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AMERICA 2000: An Education Strategy

Overview

AMERICA 2000 is a long-term strategy to help make this land all that it
should be─a nine-year crusade to move us toward the six ambitious
national education goals that the president and the governors adopted
in 1990 to close our skills-and-knowledge gap.

The strategy anticipates major change in our 110,000 public and private
schools, change in every American community, change in every American
home, change in our attitude about learning.

This strategy is bold, complex and long-range. It will start quickly,
but results won't come quickly. It will occupy us at least for the rest
of this decade.

It will spur far-reaching changes in weary practices, outmoded
assumptions and long-assumed constraints on education. It will require
us to make some lifestyle changes, too. Yet few elements of this
strategy are unprecedented. Today's best ideas, dedicated education
reforms, impressive innovations and ambitious experiments already point
the way. We already know the direction in which we must go; the AMERICA
2000 strategy will help us get there.

AMERICA 2000 is a national strategy, not a federal program. It honors
local control, relies on local initiative, affirms states and
localities as the senior partners in paying for education and
recognizes the private sector as a vital partner, too. It recognizes
that real education reform happens community by community,  school by
school,  and only when people come to understand what they must do for
themselves and their children and set about to do it.

The federal government's role in this strategy is limited as─wisely─
its part in education always has been. But that role will be played
vigorously. Washington can help by setting standards, highlighting
examples, contributing some funds, providing flexibility in exchange
for accountability and pushing and prodding─then pushing and prodding
some more.

The AMERICA 2000 strategy has four parts that will be pursued
simultaneously. They can be visualized as four giant trains─big enough
for everyone to find a place on board─departing at the same time on
parallel tracks on the long journey to educational excellence. All four
must move swiftly and determinedly if the nation is to reach its
destination:

1.   For today's students, we must radically improve today's schools,
     all 110,000 of them─make them better and more accountable for
     results.

2.   For tomorrow's students, we must invent new schools to meet the
     demands of a new century─a New Generation of American Schools,
     bringing at least 535 of them into existence by 1996 and thousands
     by decade's end.

3.   For those of us already out of school and in the work force, we
     must keep learning if we are to live and work successfully in
     today's world. A "Nation at Risk" must become a "Nation of
     Students."

4.   For schools to succeed, we must look beyond their classrooms to
     our communities and families. Schools will never be much better
     than the commitment of their communities. Each of our communities
     must become a place where learning can happen.

Our vision is of four big trains, moving simultaneously down four
parallel tracks: Better and more accountable schools; a New Generation
of American Schools; a Nation of Students continuing to learn
throughout our lives; and communities where learning can happen.

THE CHALLENGE: AMERICA'S SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE GAP

Eight years after the National Commission on Excellence in Education
declared us a "Nation at Risk," we haven't turned things around in
education. Almost all our education trend lines are flat. Our country
is idling its engines, not knowing enough nor being able to do enough
to make America all that it should be.

Yet we're spending far more money on education. Total spending for
elementary and secondary schools has more than doubled since 1980─while
the number of students has remained about the same. In real terms,
education spending has increased approximately 33 percent more per
public school student. As a nation, we now invest more in education
than in defense. But the results have not improved, and we're not
coming close to our potential or what is needed.

Nor is the rest of the world sitting idly by, waiting for America to
catch up. Serious efforts at education improvement are under way by
most of our international competitors and trading partners. Yet while
we spend as much per student as almost any country in the world,
American students are at or near the back of the pack in international
comparisons. If we don't make radical changes, that is where we are
going to stay.

Meanwhile, our employers cannot hire enough qualified workers. Immense
sums are spent on remedial training, much of it at the college level.
Companies export skilled work-or abandon projects that require it.

Shortcomings are not limited to what today's students are learning in
school. The fact is that close to 85 percent of America's work force in
the year 2000 is already in the work force today. These people are the
products of the same education system.

Perhaps 25 million adults are functionally illiterate. As many as 25
million more adult workers need to update their skills or knowledge.

While more than 4 million adults are taking basic education courses
outside the schools, there is no systematic means of matching training
to needs; no uniform standards measure the skills needed and the skills
learned.

While the age of technology, information and communications rewards
those nations whose people learn new skills to stay ahead, we are still
a nation that groans at the prospect of going back to school.  At best,
we are reluctant students in a world that rewards learning.

