Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, yes, I think--I advocate--I think what Massachusetts did was a good thing, not a bad thing. Most…”

“Well, first of all, yes, I think--I advocate--I think what Massachusetts did was a good thing, not a bad thing. Most people, every time they read bad news think this is a bad thing. Sometimes when you read bad news, it's a good thing, because otherwise how are you going to make it better if you don't know what the facts are? So the first thing I'd like to say is we ought to give Massachusetts a pat on the back for having the guts to have the teacher testing, get the facts out, and deal with them. Now, what I think should happen is, I think every State should do this for first-time teachers just the way they do it for lawyers and doctors. Then I believe there should be a much more vigorous system for trying to support and improve teaching as we go along, trying to bring like retired people with degrees in science and mathematics and other things into the teacher corps, which is very uneven across the country. And there's also something called the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards, which certifies master teachers every year, people who have great academic knowledge, could knock the socks off that test, and people who have proven ability in the classroom. And one of the things that I've got in my budget is enough money to fund 100,000 of those master teachers, which would be enough to put one master teacher in every school building in the country. And if you look at--I don't want to embarrass him, but Tony Robbins standing here, if you ever listen to his tapes or look at him on television, you know he's a teacher. He's teaching people to change how they behave. Well, it just stands to reason that if you could get one really great teacher in every class, in every school building in America, you would change the culture of that school building if they had mentoring as part of their responsibility. So I think this is a huge deal. But let me say, there's a lot more to do. You have to recognize, too, that we have to do more to get young people into teaching, even if they only stay a few years--really bright young people. One of the proposals I've got before the Congress today would fund several thousand young people going into inner-city schools and other underserved areas to teach just for a couple of years and they would, in turn, get a lot of their college costs knocked off for doing it. Congress hasn't adopted it yet, but I think that's another important avenue to consider. You've got to--the quality of teaching matters. Now, I won't go through my whole education agenda with you, but the other thing that you have to remember, whether you're in Colorado or anyplace else, is that when most of us who are my age at least were children, the smartest women were teaching because they couldn't do anything else for a living. And they weren't making much for doing it, but it was all they could do. And now, a smart woman can run a big company, can create a company and then take it public and be worth several hundred million dollars, can be elected to the United States Senate and, before you know it, will be President of the United States. So that means if you want good young people to be teachers, we're going to have to pay them more. And that's--everybody nods their head and then nobody wants to come up with the bread to do it, but you've got to do it. I mean, there's no question about it. If you really want to maintain quality over a long period of time, you have to do--you have to pay people; you have to improve the pay scales. The best short-run fix is to get really smart people who did other things and now have good retirement income to come in because they don't need the salary as much, or to get really smart young people to do it for a few years as soon as they get out of college by helping them cover their college costs. Moderator. Mr. President, Michael Goldberg promised me he would show me some reruns of his brother, the wrestler, on winning his championship after you were done speaking.”