President Clinton was on the stump for his education agenda in the Chicago area Wednesday, declaring that opponents of national standards are “selling our kids down the drain” and using local control of schools as an excuse.
In his first trip since his second term began, Clinton hailed the academic performance of 8th-grade students in a consortium of 20 suburban school districts. The students scored in the top tier of 41 countries in science and in the second tier in math.
Clinton highlighted the consortium’s efforts as he urged school districts across America to adopt the national standards and testing under the Goals 2000 program.
“We can no longer hide behind our love of local control of the schools and use that as an excuse not to hold ourselves to high standards,” he said in a speech before several thousand people at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook. “It has nothing to do with local control. There’s no school board in America that controls the content of algebra.”
During his visit to Northbrook, Clinton also witnessed a science project in an 8th-grade class at Field Middle School.
Later, before the Chicago School Board, he pushed his plan to expand the number of charter schools nationwide, announcing a near-doubling of federal funds to $100 million from $51 million to set up such independent schools in his new budget to be presented Feb. 6. The funds will help increase the number of charter schools from about 500 to 1,500 next year.
The president told the Chicago board that there will be a tenfold increase in charter schools during his administration. He also praised the board for its educational reforms and said it could be a model for the rest of the country. “I’m here to listen,” he said.
The White House also said that Clinton will pump an additional 26 percent into the Goals 2000 standards program to $620 million in an effort to expand the national standards program to more school districts.
Clinton explained in his speech at Glenbrook North that the 20 school districts that decided to administer the international test to a random group of 8th graders did not relinquish local control.
The school districts decided to participate in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study last year. In the same way that the tests were conducted for the U.S. as a whole, a random sample of students in the districts was selected to take the tests.
The Chicago-area students scored in the top group of countries in science, along with such countries as Singapore, Japan, Korea and the Czech Republic. Singapore finished first in math, but the consortium finished in the second tier with six other countries.
According to Mike Cohen, special assistant to the president for education, the 20 districts were the only ones in the country who came forward a year ago and agreed to administer the international math and science tests to their students.
He acknowledged that the districts who took the test may be more affluent and have stronger community support than an inner-city district, but he said poor districts can do better if their curriculum is improved.
Paul Kimmelman, president of the consortium, said that “this is the first time anybody had done anything like this. Everybody had the jitters. We had no idea of how well we would do. I don’t think we can rest on our laurels.”
The president has been a strong advocate of students throughout the country being evaluated nationally.
Clinton did not refer to the opponents of national standards by name, but some conservatives oppose them as a takeover of public schools. An effort to kill the Goals 2000 program failed in Congress in 1995.
Holding up national standards as a threat to local control of schools “is just an excuse to avoid being held accountable because we’re afraid we can’t make it,” he said. “It’s selling our kids down the drain, and it’s wrong.”
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Improving education in America is one of the president’s prime second-term goals and, he believes, the way to prosperity in the next century. With Republicans in control of Congress, he is taking to the road to build a case for his program.
“We have delayed too long; we shouldn’t delay anymore,” he said. “By the time we start the new century we ought to have these standards adopted, embraced and evaluated in every school district in the United States.”
He said it takes courage to agree to take the tests and that poor children are just as capable of learning.