And planning, most people agree, is essential to improving teaching and learning. 2000 Second-year funding awards were made to Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri this week. Both MN and IA have submitted comprehensive education reform plans which are in the process of being evaluated by a peer review panel. We are working with the telecommunications industry, educators and parents to connect 20 percent of the classrooms in California by this spring, and every classroom and library in America by the year 2000. I ask Congress to support our education technology initiative to make this national partnership successful.
Every diploma ought to mean something.
I challenge every community, school and state to adopt national standards of excellence, measure whether schools are meeting those standards, cut red tape so that schools have more flexibility for grassroots reforms, and hold them accountable for results by embracing our Goals 2000 initiative. I challenge every state to give all parents the right to choose which public school their children attend and let teachers form new schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job. And if it means teenagers will stop killing each other over gang jackets, then public schools should be able to require school uniforms. I challenge parents to be their children's first teachers. See that the homework gets done.