Bill Clinton: “Long Beach, California February 24, 1996 Thank you very much, Mr. Cohn. I am here mostly to listen to all of you. And I…”

“Long Beach, California February 24, 1996 Thank you very much, Mr. Cohn. I am here mostly to listen to all of you. And I thank you for taking a little time to meet with me. I have spent an enormous amount of my time in the last 18 years now since I became a Governor of my State in 1986--'78--in public schools. And I devoted a lot of time as President to how we can improve education through higher standards and higher expectations, get higher performance. It is obvious that unless the school is a safe, disciplined, drug-free learning environment, it's impossible for learning to occur. And what we have tried to do at the national level is to encourage all kinds of grassroots reforms and to make it possible for people to do what they think is appropriate in their schools, not to tell schools how they should go about improving learning and improving the environment but to support them when they wanted to do it. And because there were some legal questions raised, I did send the Attorney General out here. As you know, I mentioned your school district in the State of the Union Address.…”