THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                             April 13, 1993     

	     
                      REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT,
               SECRETARY OF EDUCATION RICHARD RILEY AND
                   SECRETARY OF LABOR ROBERT REICH  IN 
                GOALS 2000 SATELLITE TOWN HALL MEETING
	     
                     Chamber of Commerce Building
                           Washington, D.C.   



8:30 P.M. EDT
	     
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Good evening and welcome to all of you 
in the thousands of communities around the country that are taking 
part in this satellite town meeting for the month of April.
	     
	     You know, today is April 13th.  In 1743, Thomas 
Jefferson was born, 250 years ago.  I think that's appropriate to 
mention at the beginning of this meeting because since that time he 
has been, of course, a person who has been one that we've all 
followed in terms of our democracy and the importance of education 
here in this great country.  The success of our democracy according 
to Jefferson really depends upon the success of our educational 
system.
	     
	     His philosophy of government, his belief in the 
importance of education is also very meaningful to our special guest 
here this evening.  Tonight we're so pleased to have with us 
President Clinton.  He's come over from the White House to join us in 
the Chamber of Commerce studios.  
	     
	     Mr. President, it's good to have you.  We thank you for 
taking the time to visit with these communities here on the satellite 
network and we welcome you here this evening.
	     
	     Also we have with us Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.  
And, Bob, it's certainly pleasant to have you with us this evening 
also.
	     
	     I have some questions for our two guests, and I'm sure 
many of you do, too.  So please call us if there's something that 
you'd like to ask.  The number is 1/800/368-5781 or 5782.  In 
Washington, D.C. the number is 202/463-3170 or 3171.
	     
	     I believe the President has a few words that he might 
want to share with us.  And, Mr. President, I'll ask you to do that 
at this time.  It's great to have you.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
	     
	     I'm glad to be here with my friends, Dick Riley and Bob 
Reich -- also members of my Cabinet -- at the headquarters of the 
Chamber of Commerce to support the effort that the Chamber is making, 
along with its Center for Work Force Preparation, to help to examine 
tonight the whole critical question of how to move our young people 
from school to the work place.
	     
	     I want to compliment the Chamber on all their efforts, 
recognizing that without an educated work force we can't grow this 
economy or remain competitive, and recognizing that we all have to 
work together -- business and government, labor and educators -- to 
make things happen.
	     
	     This satellite town meeting is a good example of that 
kind of working together.  And if you'll forgive me a little home 
state pride, I want to say a special word of thanks to the Wal-Mart 
Corporation, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, for providing 
several hundred of the sites for this town meeting tonight.  I 
appreciate that a lot, as well as the sites that are provided for all 
the rest of you.
	     
	     I have tried as hard as I could to move toward 
constructive change for this country.  Secretary Riley talked about 
this being Thomas Jefferson's 250th birthday.  If Thomas Jefferson 
believed in anything, he believed in these three things:  first, in 
education; second, in real personal liberty, freedom of religion, 
freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press; and 
third, in the absolute imperative of changing as times change.  
	     
	     If you go to the Jefferson Memorial here in this 
beautiful city, which is now bedecked with all of its wonderful 
cherry blossoms, you will see Jefferson saying that we have to change 
with changing times.
	     
	     For us here in America, that means reducing our deficit 
and increasing our investment and putting our people first so that we 
can compete in the world.  We're here to talk about that tonight --
about what we can do to educate and train our people better.  Unless 
we do that, none of the efforts that all the rest of us make in 
government, even to bring the budget into balance, even to increase 
our investment in other things which will grow jobs, will last in the 
long run.
	     
	     We also have to have people who can carry their load.  
And in a world where the average young person will change jobs seven 
or eight times in a lifetime, that begins with the education system 
and continues into the work force where education must go on for a 
lifetime.  It's not just important what you know, but what you can 
learn.
	     
	     And if I might, I'd like to close just by emphasizing 
we're doing our best to try to have the most innovative partnership 
between the Labor Department and the Education Department and the 
private sector to build a good school-to-work transition.  And we're 
trying to get off to a good start this summer with a program that 
would create more than 700,000 new summer jobs, including many 
thousands that have a strong education component so our young people 
can be learning and working at the same time.
	     
