Douglas Alexander: “right after the election, on November 3, 2004, I went to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The purpose of…”

“right after the election, on November 3, 2004, I went to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The purpose of the occasion was a discussion of the 1989 Education Summit. It had been 15 years since the President of the United States and the Nation's Governors--all of our chief executives--gathered in Charlottesville, VA, to establish the first ever national education goals for our country. It is astonishing to me that 15 years have gone by since then, and it was to most other governors who were there. It was important to look back on what had happened in 1989, to see how it happened, and to think about what happened since then. The summit at the University of Virginia had gone remarkably well. President George H.W. Bush had convened it. Terry Bransted, the Governor of Iowa, was chairman of the National Governors Association that year. He had appointed the Governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, whose library is opening today, and Carroll Campbell of South Carolina as the lead Governors. Working with the President's representatives, they came up with those first national education goals. There had been a long prelude to all of this activity in 1989. I was a part of that prelude, and I saw a lot of it happen.”