And there is one more big problem: Today's young Americans spend barely
9 percent of their first eighteen years in school, on average. What of
the other 91 percent, the portion spent elsewhere─at home, on
playgrounds, in front of the television?

o    For too many of our children, the family that should be their
     protector, advocate and moral anchor is itself in a state of
     deterioration.

o    For too many of our children, such a family never existed.

o    For too many of our children, the neighborhood is a place of
     menace, the street a place of violence.

o    Too many of our children start school unready to meet the
     challenges of learning.

o    Too many of our children arrive at school hungry, unwashed and
     frightened.

o    And other modern plagues touch our children: drug use and alcohol
     abuse, random violence, adolescent pregnancy, AIDS and the rest.

No civil society or compassionate nation can neglect the plight of
these children who are, in almost every case, innocent victims of adult
misbehavior.

But few of those problems are amenable to solution by government alone,
and none by schools alone. Schools are not and cannot be parents,
police, hospitals, welfare agencies or drug treatment centers. They
cannot replace the missing elements in communities and families.

Schools can contribute to the easing of these conditions. They can
sometimes house additional services. They can welcome tutors, mentors
and caring adults. But they cannot do it alone.

At one level, everybody knows this. Yet few Americans think it has much
to do with them. We tend to say that "the nation is at risk, but I'm
okay." Complacency is widespread with regard to one's own school, one's
own children, one's own community.

This leaves us stuck at far too low a level, a level we ought not
tolerate. One of the lessons of the education reform movement of the
1980s was that little headway can be made if few of us see the need to
change our own behavior. Yet few of us can imagine what a really
different education system would look like. Few of us are inclined to
make big changes in familiar institutions and habits.

Until last year, few could even describe our education goals. As a
nation, we didn't really have any.

In 1990, the president and the governors adopted six ambitious
education goals.  AMERICA 2000 is a strategy to achieve them.

AMERICA'S EDUCATION GOALS

By the year 2000:

1.   All children in America will start school ready to learn.

2.   The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90
     percent.

3.   American students will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having
     demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including
     English, mathematics, science, history, and geography; and every
     school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their
     minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship,
     further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.

4.   U.S. students will be first in the world in science and
     mathematics achievement.

5.   Every adult American will be literate and will possess the
     knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and
     exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

6.   Every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and
     will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.

The four-part AMERICA 2000 Education Strategy will enable us to achieve
these goals.

I.   FOR TODAY'S STUDENTS: BETTER AND MORE ACCOUNTABLE SCHOOLS

Goals served:       All six, but especially #2 (90 percent graduate
                    from high school), #3 (competence in core
                    subjects) and  #4 (first in the world in science
                    and mathematics).

Strategy: Through a 15-point accountability package, parents, teachers,
schools and communities will be encouraged to measure results, compare
results and insist on change when the results aren't good enough.

Specifics:
World Class Standards:  Standards will be developed, in conjunction
with the National Education Goals Panel.  These World Class
Standards─for each of the five core subjects─will represent what young
Americans need to know and be able to do if they are to live and work
successfully in today's world. These standards will incorporate both
knowledge and skills, to ensure that, when they leave school, young
Americans are prepared for further study and the work force.

American Achievement Tests: In conjunction with the National Education
Goals Panel, a new (voluntary) nationwide examination system will be
developed, based on the five core subjects, tied to the World Class
Standards. These tests will be designed to foster good teaching and
learning as well as to monitor student progress.

Encouragement to use the tests:  Colleges will be urged to use the
American Achievement Tests in admissions; employers will be urged to
pay attention to them in hiring.

Presidential Citations for Educational Excellence: Citations will be
awarded to high school students who do well on American Achievement
Tests.  Until those tests become available, Presidential Citations for
Educational Excellence will be awarded based on Advanced Placement
tests.

Presidential Achievement Scholarships: Once enacted by Congress, these
scholarships will reward academic excellence among needy college and
university students.

Report Cards on results:  More than reports to parents on how their
children are doing, these report cards will also provide clear (and
comparable) public information on how schools, school districts and
states are doing, as well as the entire nation. The national and state
report cards will be prepared in conjunction with the National
Education Goals Panel.