	     Dick, I think I ought to stop there.  That's a good 
place we can begin, I think, the discussion.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Thank you so much, Mr. President.
	     
	     Each month we get together and talk about ways that all 
citizens can work towards reaching the national education goals.  And 
tonight, we'll focus on goal five, and how communities such as yours 
can prepare students for this world of work.
	     
	     This week, the Education Department and the Labor 
Department are hosting a conference here in Washington, D.C. called 
Summer Challenge, a program of work and learning, to America's youth.  
The aim is to use some special funds from President Clinton's 
proposed economic stimulus package to provide educationally-enriched 
jobs and summer school programs for young people in disadvantaged 
areas of the country.  
	     
	     Mr. President, let's talk a minute -- you alluded to it 
somewhat -- about the  Summer Youth Challenge.  Your program calls 
for more educational enrichment in the summer jobs.  And why in your 
words is that so important?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I think it's important for two reasons.  
First of all, a lot of the young people we're trying to reach may 
have had trouble adjusting to school and learning.  And while we want 
them to have a good experience with a real job, we also want them to 
continue to learn during the summer because we know from a lot of 
research that a lot of kids that have trouble learning in school may 
forget as much as 30 percent of what they learned the previous year 
over the summertime.  And that is a very unproductive thing for 
schools to have to take up a lot of time teaching what they already 
taught before.
	     
	     Secondly, we want to help these young people progress, 
not only in terms of work, but in terms of learning.  We want to 
abolish the artificial dividing line between what is work and what is 
learning because we think that the best and most productive workers 
will have to be lifetime learners.  And we think that this experience 
could maybe drive that point home and prepare these young people to 
succeed in school, or at work, or in college as they go on.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Well, I think the fact that these are 
disadvantaged kids -- that gap, that lag you mentioned as they go 
into the next year, is really even greater.  
	     
	     Secretary Reich, of course, you have training programs 
throughout the year.  And I wonder is you have any comment about this 
educational component of training.
	     
	     SECRETARY REICH:  Well, what we've learned, Mr. 
Secretary, is that for many young people, whether it's for the summer 
or for the year, actually on-the-job work experience combined with 
education is one of the best ways of learning.  Many young people, 
for example, have a lot -- they have a difficult time learning 
geometry.  But when they actually are there building something or 
working on something, and they can see the exact and direct 
application of geometry, they understand what it's used for.  And a 
lot of young people -- just that sense of connection between 
education and the world of work is terribly, terribly important.  
It's important during the summer, but it's important for a lot of 
young people even beyond the summer.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Thank you.  
	     
	     Mr. President, you've called for a youth apprenticeship 
program, school-to-work transition.  And I wonder if you would tell 
us a little bit about your concept of that and how you see it 
developing.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, let's talk about why 
it's important.  Most new jobs that will be created in this decade 
will not require a four-year college degree, but most of them will 
require some learning and skills that go well beyond what most people 
get in a high school diploma.  
	     
	     If you look at the last 10 years, the average salaries 
of young people that had at least two years of good post-high school 
education was a good salary that went up over the decade.  The young 
people who had less than that tended to have lower wages that did not 
go up, and in many cases in real terms fell over the decade, because 
they weren't productive, they weren't more valuable to their 
employers.
	     
	     So we think America has a big economic interest in 
trying to ensure that all the young people who get out of high school 
but don't go on to college make a transition to work, which includes 
two years of further training either in a community college, a 
vocational setting, or perhaps on the job.  And what I have done in 
this budget, as you know, is to give you and Secretary Reich some 
funds and some incentives to try to work in partnership with states 
and with the private sector to build these programs state-by-state in 
a way that would be customized essentially by the business community, 
based on the needs of the economy in any given area.  It could 
revolutionize long-term the quality of the American work force and 
the earnings of American workers.
	     
