Into the great beyond. We lower our heads for a moment to reflect on the void left by the passing of these two iconic americans and how lucky we were to have befriended them. [no audio] thank you. Throughout the year, we honor president and missions bushes legacy bushs legacy, where the bush exhibit chronicles their love affair with maine, president ial years, and the bush connection with you wendy that she would any une. Today, we had the Incredible Opportunity to examine a Pivotal Moment in american history, and of americas educational system. We gather to learn about and to commemorate, the 30th anniversary of president bush convening all u. S. Governors to create a unified set of National Educational goals. This work brought data and research at long last into the process of crafting educational policy. Our event today will undoubtedly shed light on the strides we have made since september 27, 1989, when this historic meeting took place. We will also shine a light on the work left to be done. To introduce the event further and or millie introduce todays guest, il special invite the chairman of the george and Barbara Bush Foundation and a nephew of president and misses bush. [applause] thank you, president herbert. Lovely moment of remembrance as well. On behalf of the george and Barbara Bush Foundation, i want to thank you president herbert and your team for producing this special and important event. I also want to thank the foundation for their Generous Foundation and of this event. At the george and Barbara Bush Foundation, we believe the four years they served in the white house were four years that changed our lives for the better. President bush worked to secure freedom and the cold war without a single shot fired between the superpowers. He helped unify germany within nato and the division of europe. He forged and led an Unprecedented Coalition to reverse the brutal invasion of kuwait. Also during the four years, in the white house and beyond, george and barbara bush helped change our country for the better. Today, in this beautiful facility, we can see the impact of americans with disabilities act, the main air is always refreshing, especially today air is alwaysaine fresh and, especially day. Today. Smaug was choking our cities. No other issue affects our nation, people, and future more than education. We are delighted to be cohosting this important event as we look back at the Ground Breaking collaborative work of the 1989 Education Summit, but in classic george bush fashion, looking ahead to the challenges and opportunities that remain. Theening this event under distinguished lecture series seems poignant. This being the first such lasher lecture since we lost president bush last year. Bushes enjoy a wonderful enjoy wonderful relationship with the school and students. Its my great pleasure to introduce our distinguished moderator for todays events, one of the masterminds behind the 1989 Education Summit, professor roger porter. He serves as the business and government professor athe kennedy school. 19 89, he was a Senior Advisor for the best policy. We could not be more pleased to have roger for our conversation today with our two distinguished speakers. Im delighted to invite him to the stage. Please welcome professor roger porter. [applause] delight to be with you this afternoon. When people aspire to be president of the united states, they are required to give an explanation of what it is they want to do if they become president. When George Huawei we bush sought the presidency George H W Bush sought the presidency in 1988, he told the country he wanted to become the education president , the environmental president , and he wanted a kinder, gentler america. Visionter to tell us his for this summit than george w. Bush himself. The spirit of this summit is how can we get results . We are here to part progress before partisanship. The future before the moment, and our children before ourselves. Now, it is time to define goals. This is the time for action. Ideas, your advice and as we continue to refine the federal role. To those who say money alone is the answer, i say there is no one answer. If anything, hard experience teaches we are simply not getting our moneys worth in education. Our focus must no longer be on resources, it must be on results. This is only the third time in ar 200 years as a nation that president has called a summit with the governors, and i have called you together because you bear a constitutional responsibility for education. I didnt ask you to such a historic occasion to look at what is wrong. We are here to Work Together to make aiming American Education the best in the world. Governors, an American Education the best in the world. Governors emphasized to me the greater effects ability greater flex ability and use of federal funds while excepting enhanced accountability for the results. They have also stressed the highpriority helping prepare preschool children should have in federal standards. Even times of fiscal constraints. Finally, the governors have articulated eloquently the need to restructure our Education System. , it begins today in Charlottesville Virginia charlottesville, virginia. A pact between parents, teachers, principal, superintendent, state , and there, governors administration. Our compact is founded not on promises, but on challenges. , a radical departure from tradition. I hope you will join me to define National Goals in education for the first time, from this day forward time. From this day forward, let us be an america of tougher standards, higher goals, in a land of bigger dreams and a land of bigger dreams. [applause] [applause] you may well have wondered what those first two president ial summits with governors were. Formerst was the governor of new york, teddy roosevelt, who, near the end of his second