Report Card data collection: Congress will be asked to authorize the
National Assessment of Educational Progress regularly to collect
state-level data in grades four, eight and twelve in all five core
subjects, beginning in 1994. Congress will also be asked to permit the
use of National Assessment tests at district and school levels by
states that wish to do so.

Choice: If standards, tests and report cards tell parents and voters
how their schools are doing, choice gives them the leverage to act.
Such choices should include all schools that serve the public and are
accountable to public authority, regardless of who runs them. New
incentives will be provided to states and localities to adopt
comprehensive choice policies, and the largest federal school aid
program (Chapter 1) will be revised to ensure that federal dollars
follow the child, to whatever extent state and local policies permit.

The school as the site of reform: Because real education improvement
happens school by school, the teachers, principals and parents in each
school must be given the authority─and the responsibility─to make
important decisions about how the school will operate. Federal and
state red tape that gets in the way needs to be cut. States will be
encouraged to allow the leadership of individual schools to make
decisions about how resources are used, and Congress will be asked to
enact Education Flexibility legislation to remove federal constraints
that impede the ability of states to spend education resources most
effectively to raise achievement levels. The Business Roundtable, the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other private groups representing the
private sector are to be commended─and encouraged─in their important
efforts to create state and local policy environments in which
school-by-school reform can succeed.

Merit Schools Program: Individual schools that make notable progress
toward the national education goals deserve to be rewarded. Congress
will be asked to enact a new program that will provide federal funds to
states that can be used as rewards for such progress.

Governors' Academies for School Leaders: Academies will be established
with federal seed money, so that principals and other leaders in every
state will be able to make their schools better and more accountable.

Governors' Academies for Teachers: Academies will also be established
with federal seed money, so that teachers of the five core subjects in
every state will be ready to help their students attain the World Class
Standards and pass the American Achievement Tests.

Differential pay for teachers:  Differential pay will be encouraged for
those who teach well, who teach core subjects, who teach in dangerous
and challenging settings or who serve as mentors for new teachers.

Alternative teacher and principal certification:  Congress will be
asked to make grants available to states and districts to develop
alternative certification systems for teachers and principals.  New
college graduates and others seeking a career change into teaching or
school leadership are often frustrated by certification requirements
unrelated to subject area knowledge or leadership ability.  This
initiative will help states and districts to develop means by which
individuals with an interest in teaching and school leadership can
overcome these barriers.

Honor teachers: The federal government will honor and reward
outstanding teachers in all five of the core subjects with Presidential
Awards for Excellence in Education.

II.  FOR TOMORROW'S STUDENTS: A NEW GENERATION OF AMERICAN SCHOOLS

Goals served:  All six. In fact, they are the principal
               standards against which every New
               American School will be measured.

Strategy:
We will unleash America's creative genius to invent and establish a New
Generation of American Schools, one by one, community by community.
These will be the best schools in the world, schools that enable their
students to reach the national education goals, to achieve a quantum
leap in learning and to help make America all that it should be.

A number of excellent projects and inspired initiatives already point
the way. These include Washington State's Schools for the 21st Century,
Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, James Comer's School
Development Program, Henry Levin's Accelerated Schools, RJR Nabisco's
Next Century Schools, the Saturn School of Tomorrow in St. Paul and
other commendable efforts.

But this strategy goes beyond what these pioneers have begun. It
enlists communities─aided by the best research and development the
nation is capable of─in devising their own plans to break the mold and
create their own one-of-a-kind high-performance schools. It relies on
clear, rigorous measures of success─the World Class Standards and
American Achievement Tests discussed under Part I.  The goal is to
bring at least 535 such schools into existence by 1996. And it calls on
leaders at all levels to join in this effort.

Specifics:
Research and development: America's business leaders will establish─and
muster the private resources for─the New American Schools Development
Corporation, a new nonprofit organization that will award contracts in
1992 to three to seven R & D Teams. These Teams may consist of
corporations, universities, think tanks, school innovators, management
consultants and others. The president will ask his Education Policy
Advisory Committee, as well as the Department of Education, to examine
the work of these R & D Teams (and similar break-the-mold school reform
efforts), and to report regularly on their progress to him and to the
American people.

New American Schools: The mission of the R & D Teams is to help
communities create schools that will reach the national education
goals, including World Class Standards (in all five core subjects) for
all students, as monitored by the American Achievement Tests and
similar measures. Once the R & D is complete and the schools are
launched, the operating costs of the New American Schools will be about
the same as those of conventional schools.