	     SECRETARY REICH:  I should add, Mr. President -- I think 
you know this from your experience in Arkansas -- and many of the 
people watching this program -- that the business community and 
educators, labor groups are already in many of our communities, many 
of our states, building a school-to-work transition program.  In 
fact, there's an awful lot of ferment, a lot of excitement.  The 
people watching this program probably are the ones who are most 
directly involved in that.  And more power to them.  Secretary Riley 
and I are going to do everything we can to build on the successes 
already out there.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Bob, we're going to be talking tonight 
about youth apprenticeship and tech prep, the co-op learning  
career academies.  And what features all those programs that deal 
with this subject -- what are some of the features that every one of 
these school-to-work programs might have that   are important?
	     
	     SECRETARY REICH:  Well, one thing that we've seen -- and 
you and I have been working at this for a long time, and you much 
longer than I -- we've seen that active involvement of the business 
community is absolutely essential.  And I'm so delighted that we're 
doing this in the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce.  The 
Chamber of Commerce of the United States is committed to doing these 
kinds of programs -- training, education, retraining -- and we've 
aimed to work very closely with the Chamber.
	     
	     The business community is going to be actively engaged 
in developing almost an audit of the kind of jobs that are needed and 
helping the educators, community colleges, technical institutions 
develop curricula that are relevant for the jobs of the future.
	     
	     Communities have got to come together.  I mean, this is 
one of the most important things.  You've got to have all of these 
players in a community come together and work together and cooperate 
together.  You know, too often we have the educators over here and 
the business leaders over here, labor groups over here and everybody 
is talking, but they're not really working together in a common 
strategy.
	     
	     And the third and final ingredient I would say, Dick, 
would be a commitment to excellence -- a commitment both to academic 
excellence and also to skills development excellence.  This is not a 
tracking program we're talking about for kids who are not going to 
make it.  This is a program that every young person ought to be 
eligible for.  If they want to go on beyond that to four-year 
college, that's fine.  That ought to be permissible.  But we're 
talking about the foundation of learning about jobs, the foundation 
skills for on-the-job learning.
	     
	     And again, those are the critical components.  It's 
already being done.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I think -- if I might just interject one 
point based on my personal experience at home -- the business 
community has a critical role to play, not simply in saying here are 
the job skills that are needed and here's what ought to be taught, 
but also in monitoring that excellence.  If you have the right sort 
of partnership there, the people who are paying the taxes and who are 
going to then be hiring the workers are not going to permit the 
second-rate programs to survive if they have any way to shape and 
influence them.  So I think that's very important.
	     
	     And when we try to, if you will, fill in the blanks at 
the federal level, trying to set some standards and provide some 
funds, one of the things that we want to be sure and do is to make 
sure that the employer has a heavy amount of influence over the 
quality of these programs, because that's really what's going to 
determine whether the whole thing is worthwhile.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  That's great.  We've been talking, of 
course, about school-to-work and also the jobs and economic recovery 
program for this summer and fall.  But let's talk just a moment about 
long-term school reform.  It's something especially close to me.  Mr. 
President, I wonder if you would give us some of your ideas for the 
communities out here on Goals 2000 legislation that I think will be 
coming forth before too long.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, as you know, back when you and I 
were both governors, we spent a lot of time working on our public 
schools and we tried to be very candid with our people in saying that 
a lot of these things were going to take some time to materialize.  
	     
	     I had a hand in writing the National Education Goals 
that the governors drafted, along with representatives of President 
Bush's administration back in 1989.  And what we're going to try to 
do this year with your leadership is to introduce legislation in 
Congress that will actually define the things that the national 
government ought to do to try to help the local schools and the 
children of this country and the adult learners, too, meet those 
goals -- making sure that when -- by 2000, people show up for school 
ready to learn; that we get a 90 percent on-time high school 
graduation rate; that children at the 4th, 8th, and 12th grades are 
confident in the subjects they're supposed to know; that they are 
second to none in math and science; that are schools are safe, 
disciplined, and drug-free.  And, of course, the fifth goal --I took 
them out of line to say this the last -- is that we have a system of 
life-long learning in this country.
	     
	     And each one of those goals there's a national role, a 
state role, a school role, school district role, and a private sector 
role.  And what you've attempted to do in this bill you're going to 
introduce with me in the next few weeks is to define what our job is; 
and then to give the rest of America a way of defining what their job 
is and seeing whether we're actually meeting the standards of quality 
that we need to meet.
	     
