For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 22, 2001
Remarks by the President During Drop-By at White House Briefing on Hispanic Scholarship Fund
The Indian Treaty Room
Listen to the President's Remarks
1:20 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank
you. Please be seated. That's a pretty tough act
to follow. (Laughter.) Sara and I were honored
this Sunday at Notre Dame. We both received honorary
degrees. She probably deserved hers more than I deserved
mine, but it was such an honor to be on the stage with her. What a
wonderful lady.
Such a great inspiration, and somebody who has
made a concerted effort to make a difference in people's
lives. It's really what America is about, when you think
about it. I mean, the true strength of this country are
people like Sara, who are willing to say, let's get something done,
instead of sitting idly by and looking at depressing statistics, the
statistic that not enough of our Hispanic youngsters are going to
institutions of higher learning.
Let's get something done about
it. Instead of hoping somebody else will pick up the
initiative and get it done, Sara said, I'm going to do it. And I want
to thank you all for joining and supporting the Hispanic Scholarship
Fund. It is important for our nation's future that this fund
be whole and active and fully funded.
I want to thank my friend, Rudy Beserra for
being here today as well. Rudy. Mr. Chairman, it's good to
see you, sir. And I understand that you will be hearing from
Margaret LaMontagne after I say a few words.
Access is incredibly important. We
must work as a society to extend the American dream to todos, to
everybody. Now, it starts with making sure youngsters
understand that dream is available. And all of us need to
help on making sure people understand the dream is available -- and the
benefits of working hard to achieve the dream.
It also starts with making sure our public
schools educate children. I would bet -- I haven't seen any studies on
this, but I would fully suspect that if a child is illiterate, relative
to his or her classmates, it diminishes hope. And the dream
that we all hope for, higher education, becomes smaller in the eyes of
that child. If a person doesn't have the capacity that we
all want that person to have, I suspect hope is in the far distant
future, if at all.
And so first things first means having an
education system that provides hope by educating
children. Not a system that looks at hard-to-educate
children -- perhaps the ninos of the first generation whose parents may
not speak English and say, oh, it's the easiest route to take is just
move them through the school system.
The easiest thing for us to do is not to focus
on each child, but just move them through. If they're 12,
we'll put everybody here; if they're 16, everybody goes
there. And if they happen to learn to read,
fine. That attitude is going to change. It's
going to change by starting to ask the question around this
country: What do you know? Do you know what
you're supposed to know? And if you don't know what you're
supposed to know, we as a society will come together to make sure you
do early, before it's too late.
What Margaret will discuss with you is the
bill that we've proposed here in Congress, that lays out some clear
principles about public education. One is, we ought to
expect high standards. That means when people stand in front
of a classroom full of Latino children, they expect the
best. They know what all of us know, particularly, Sara
knows: that if you expect the best, you get good
results. If you say, well, certain kids can't learn, it's
too hard to teach them to speak English; if you lower the bar, we get
lousy results. And every child deserves better than that.
So, one of the principles is setting high
standards and realizing every child can learn. Secondly, is
to pass power out of Washington to provide maximum flexibility for
local districts to be able to chart the path to excellence for their
individual school districts. And, thirdly, and the core of
reform, as far as I'm concerned, is to have strong accountability
measures inherent in the school systems.
To put it more directly, if you receive
federal money to help a child, you need to show us whether or not the
children are learning. If you received help, you
show. And if you're doing the job we want you to be doing,
there will be plenty of praise. But if not, if not, if we
find out children aren't learning, something else has to
happen. We cannot continue to trap our children in schools
that won't teach.
Now, we've got a couple of more initiatives
that I think you'll find interesting. One is, I believe Head
Start ought to be an early reading program, as well as the current
strategy. And I think we ought to focus on making sure
children are armed with the tools necessary to become good little
readers. Unfortunately, not enough parents -- or some
parents, don't read to their kids. And so the school
children are behind. Well, if we're going to have an
accountability system starting in the third grade, we need to make sure
we've got enough early education to get those children up to the
starting line with every other child.
And so the budget I submitted outlines triple
the amount of money available for reading programs. Inherent
in the program is K through 2 diagnostic testing, so that we know if
little children have got reading deficiencies, we'll correct
them. The whole core of reform is, I ask the
question: Do our children know what they're supposed to
know?
Now, there are some in our society who don't
like the notion of accountability, who don't like to
test. And I will resist that backward thinking with all my
might. Because I know what happens when you don't hold
people accountable: children are given up on. And
that's not the American vision, as far as I'm concerned. I
know it's not the American vision as far as you're concerned as well.
In our budget, we also focus on ways to
complement the work that you all do. We expand the monies
available for Hispanic serving institutions. And as importantly, I
think you'll find that -- this fact will, I think, bring some joy to
your heart, that we expand the Pell Grants available for low-income and
middle-income students. Expanding the Pell Grants is not a
way to replace what you all are doing, it's a way to complement what
you're doing.
We want the -- I can't say it enough, we want
the American experience to be available for every child. And
Pell Grants is a good way to encourage access to higher
education. We expand the TRIO program in my
budget. It's a program aimed at focusing on keeping children
in school. We believe in education savings accounts. We
give parents a tax incentive to save. And as I mentioned
before, we're focused on making sure that the public schools do their
job.
I am fixing to go talk to another group of
Latino leaders about the faith-based initiative, and I want to just
share some thoughts with you about that. It's what I talked
about when I was at Notre Dame. And it ties hand in hand
with what we're trying to do.
On the one hand, we'll educate; on the other
hand, we must inspire. And governments aren't very good at
inspiring. We're kind of bureaucracies. The way
to inspire a child is to convince somebody to be a
mentor. The way to inspire somebody about America and its
future and hope is for somebody to put an arm around a child and say, I
love you a lot; and America is meant for you as well as anybody else.
So we're talking about education today, but
there's a different kind of education that our society must do as
well. And that's the education of helping somebody feel
wanted.
First, our country must recognize there are
some who are being left behind, and we've got to deal with
it. That means more budgets, but it also means standing on
the side of faith-based institutions who exist because they've heard
the call to love a neighbor like they would like to be loved
themselves, and rally the great compassion of America.
I called on corporate America when I was at
Notre Dame to do its job. I welcome corporate America here, doing your
job by providing these scholarships. It's in your best
interest to do so. It's also in our nation's best interest
that corporate America support faith-based programs that teach people
love and compassion and hope.
Our country is a fabulous
country. It is. Mainly, because the people are so
great. And our country is richer because of the Hispanic
influence. I know. I came from a state that has a
tremendous Hispanic influence. And I know I shouldn't say
this: I happen to think it's the greatest of all states, but
-- (applause) -- partly because of our history and tradition and
relationships in the Hispanic community.
We are one nation under God, which means every
child -- every child -- should be viewed as a precious
individual. Every child should be educated, and no child
should be left behind. It is my honor to help kick off your
conference. I can't thank you enough for what you
do. For those generous souls who have contributed, thanks
from the bottom of our nation's heart. Keep doing it. And
for Sarah, thank you very much for having me a chance to come
by. God bless you all. (Applause.)
END
1:30 P.M. EDT
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