Breaking the Mold: The R & D Teams─and the communities and states with
which they work─can be expected to set aside all traditional
assumptions about schooling and all the constraints that conventional
schools work under. They will naturally need to consider the policy
environment within which schools can thrive. Time, space, staffing and
other resources in these new schools may be used in ways yet to be
imagined. Some schools may make extensive use of computers, distance
learning, interactive videodiscs and other modern tools. Some may
radically alter the customary modes of teaching and learning and
redesign the human relationships and organizational structures of the
school. Whatever their approach, all New American Schools will be
expected to produce extraordinary gains in student learning.

Note: A New American School does not necessarily mean new bricks and
mortar. Nor does a New American School have to rely on technology; the
quality of learning is what matters.

AMERICA 2000 Communities: The president will call on every community in
the land to do four things: adopt the six national education goals for
itself, establish a community-wide strategy for achieving them, develop
a report card for measuring its progress and demonstrate its readiness
to create and support a New American School. Communities that accept
this challenge will be designated (by the governors of their states) as
"AMERICA 2000 Communities."

The First 535+ New American Schools: Each AMERICA 2000 Community may
develop a plan to create one of the first 535+ New American Schools
with limited federal support for start-up costs. In that plan, they
will be expected to suggest their own answer to the question:  What
would it take to develop the best school in the world in this
community, a school that serves the children of this community while
also meeting the national education goals?

Governors, in conjunction with the secretary of education, will review
these community-developed plans, with the assistance of a distinguished
advisory panel, and will determine which AMERICA 2000 communities in
each state will receive federal help in starting New American Schools.
At least one New American School will be created in each congressional
district by 1996. This distribution assures that every type of
community in every part of the country will have the chance to create
and establish one of the first 535+ New American Schools.  The
governors and the secretary will take added care to make sure that many
such schools serve communities with high concentrations of "at-risk"
children.

Funding: American business and other donors will make sufficient funds
available through the New American Schools Development Corporation to
jump start the R & D Teams─at least $150-200 million. Congress will be
asked to provide one-time grants of $1 million to each of the first
535+ New American Schools to help cover their start-up costs. State,
local, and private sources will enable thousands more such schools to
begin by the end of the decade.

Bringing America On-Line: The secretary, in consultation with the
president's science advisor and the director of the National Science
Foundation will convene a group of experts to help determine how one or
more electronic networks might be designed to provide the New American
Schools with ready access to the best of information, research,
instructional materials and educational expertise. The New American
School R & D Teams will be asked for their recommendations on the same
question.  These networks may eventually serve all American schools as
well as homes, libraries, colleges and other sites where learning
occurs.

III.      FOR THE REST OF US (YESTERDAY'S STUDENTS/TODAY'S WORK FORCE):
          A NATION OF STUDENTS

Goals Served:  All six, but especially #5 (adult literacy,
               citizenship, and ability to compete in the
               workplace).

Strategy:
Eighty-five percent of America's work force for the year 2000 is
already in the work force today, so improving schools for today's and
tomorrow's students is not enough to assure a competitive America in
2000. And we need more than job skills to live well in America today.
We need to learn more to become better parents, neighbors, citizens and
friends. Education is not just about making a living; it is also about
making a life.

That is why the president is challenging adult Americans to "go back to
school" and make this a "Nation of Students." For our children to
understand the importance of their own education, we must demonstrate
that learning is important to grown-ups, too. We must ourselves "go
back to school." The president is urging every American to continue
learning throughout his or her life, using the myriad formal and
informal means available to gain further knowledge and skills.

Specifics:
Private-Sector Skills and Standards:  Business and labor will be asked
to adopt a strategy to establish job-related (and industry-specific)
skill standards, built around core proficiencies, and to develop "skill
certificates" to accompany these standards. The president has charged
the secretaries of Labor and Education to spearhead a public-private
partnership to help develop voluntary standards for all industries.
Federal funds are being sought to assist with this effort, which will
be informed by the work of the Labor Department's Commission on
Work-Based Learning and the Secretary's Commission on Achieving
Necessary Skills.