	     It's very exciting.  So far as I know, nothing quite 
like it has ever been done in the form of federal legislation before.  
Not mandating and telling people what they have to do with their 
money, but actually setting up a framework for excellence and 
partnerships so that we can do our job.  I'm really excited about it.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Well, I am, too.  And I think really 
it will be an entirely new role for the federal government in terms 
of its relationship with states, serving as a partner really to 
support and facilitate and to help out in these education reform 
efforts, all driven by high standards.  That's the point.
	     
	     Bob, let me ask you one question, and then we'll get to 
the telephone calls.  It's about the same subject.  We have, of 
course, skills standards that are going to be part of Goals 2000, and 
I wonder if you would comment on that.
	     
	     SECRETARY REICH:  Well, you know, we have 75 percent of 
our young people who don't graduate from college.  Very often they 
don't have very many alternatives.  They do have a wonderful system 
of community colleges and technical institutions, but if we had 
national skill standards to which they could aspire and which 
employers would understand as a national credential, many of these 
young people would actually find that they were much more eligible 
for jobs.
	     
	     Everybody doesn't have to go to college.  Other 
countries you have smaller proportions of their population going to 
college, but you have a whole level of people who have certain 
technical, preprofessional skills.  We can do it in this country.  If 
you don't go to four-year college you're not a loser.  And we want to 
develop those national skill standards.  We're going to be working 
with the states, with the Education Department, with a lot of private 
industry in developing those standards.  And I think they will be the 
kinds of things that enable our vocational and technical and other 
institutions to rally around, as well as our business community.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Well, that's great.  Why don't we go 
ahead and go to the telephone.  We have a call, I see -- Mayor Bruce 
Todd of Austin, Texas.
	     
	     Q	  Yes, Mr. President and Mr. Secretary Reich and 
Riley, we certainly appreciate the opportunity to join you today.  We 
have some dedicated professionals and volunteers here in Austin who 
have heard what you have said and are very appreciative.  Let me 
simply say, amen to some of the comments made already.  We agree with 
much of the tone that the Clinton administration has taken, and are 
very supportive.  
	     
	     We have been successful here in Austin of tripling our 
summer employment program over the last four years.  We expect to 
have over 2,000 employed this year in the summertime; perhaps as much 
as 3,500 with the federal assistance.  
	     
	     Much of the question that we had designed you have 
answered in your opening comments, so we must be thinking alike.  But 
the question essentially involved what initiatives after Labor Day 
would be appropriate.  We know summertime is important.  Year-round 
is even more important.  And what kind of initiatives at the federal 
level might be proposed to meet the needs of the youth on a year-
round basis?  And perhaps more importantly, how can families and the 
local community be more involved using the federal initiative? That's 
something that we believe is very important to success in this 
effort.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Mr. President.
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I think I'll give everybody a chance to 
answer the question, Bruce, but let me first thank you for calling, 
and thank you for all the great work that you're doing in Austin.  
I've seen some of it and I've always been very impressed.  
	     
	     First, with regard to the summer program, we hope we can 
structure it in a way that will enable us to continue the summer 
program and that will move a lot of these young people back into 
schools under circumstances that might allow them to do some work in 
the private sector, too.  We hope that -- Secretary Reich is going to 
try to set up a system where we create a lot of private sector jobs 
to be matched with the public sector jobs this summer.  And we're 
working on that.
	     
	     Secondly, in the program that I have presented to the 
Congress over the next five years, what we are attempting to do is to 
build in an amount of investment that's quite substantial for job 
training programs, for school-to-work programs, all of which give 
heavy, heavy weight to local community input -- just the question you 
asked -- but do provide some federal investment dollars, which we 
hope you can put with local dollars to keep people working and being 
trained on a year-round basis.
	     
	     And I will say again, to echo what Secretary Reich said 
a moment ago, to try to break down the barrier between what is seen 
as work and what is seen as learning.  An awful lot of young people 
actually have quite high IQs, but actually learn so much better when 
they're doing than when they're reading or just listening.  So we 
hope that the community involvement part of it will be permanent, and 
we hope that if the whole budget passes -- and we do have 200 budget 
cuts and more than 200, actually, in the budget -- and some revenue 
raisers, and some new money for education and training, that we'll be 
able to do just what you seem to want based on your question.
	     