term, convened the governors and a group of other people in the white house for a conference on conservation and natural resources. One was another former governor of new york, franklin roosevelt, who invited his fellow governors to his inauguration, and asked them to stay over to the following monday so he could meet with them on a series of issues at the interface between the states and federal government. , what we have come to call the charlottesville summit, the president s Education Summit with governors was front. It began early in his administration. And, it was not held in the east room of the white house, as the previous two summits had, but it was held at the university of virginia because president bush determined that he did notant this to be viewed as washington solving the nations problems, nor did he want it to be viewed as being held in the white house. But instead, on the campus of an Education Institution that was near and dear to him, in part because his son marvin and daughterinlaw margaret had gone there, and in part because it was founded by one of his predecessors, thomas jefferson. What happened at that charlottesville summit and how it came about, we could not have any two finer individuals who have dedicated a great deal of their lives to promoting Educational Excellence in the united states. Please join me in welcoming the 42nd president of the united states, bill clinton, and the 43rd of florida, jeb bush. [applause] [cheering] as i was mentioning, this summit was quite different. ,very summit has its context and in 1983, president reagan had issued the nations report card called a nation at risk, which suggested we had dramatic improvements that needed to be made in our Education System. A series of governors who chaired the National Governors association, Lamar Alexander and , and governor bill clinton 8687, johnson knew, the governor john sununu, the governor of california, and the white house chief of staff who was a major force in encouraging this summit. Then, jerry of virginia, and he was succeeded by Terry Branstad of iowa on when president bush came into office. All of them were very eager to have governors involved in any discussions about education. So, president bush determined he in fact wanted this conference not to be his agenda, but a joint agenda. So, governor branstad appointed a task force on education, cochaired by governor clinton of arkansas, and governor carol campbell, a republican from South Carolina. Its important to remember the National Governors association, since it was created in 1908, has been a bipartisan organization, and has maintained that bipartisanship for more than a century, which is, at least in my view, very impressive. I would like to begin by asking president clinton to share with us his thinking, and the thinking of his fellow governors as we went into the process of deciding how we were going to make the best use of this time well. Ere i think its worth emphasizing that by the time this meeting uva, aned, at the enormous number of percentage of governors have been seriously on education. Issuance ofce the the National Risk report of more than six years previous. And they were disproportionately concentrated in the south because it was the poorest part of the country. Trying to catch up. And we believe, beyond any doubt, that we never would catch up or close out of the income or close either the income or racial gaps without doing much better on education. In 1982, you had big initiatives coming out of florida and mississippi. Then, we passed our initiative in 83, and alexander in tennessee did. Carolina did ath lot of work. Richard riley in South Carolina did. Then, you had a lot of interests outside of the country outside of the south. Example, one of our best education governors was tom kane of new jersey. By 87, he and i took share of Carnegie Council group on middle school. First commission ever to recommend Community Service as a part of a curriculum of middle school education. So we were in this, but we were also frustrated, because most of standards andpted put in more money into education were having some success in recruiting and keeping better teachers who were doing a good job and developing principles and supporting schools with good cultures. But, we were having a hard time figuring out how you would take this unique system in america, had local control, state, constitutional responsibility for education, and funding from the state, federal, and local levels, in a blinding array of different shades. And, turn it into something that would produce better results on the systematic basis. We had done all of this work, all of this good stuff that fromned, our state went being one of the lowest rated states to the country to the bestperforming state in the midsouth, but we had the feeling we were in this big global race, and we werent catching up really. That it was two steps forward, one step back. Nobody could figure out how to put incentives to perform and improving the system, and accountability, and make it all work. I think it is worth pointing out that, even then, it was obvious nearly every challenge in American Education had been met by somebody somewhere. You couldnt name anything where you couldnt find a school at worldwideerform levels. High worldwide levels. Our ability to replicate excellence for a variety of reasons was stunted. We needed a new boost, and that is why i was so excited when president bush agreed to do this, and i know you and jonathan will have a lot to do with it, and the National Governors association had a lot to do with it. He is here today too. Addicted to this tougher life. At least we are not drug by pretenders. [laughter] pres. Clinton but, that is what people need to know. There was remarkably little partisan difference. There were genuine differences in terms how much