Skill Clinics:  The strategy will promote one-stop assessment and
referral Skill Clinics in every large community and work-site,
including many federal agencies. In the Skill Clinics, people can
readily find out how their present skills compare with those they'd
like to have─or that they need for a particular job─and where they can
acquire the skills and knowledge they still need.

Federal Leadership:  Federal agencies will set an example for other
employers by embarking upon a government-wide program of skill
upgrading. The president has asked the director of the Office of
Personnel Management to lead this important initiative.

Recommitment to Literacy:  The nation's efforts will be strengthened by
developing performance standards for all federally aided adult
education programs and making programs accountable for meeting them.
The National Adult Literacy Survey will be expanded so that we have
better information on a regular basis about the condition of literacy
among adults.  The administration will also work with Congress and the
governors to enact sound literacy and adult education legislation.

National Conference on Education for Adult Americans:  A major
conference will be called to develop a nationwide effort to improve the
quality and accessibility of the many education and training programs,
services and institutions that serve adults.

IV.  COMMUNITIES WHERE LEARNING CAN HAPPEN

Goals Served:  All six, but especially #1 and #6
               (children starting ready to learn) and
               (drug- and violence-free schools).

Strategy:
Even if we successfully complete the first, second and third parts of
the AMERICA 2000 education strategy, we still will not have done the
job. Even with accountability embedded in every aspect of education,
achieving the goals requires a renaissance of sound American
values─proven values such as strength of family, parental
responsibility, neighborly commitment, the community-wide caring of
churches, civic organizations, business, labor and the media.

It's time to end the no-fault era of heedlessness and neglect, and as
we shape tomorrow's schools, to rediscover the timeless values that are
necessary for achievement.

Government at every level can play a useful role, and it is incumbent
upon all of us to see that this is done efficiently and adequately. But
much of the work of creating and sustaining healthy communities,
communities where education really happens, can only be performed by
those who live in them: by parents, families, neighbors and other
caring adults; by churches, neighborhood associations, community
organizations, voluntary groups and the other "little platoons" that
have long characterized well-functioning American communities. Such
groups are essential to the building of relationships that nurture
children and provide them with people and places to which they can turn
for help, for role models and for guidance.

Specifics:
AMERICA 2000 Communities:  The president is challenging every city,
town and neighborhood in the nation to become an AMERICA 2000 Community
by:

(1)  Adopting the six national education goals for itself

(2)  Establishing a community-wide strategy for achieving the goals

(3)  Developing a report card for measuring the community's progress

(4)  Demonstrating the community's readiness to create and support a
     New American School

Designation by Governors:  Designation as an AMERICA 2000 Community
will be made by the governors, with 535+ of them getting help in
creating the first New American Schools by 1996.

Recognition:  The president and the administration will promote AMERICA
2000 Communities with national attention to and rewards for community
planning and progress with special emphasis on the creation of such
communities in areas of
concentration of at-risk children.

The Cabinet:  The Domestic Policy Council's Economic Empowerment Task
Force, working with the National Governors' Association and other state
and local officials, will seek ways to maximize program flexibility and
effectiveness in meeting the needs of children and communities,
including streamlined eligibility requirements for federal programs,
better integration of services and reduced red tape.

Individual Responsibility:  Increased attention will be focused on
adult behavior, responsibility for children and family and community
values essential for strong schools─including involvimg parents as
teachers of their children and as school partners.

Who Does What?

The four-part AMERICA 2000 strategy depends upon the strong and
long-term commitment of all Americans.

The President, the Department of Education and the entire Cabinet will
help keep the focus on this strategy, spotlight areas of trouble as
well as examples of excellence,  and reward progress and spur change.

The Congress will need to pass the AMERICA 2000 Excellence in Education
Act, containing most of the federal initiatives in support of this
strategy. Since most of the important changes need to occur outside
Washington, we hope that every member of Congress will also press for
the kinds of state and local changes that need to be part of this
strategy, will foster the establishment of AMERICA 2000 Communities in
their states and districts and will serve as mentors to the New
American Schools in their districts.

The Governors, too, are key. They will designate the AMERICA 2000
Communities. They (with the secretary of Education) will decide where
the first 535+ New American Schools are located. With their
legislatures, they will have the opportunity to support the new schools
as they do the old. They will catalyze the creation of Governors'
Academies for School Leaders and Governors' Academies for Teachers of
core subjects. In no state is an Education President or federal program
as important as a committed Education Governor.

