become than the
education of our children.  To quote the landmark case, Brown v. Board
of Education, "It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected
to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education."

Education has always meant opportunity.  Today, education determines
not just which students will succeed, but also which nations will
thrive in a world united in pursuit of freedom in enterprise.  Think
about the changes transforming our world.  The collapse of communism
and the Cold War.  The advent and acceleration of the Information Age.
Down through history, we've defined resources as soil and stones, land
and the riches buried beneath.  No more.  Our greatest national
resource lies within ourselves─our intelligence, ingenuity─the capacity
of the human mind.

Nations that nurture ideas will move forward in years to come.  Nations
that stick to stale old notions and ideologies will falter and fail.
So I'm here today to say, America will move forward.  The time for all
the reports and rankings, for all the studies and the surveys about
what's wrong in our schools is passed.  If we want to keep America
competitive in the coming century, we must stop convening panels to
report on ourselves.  We must stop convening panels that report the
obvious.  And we must accept responsibility for educating everyone
among us, regardless of background or disability.

If we want America to remain a leader, a force for good in the world,
we must lead the way in educational innovation.  And if we want to
combat crime and drug abuse, if we want to create hope and opportunity
in the bleak corners of this country where there is now nothing but
defeat and despair, we must dispel the darkness with the enlightenment
that a sound and well-rounded education provides.

Think about every problem, every challenge we face.  The solution to
each starts with education.  For the sake of the future, of our
children and of the nation's, we must transform America's schools.  The
days of the status quo are over.

Across this country, people have started to transform the American
school.  They know that the time for talk is over.  Their slogan is:
Don't dither, just do it.  Let's push the reform effort forward.  Use
each experiment, each advance to build for the next American century.
New schools for a new world.

As a first step in this strategy, we must challenge not only the
methods and the means that we've used in the past, but also the
yardsticks that we've used to measure our progress.  Let's stop trying
to measure progress in terms of money spent.

We spend 33 percent more per pupil in 1991 than we did in 1981─33
percent more in real, constant dollars─and I don't think there's a
person anywhere who would say─anywhere in the country─who would say
that we've seen a 33 percent improvement in our schools' performance.

Dollar bills don't educate students.  Education depends on committed
communities determined to be places where learning will flourish;
committed teachers, free from the noneducational burdens; committed
parents, determined to support excellence; committed students, excited
about school and learning.  To those who want to see real improvement
in American education, I say:  There will be no renaissance without
revolution.

We who would be revolutionaries must accept responsibilities for our
schools.  For too long, we've adopted a "no fault" approach to
education.  Someone else is always to blame. And while we point fingers
out there, trying to assign blame, the students suffer.  There's no
place for a no-fault attitude in our schools.  It's time we held our
schools─and ourselves─accountable for results.

Until now, we've treated education like a manufacturing process,
assuming that if the gauges seemed right, if we had good pay scales,
the right pupil-teacher ratios, good students would just pop out of our
schools.  It's time to turn things around─to focus on students, to set
standards for our schools─and let teachers and principals figure out
how best to meet them.

We've made a good beginning by setting the nation's sights on six
ambitious national education goals─and setting for our target the year
2000.  Our goals have been forged in partnership  with the nation's
governors, several of whom are with us here today in the East Room.
And those who have taken a leadership role are well-known to everyone
in this room.  And for those who need a refresher course─there may be a
quiz later on─let me list those goals right now.

By 2000, we've got to, first, ensure that every child starts school
ready to learn; second one, raise the high school graduation rate to 90
percent; the third one, ensure that each American student leaving the
4th, 8th and 12th grades can demonstrate competence in core subjects;
four, make our students first in the world in math and science
achievements; fifth, ensure that every American adult is literate and
has the skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise
the rights and responsibilities of citizenship; and sixth, liberate
every American school from drugs and violence so that schools encourage
learning.

Our strategy to meet these noble national goals is founded in common
sense and common values.  It's ambitious and, yet, with hard work, it's
within our reach.  And I can outline our strategy in one paragraph, and
here it is:

For today's students, we must make existing schools better and more
accountable.  For tomorrow's students, the next generation, we must
create a New Generation of American Schools.  For all of us, for the
adults who think our school days are over, we've got to become a Nation
of Students─recognize learning is a lifelong process.  Finally, outside
our schools we must cultivate communities where learning can happen.
That's our strategy.

People who want Washington to solve our educational problems are
missing the point.  We can lend appropriate help through such programs
as Head Start.  But what happens here in Washington won't matter half
as much as what happens in each school, each local community and, yes,
in each home.  Still, the federal government will serve as a catalyst
for change in several important ways.

Working closely with the governors, we will define new World Class
Standards for schools, teachers and students  in the five core
subjects:  math and science, English, history and geography.

We will develop voluntary─let me repeat it─we will develop voluntary
national tests for 4th, 8th and 12 graders in the five core subjects.
These American Achievement Tests will tell parents and educators,
politicians and employers, just how well our schools are doing.  I'm
determined to have the first of these tests for 4th graders in place by
the time that school starts in September of 1993.  And for high school
seniors, let's add another incentive─a distinction sure to attract
attention of colleges and companies in every community across the
country─a Presidential Citation to students who excel on the 12th grade
test.