the federal moneyment should give in or how much the state should regulate local districts, or how teacher certification should be. All of the stuff we are still dealing with when he became governor, but there wasnt much partisan difference. And, i think president bush set the tone, and he wanted to meet i gave annors and Opening Statement to come here to praise the president. From a man ine congress saying do you know what youre doing . I said yeah, this is a big deal. I said we need to grow up as a country, and rag on people in agreeher party when we with what they are doing and disagree with them honestly without being its crazy. All act likes, we threedimensional people instead of twodimensional cartoons. I think there was a big appetite for it, but it sounds surprising now. It was normal then. Partner, you, my know, i have a great relationship with. He had to go home that night. Is now ourtad ambassador to china, and he was the chairman of the governors conference, and he had basically decided he would stand in for those meetings we ran together, but he couldnt, for some reason, he couldnt be there when we started, and you said go and start, you know where we are, what we are different on and what we agree, so just go and get started. We dont want to waste time. Asas i thought it was normal as anything. He knew i wouldnt embarrass the president , him, or republicans, and i would be faithful to where i knew we had differences in positions, why give whether they were regulated party or not. Today. Ds unique it seemed normal to me, and it needs to be normal again. [applause] president clinton, you will recall president bush was very intent that this not to be a conference where people simply gave speeches and listened to one another talk, but he wanted something concrete to emerge from it, so we organized these panels, which governors would sit around the table and discuss an issue before we had the plenty area session. He was also determined, as you and governor campbell where, that we produce a joint statement at the end, that we not to stab the summit have the summit and say this is great but there was something concrete coming out. Joint statements are wonderful, and this one was more than four singlespaced pages in length, but you cant issue a joint statement until everybody signs on to it, and we didnt want to have the president and a few of the governors sign onto it. We wanted to have the president and all of the governors sign onto it. Carol campbell, governor campbell, and then governor clinton had the responsibility of getting the republicans and democratic governors, respectively, to sign on to this joint statement. Would you like to share with us what happened as you tried to get this joint statement signed on by your fellow democratic governors . You can tell how long it took to write it by the way. [laughter] pres. Clinton when do we go to sleep . We finished did we go to sleep . We finished at 3 10 in the morning. The press was just getting warmed up at that time. [laughter] , it. Clinton i have to say didnt bother me as much as it did some people, and it took us a while to get it done because it took a while to get it done because we had so many people who had been involved in education. You gotta understand, we did a lot of bipartisan johnson new. He led a delegation to italy in 1987, to study the Economic Organization of the medieval guilds in northern italy, as they had been applied to the modern world, to see if it was a good thing for the Economic Transformation going on in america. Republicans. Hree hillary and i went and we had the time of our lives, and we were serious. We worked. I was used to all these guys having an idea. Everybody had an idea, and they wanted their phrase in a final statement, so we tried to do how, but i remember unusually accommodating we were to each other, once we knew it was on the level. You would be amazed how much could be done how much you could do if you were convinced that your counterparts are just on the level. But it issilly, truth. So we work at it, and i would patiently go see them all, you know, and they were all there, all of the democrats were there, except rudy, who i think had a family illness. Eat at a family illness in minnesota and was unable to come. He was the only other unable to come. Pres. Clinton all the others were there. Terry branstad was working with the republicans. Gov. Bush right. Pres. Clinton we had to work with the democrats and work through it. One of the interesting things, about all these meetings, there were no staff allowed in the meetings. Exceptgovernors only, for i think roger was the only person who is there for the white house. Gov. Bush and john sununu. Pres. Clinton sununu was great, and we all knew him and served with him and everything. Literally how are we going to work the fact that we wanted every child to start school learn, what did that mean . How much are we going to say and how much are we not going to say . How are we going to word making Higher Education available to all and affordable . What is that mean and how did you define the federal responsibility there. So the democrats could hold out the hope of getting more money in the president didnt get in trouble. You dont over commit to something without consulting staff. Questions like this. We methodically went through 3 10,one of them and, by my staff was happy as a clown. [laughter] gov. Bush well, if you look at what was produced out of the charlottesville summit, probably the single biggest idea and you alluded to this in your concluding remarks there was that we would commit to establishing performance goals that would be embraced nationwide, but would be implemented by each state, and each of the governors, and that we would hold ourselves accountable for that. Its one thing to articulate a set of goals. Its another