The Business Community is also vital. It will jump start the
R & D Teams that will design the New American Schools. The business
community will use the American Achievement Tests in hiring decisions,
develop and use its own skill standards and, perhaps most important,
will provide people and resources to help catalyze needed change in
local schools, communities and state policies.

And at the community level, it will take all of us─principals,
teachers, students, businesses, office-holders, the media, the medical
and social service communities, civic and religious groups, law
enforcement officials, caring adults and good neighbors─to effect the
planning and follow-through that every AMERICA 2000 Community will
need.

Most of all, it will take America's parents─in their schools, their
communities, their homes─as helpers, as examples, as teachers, as
leaders, as demanding shareholders of our schools─to make the AMERICA
2000 education strategy work─to make this land all that it should be.

GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS

American Achievement Tests: The anchor for a new system of voluntary
national examinations at the fourth, eighth and twelfth grades in each
of the five core subjects, tied to the World Class Standards.

AMERICA 2000: An Education Strategy: An action plan to move America
toward the six national education goals through a populist crusade, by
assuring accountability in today's schools, unleashing America's genius
to jump start a new generation of American schools, transforming a
"Nation at Risk" into a "Nation of Students" and nurturing the family
and community values essential to personal responsibility, strong
schools and sound education for all children.

AMERICA 2000 Communities: Communities, designated by the governors,
that meet the president's four-part challenge: that (1) adopt the six
national education goals for themselves, (2) create a community-wide
plan for achieving them, (3) develop a Report Card to measure their
progress, and (4) demonstrate their readiness to create and support a
New American School. 535+ such communities will open New American
Schools by 1996.

Better and More Accountable Schools: A 15-part improvement package for
today's schools, designed to move America toward the six national
education goals, including World Class Standards, American Achievement
Tests, Report Cards and school choice.

Federal Role:  While the federal government's role in education is and
should remain limited, the administration is committed to providing R &
D, assessment and information, assuring equal opportunity and, above
all, leading the nationwide effort to achieve the six education goals.

535+ by 1996: At least 535 New American Schools will be up and running
in AMERICA 2000 Communities across the country─at least one in each
congressional district─by 1996, as well as in Puerto Rico, the District
of Columbia and the U.S. territories.

From a "Nation at Risk" to a "Nation of Students": Adults─today's work
force─"go back to school" for further study, to learn a new skill to
help them earn their living, or to acquire additional knowledge to live
a better life.

Governors' Academies for School Leaders: State or regional Academies
launched with federal seed money, which train principals and other
school leaders in the design and execution of school improvement
strategies, accountability mechanisms, and school-site management.

Governors' Academies for Teachers: State or regional Academies in each
of the five core subjects, launched with federal seed money, which
train teachers in the five core subjects to ensure that they possess
the knowledge, the skills, and the tools they need to help students
meet the World Class Standards and do well on the American Achievement
Tests.

Job Skill Standards and Job Skill Certificates: Standards to be
established jointly by management and labor for each industry,
beginning with the fundamental categories and definitions developed by
the Department of Labor's SCANS Commission, which will help workers see
what skills are needed to perform a job and to evaluate their own grasp
of those skills. Certificates will be given (by the private sector) to
those who acquire the skills and meet the standards.

New American Schools Development Corporation: A non-profit,
non-governmental organization, created by American business leaders and
other private citizens, which will receive funds, sponsor a competition
and establish, support and monitor three to seven R & D Teams. The
mission of these teams is to help AMERICA 2000 Communities invent and
create their own new American schools.

New Generation of American Schools: A major nationwide effort to invent
and create 535+ schools by 1996 (and many more thereafter) that are the
best in the world. Located in AMERICA 2000 Communities, these schools
will reach the national education goals at operational costs not
exceeding those of conventional schools.

Populist Crusade: A national crusade led by the president─school by
school, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community─to
transform American education and to spur fundamental changes in the
ways we educate ourselves and our children. This crusade also will be a
restoration of what we think is important, a return to sound values and
community spirit.

R & D Teams: Partnerships of corporations, universities, think tanks,
school innovators, management consultants and others, selected through
a competitive process by the New American Schools Development
Corporation to receive up to $30 million each over three years to
conceptualize and invent New American Schools.

Report Cards: A public reporting system on the performance of education
institutions and systems, which provides maximum information at the
school, district, state and national levels.