We can encourage educational excellence by encouraging parental choice.

The concept of choice draws its fundamental strength from the principle
at the very heart of the democratic idea.  Every adult American has the
right to vote, the right to decide where to work, where to live.  It's
time parents were free to choose the schools that their children
attend.  This approach will create the competitive climate that
stimulates excellence in our private and parochial schools as well.

But the centerpiece of our National Education Strategy is not a
program, it's not a test.  It's a new challenge:  to reinvent American
education─to design New American Schools for the year 2000 and beyond.

The idea is simple but powerful:  Put America's special genius for
invention to work for America's schools.  I will challenge communities
to become what we will call AMERICA 2000 Communities.  Governors will
honor communities with this designation if the communities embrace the
national education goals, create local strategies for reaching these
goals, devise report cards for measuring progress, and agree to
encourage and support one of the new generation of America's Schools.

We must also foster educational innovation.  I'm delighted to announce
today that America's business leaders, under the chairmanship of Paul
O'Neill, will create the New American Schools Development Corporation─a
private-sector research and development fund of at least $150 million
to generate innovation in education.

This fund offers an open-end challenge to the dreamers and the doers
eager to reinvent─eager to reinvigorate our schools.  With the results
of this R & D in hand, I will urge Congress to provide $1 million in
start-up funds for each of the 535 New American Schools─at least one in
every congressional district─and have them up and running by 1996.

The New American Schools must be more than rooms full of children
seated at computers.  If we mean to prepare our children for life,
classrooms also must cultivate values and good character, give real
meaning to right and wrong.

We ask only two things of these architects of our New American Schools:
that their students meet the new national standards for the five core
subjects and that outside of the costs of the initial research and
development, the schools operate on a budget comparable to conventional
schools.  The architects of the New American Schools should break the
mold.  Build for the next century.  Reinvent─literally start from
scratch and reinvent the American school.  No question should be off
limits, no answers automatically assumed.  We're not after one single
solution for every school.  We're interested in finding every way to
make schools better.

There's a special place in inventing the New American School for the
corporate community, for business and labor.  And I invite you to work
with us not simply to transform our schools, but to transform every
American adult into a student.

Fortunately, we have a secret weapon in America's system of colleges
and universities─the finest in the entire world.  The corporate
community can take the lead by creating a voluntary private system of
World Class Standards for the workplace.  Employers should set up skill
centers where workers can seek advice and learn new skills.  But most
importantly, every company and every labor union must bring the worker
into the classroom and bring the classroom into the workplace.

We'll encourage every federal agency to do the same.  And to prove no
one's ever too old to learn, Lamar, with his indefatigable
determination and leadership, has convinced me to become a student
again myself.  Starting next week, I'll begin studying.  And I want to
know how to operate a computer.  Very candidly─I don't expect this new
tutorial to teach me how to set the clock on the VCR or anything
complicated.  But I want to be computer literate, and I'm not.  There's
a lot of kids, thank God, that are.  And I want to learn, and I will.

The workplace isn't the only place we must improve opportunities for
education.  Across this nation, we must cultivate communities where
children can learn.  Communities where the school is more than a
refuge, more than a solitary island of calm amid chaos.  Where the
school is the living center of a community where people care─people
care for each other and their futures.  Not just in the school but in
the neighborhood.  Not just in the classroom, but in the home.

Our challenge amounts to nothing less than a revolution in American
education.  A battle for our future.  And now, I ask all Americans to
be points of light in the crusade that counts the most: the crusade to
prepare our children and ourselves for the exciting future that looms
ahead.

What I've spoken about this afternoon are the broad strokes of this
National Education Strategy.  Accountable schools for today, a new
generation of schools for tomorrow.  A nation of students committed to
a lifetime of learning and communities where all our children can
learn.

There are four people here today who symbolize each element of this
strategy and point the way forward for our reforms.  Esteban Pagan,
Steve, an award winning eighth grade student in science and history at
East Harlem Tech, a choice school.

Mike Hopkins.  "Lead Teacher" in the Saturn School in St. Paul,
Minnesota, where teachers have already helped reinvent the American
school.

David Kelley.  A high-tech troubleshooter at the Michelin Tire plant in
Greenville, South Carolina.  David has spent the equivalent of one full
year of his four years at Michelin back at his college expanding his
skills.

Finally, Michelle Moore, of Missouri.  A single mother, active in
Missouri's Parents as Teachers program.  She wants her year-old son,
Alston, to arrive for his first day of school ready to learn.

So, to sum it up, for these four people and for all the others like
them, the revolution in American education has already begun.  Now I
ask all Americans to be points of light in the crusade that counts the
most: the crusade to prepare our children and ourselves for the
exciting future that looms ahead.  At any moment in every mind, the
miracle of learning beckons us all.

Between now and the year 2000, there is not one moment or one miracle
to waste.

Thank you all.  Thank you for your interest, for your dedication.  And
may God bless the United States of America.  Thank you very much.