Bill Clinton: “Ninety percent of our children are in public schools. If most of them weren't doing a good job, they wouldn't be there.…”

“Ninety percent of our children are in public schools. If most of them weren't doing a good job, they wouldn't be there. That's the first point. Second thing is--it's very important to make this point because I've been working at this now since, seriously, since 1979, and I think I've been in enough schools and looked at enough data and talked to enough people to know--the schools are better than they used to be, and they're getting better. The real problem is there are some that aren't good at all. And what do they need? You can do one of two things. You can say, ``Okay, well, we ought to just make it possible for people to abandon them.'' The problem is, only a portion of the people would abandon them and the people that are left will be even worse off, because they'll have less money and a lot of them are in financial trouble now. Or you can do what I think should be done: You have to have high standards; you have to have accountability; you have to have reform; and then you have to have adequate investment. Now, this school you mentioned--one of the things that I think every school district ought to do is, I think they ought to give the parents of the children a choice of the schools they attend within the districts, and I think every district--I hope some day before too long every district will have what educators call a charter school, which is a part of the public schools but it's created--for example, suppose there were no art school here--where teachers can get together and create a whole new school with a separate mission, with fewer rules and regulations, and it only stays in existence as long as the parents and the students are satisfied that its's fulfilling its mission. There are now 700 of these schools. In our budget, we're going to create 3,000 more. Once you get enough of them to be in every district in the country, and if we can get more people to give choice to the parents within the school districts, you're going to see dramatic improvements. We need the national standards. We also need--I have been a very strong supporter of the national board for teacher certification to get board-certified teachers as master teachers, one in every school in the country. There are only about 1,000 now. Our budget contains funds to help train 100,000 in the next 4 years, and they are dramatically better trained than most people. So I'm with you. They're getting better. They can do a good job. Most of them are doing better than they used to. Yes. Iran”