School as the Site of Reform: The individual school is education's key
action-and-accountability unit. The surest way to reform education is
to give schools and their leaders the freedom and authority to make
important decisions about what happens, while being held accountable
for making well-conceived efforts at improvement and for achieving
desired results.

Skill Clinics: Just as health clinics diagnose health and refer people
to appropriate care, skill clinics will be centers in every community
and large workplace where people can go to get their own job skills
evaluated, find out what skills they need to learn to hold a certain
job or get a better one and find out where they can go to gain those
skills.

Skills and Knowledge Gap: Too many of us lack the knowledge─especially
of English, mathematics, science, history and geography─and the skills
necessary to live and work successfully in the world as it is today.

Unleash America's Genius: Bringing the best minds and creative energies
from education, technology, management and other fields together in a
pioneering effort to create a New Generation of American Schools that
are the best in the world.

World Class Standards: Definitions of what American students should be
expected to know and be able to do upon completion of schooling, meant
to function as benchmarks against which student and school performance
can be measured.


SOME QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q.  How much will the AMERICA 2000 plan cost?
A.  The Department of Education will support appropriate activities
under existing programs in this year's budget to get AMERICA 2000 off
the ground─and the president is requesting $690 million for the
strategy in the 1992 budget.  That does not include programs in many
other departments (e.g. Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and
Urban Development), which are essential to the success of AMERICA 2000.

Nor does it include the $150-200 million from the business community to
jump start the New American Schools R&D Teams.

But two other points need to be made.  First, state and local
governments provide more than 90 percent of all education funding─a
responsibility both the president and the governors have concluded
should not be altered.  But AMERICA 2000 is not expected to raise state
or local spending.

Second, both state/local funding and federal funding have increased
dramatically in recent years without significant results.  Since 1980,
public funding is up 33 percent per student (after inflation).  The
answer does not lie in spending more money on old ways─but to redirect
our resources and our energies to new approaches.

With state, local and private sources doing their parts, and the
federal government doing its part, the elements of this strategy that
may need money will have what is required.  Excellent schools, let's
remember, don't have to cost more than mediocre ones.  Nobody says
education is free, but ingenuity, commitment and accountability matter
more than money.

Q. Aren't the New American Schools going to be more expensive than
today's schools?
A. No. It will be a requirement for the R & D Teams that the new
schools they design can operate at costs no more than conventional
schools.

Q. Is the R & D for New American Schools likely to stress technology
and glitz rather than teaching and learning?
A. Schools should certainly avail themselves of the help that
technology can furnish. (Some say that schools are one of the few
institutions in society largely untouched even by the Industrial
Revolution, much less by the Information Age.) But technology is no
cure-all for educational and social problems. Great schools are built
by people, people who care and who act. A great school is one where
adults teach children sound values and good character as well as
knowledge and skills. The secret ingredient is human, not electronic.

We expect that the R & D Teams will begin by erasing all conventional
assumptions and constraints about schooling: the schedule (and
calendar), curriculum, class size, the pace of learning,
teacher/student ratios, adult roles, teacher recruitment, health and
nutrition, discipline, staff development, organizational and management
structures, resource allocation, students-as-tutors, the nature of
instructional materials and much more.

Q. Why should there be only 535+ New American Schools?
A. We want there to be thousands. These are just the first 535+. In
time there could be 110,000. We believe─and hope─that many states and
communities will move quickly toward their own New American Schools.

Q. What's the plus sign in "535+?"
A. We propose to provide federal start-up funds not just for one New
American School for every Senator and Representative that a state has,
but also for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S.
territories.

Q. Is it worth becoming an AMERICA 2000 Community if you don't win one
of the first 535+ New American Schools?
A. It sure is.  Every neighborhood, town or city that cares about its
children, its schools and its future will want to become an AMERICA
2000 Community. The act of creating such a community─by meeting the
president's four-part challenge─will itself do immense good. Consider,
for example, what it means to devise a community plan to ensure that
all children enter school ready to learn...that all the schools are
safe and drug free...that all adults will be literate. We predict that,
by the year 2000, there will be literally thousands of AMERICA 2000
Communities. They will be the pace-setters, the beacons, the heartbeat
of this education strategy─and of their children's future.