	     Bob, do you want to say anything?
	     
	     SECRETARY REICH:  Well, you took most of the words out 
of my mouth, Mr. President, as usual.  But let me just add one thing, 
and that is that one of the most important aspects of post-high 
school for a lot of young people who are not going on to college, in 
addition to the school-to-work program, simply is the availability of 
jobs.  And we've got to get this economy moving again, obviously.  
It's terribly important to get this recovery program, to get the 
economy back on track.  That's sort of the prerequisite to everything 
else.  If we don't get the economy back on track -- we have -- I 
think this is the 16th -- correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. President -- I 
think is the 16th month we have had seven percent unemployment or 
greater.  This is a jobless recovery.  A lot of those kids are going 
to be getting out of school in June.  And even if we did everything 
right, they would have a very, very hard time getting jobs.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Thank you both.  Of course, Goals 2000 
will be a permanent, long-term thing that will certainly reach into 
next year.  It will involve, if passed -- and we certainly hope it 
will be -- action plans with every state where we can be working 
together to reach for the goals in a number of different ways.  And 
then the state, with all the various school districts, a very 
important part of that will be citizen and parent involvement.  And I 
think everybody will see a great energy out there, once we get that 
moving.
	     
	     The next call is Dr. Harry Heinemann, New York.  
	     
	     Doctor?
	     
	     Q	  Good evening, Mr. Secretary.  It is a pleasure to 
be on with you this evening.  As you may know, bridging the school 
and work has been central to La Guardia's educational program since 
its inception in the 1970s, and that includes the college, the two 
alternative high schools that operate on our campus, and the linkages 
we have forged with the local schools.  We have found this to be an 
extremely effective learning strategy.
	     
	     And over the years, we've come to believe that there are 
several principles that are very important in bridging the school and 
work.  And these include integrating theory in the classroom with 
practice in the workplace, with providing all students early exposure 
to careers, as well as providing opportunities for them to reflect 
upon these experiences while they strengthen their skills; and 
lastly, the critical role of the liberal arts, particularly in the 
development of high performance competencies.  
	     
	     My question, then is:  How can the general education 
faculty and the academic curriculum be more closely integrated with 
transition to work experience?  And what mechanisms and strategies 
can you suggest to achieve this integration?
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Well, thank you very much.  I think -- 
and we'll get a response from you all on that, and very interesting 
work going on there.  We're going to have three people, our next 
guests on the program this evening, that will be some specialists   
in that area that you're speaking, and I'll certainly pass that on to 
them and we can discuss it later.
	     
	     You all care to comment -- any comments you might have?
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  I'd just like to say, if I might, one 
thing.  I want to reemphasize this and I don't think I'm being as 
clear about it as I'd like, although I think at least one of the 
people who will be on the second panel will be able to say it more 
explicitly than I.  I think this whole concept of applied academics 
is very important.  And I think that we have to basically abolish 
what I consider to be a very artificial distinction between what is 
vocational learning and what is academic learning.
	     
	     I think we should keep the liberal arts going.  I think 
we should have a strong component for people who are in the 
vocational program.
	     
	     SECRETARY REICH:  It seems to me that we also need to 
rethink our entire tracking system, because a lot of these school and 
work combinations are important for mainstream students.  They're 
important for all students.  It's not just a special group of 
students that needs them.
	     
	     Some of the experiments that I've seen around the United 
States -- Dick, I'm sure you've seen them as well -- are mainstream 
experiments.  They're mainstreaming all the students.  At 11th and 
12th grades they're giving them a combined work and school experience 
and then a transition program.  And again, the kids can either go on 
to college if they want; they can go on to technical community; they 
can go on to an entirely -- a large variety of possibilities and 
career directions.
	     
	     But we have to get away from the stigmatizing that often 
goes on with young people who simply are doing job-related or work-
related work within the classroom, within our schools.
	     
	     SECRETARY RILEY:  Thank you, very much.  I think that's 
going to be the last call that we have time for.  Mr. President, I 
think you've got to move on to another matter, and I want to thank 
you and Secretary Reich for being here.  We appreciate your time and 
your ideas, and it's been a tremendous help to us.  