Q. Will choice apply to private schools as well as public?  Will it
apply to religiously affiliated schools?
A. It will apply to all schools except where the courts find a
constitutional bar.  The power of choice is in the parents' leverage
both to change schools and to make change in the schools.  The
definition of "public school" should be broadened to include any school
that serves the public and is held accountable by a public authority.

Q. What do you say to those who argue that school choice mainly
benefits the well-to-do and the white?
A. Rich parents, white and non-white, already have school choice. They
can move, or pay for private schooling. The biggest beneficiaries of
new choice policies will be those who now have no alternatives. With
choice they can find a better school for their children or use that
leverage to improve the school their children now attend.

Q. Aren't the places that most need radical changes in their
arrangements for children─those with the highest concentrations of
at-risk girls and boys─those least able to make such changes?
A. It has been demonstrated in a number of communities that we must
never underestimate the effectiveness of a community that decides to
transform itself. It's true, of course, that the AMERICA 2000 strategy
can do the greatest good for troubled rural and inner- city areas, and
we all need to be sure that they get whatever catalyst help they need
to take part.

Q. Will the American Achievement Tests compete with the work of the
National Education Goals Panel?
A. No, we expect to follow the panel's lead in developing the World
Class Standards and the American Achievement Tests.

Q. Do national tests mean a national curriculum?
A. No─although surveys and polls indicate that most Americans have no
objection to the idea of a national curriculum. The American
Achievement Tests will examine the results of education. The tests have
nothing to say about how those results are produced, what teachers do
in class from one day to the next, what instructional materials are
chosen, what lesson plans are followed. The tests should result in less
regulation of the means of education─because they focus exclusively on
the ends.

Q. When will the new tests be ready?
A. In 1994, we will have available a system of high quality individual
tests, at least in reading, writing and mathematics─education's
traditional "three R's"─for states and localities that want them.
Because the new American Achievement Tests probably cannot be perfected
that quickly, we will ask Congress to authorize the rapid deployment of
an individual version of tests used by the National Assessment of
Educational Progress.

Q. Do we really need another test? Aren't tests biased against
minorities?
A. A nationwide system of high quality national exams─more than one
version, but calibrated to the same standards─will probably begin to
take the place of some of today's numerous testing schemes. As for
bias, the new tests will be screened to eliminate it. Bear in mind that
minority parents also want to know how well their children─and the
schools their children attend─are doing in relation to the national
education goals and standards. Sometimes less-than-satisfactory news
serves to catalyze needed changes.

Q. Can all six national goals really be reached?
A. They are all ambitious. Some, like literacy for all adults, and
leading the whole world in math and science, are very challenging. But
each is a worthy national objective, and we should not rest until all
are achieved. The AMERICA 2000 strategy will give us the tools we need
to achieve them.

Q. How much of this is just politics?
A. Better education benefits the entire nation, not one particular
political party. AMERICA 2000 is a non-partisan education reform
strategy. There is plenty of room on these four trains for every
American, and we begin with the assumption that everyone will want to
climb aboard. Sure, we'll argue about the details in the formal
political process and elsewhere, and the strategy will doubtless be
improved through those arguments. But let's talk them through in a
spirit of wanting a first-rate education for all our children, in every
corner of this great land.

Q. What's the single most important part of the AMERICA 2000 strategy?
A. The most controversial may be school choice─at least until it's well
understood. The knottiest is probably standards and testing, which is
technically quite complex. The most dramatic is the
R & D for New American Schools. But the most important may be the
AMERICA 2000 Communities! Washington cannot achieve the six education
goals for the nation; that has to happen at the local level. It's
another of those historic American challenges,  and it starts in every
community, every school, every household.

Q. What can parents do to help?
A. A thousand things. Parents are the keys to their children's
education, and there is no part of the AMERICA 2000 strategy in which
they do not have an important role. As for what they can do today─they
could read a story to their children, check to see that tonight's
homework is done, thank their child's teacher, talk with their
children's  teachers and principals about how things are going in
school, and set some examples for their children of virtuous,
self-disciplined and generous behavior.

Q. What can the media do to help?
A. Recognize that education is an ongoing story─a local story and a
national story. The details are seldom dramatic. But this is the
challenge that will tell the story of America's future. By focusing on
the story every day, and assigning their best reporters to cover it,
the media can help win the battle.