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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD Ext ensi ons of RemarksE1820 September 25,
1998
I have ever seen them li terally radiati nghappiness. My own
view and theirs is thatthis country has seized its last chance. I
amfond of quoting Winston Churchill to the ef-fect that America
always does the ri ghtthing after i t has exhausted all the
alter-natives. This election, more than anythingelse in my
experience, proves his point.
T he subject we were discussing was whatyou and Bi ll should do
now about education,traini ng, and labor market policy. F
ollowingthat meeting, I chaired another in Washing-ton on the same
topic. T hose present at thesecond meeting included T im Barni cle,
Dave
Barram, Mike Cohen, David Hombeck, Hil-lary P ennington, Andy P
latt ner, L aurenResnick, Betsy Brown Ruzzi. Bob Schwartz,Mike
Smith, and Bill Spring. ShirleyMalcom, Ray Marshall, and Susan
McGuirewere also i nvit ed. Though these thr ee werenot able to be
present at last week s meet-ing, they have all contributed by
telephoneto the ideas that follow. Ira Magaziner wasalso invit ed
to this meeti ng.
Our purpose in these meetings was to pro-pose concrete actions
that the Clinton ad-mini strati on could tak e between now andthe
inauguration, in the first 100 days andbeyond. The result , from
where I sit , wasreally exciting. We took a very large leapforward
in terms of how to advance the agen-da on which y ou and we have al
l been work -ing a practical plan for putti ng all t hemajor
components of the system in placewithi n four years, by the time
Bil l has to runagain.
I take personal responsibility for what fol-lows. T hough I bel
ieve everyone involved inthe planning effort is in broad
agreement,they may not al l agree on the detai ls. Y oushould also
be aware that, although the plancomes from a group closely
associated withthe National Center of Education and theEconomy,
there was no practical way to pollour whole Board on this plan in
the timeavailable. It represents, then, not a proposalfrom our
Center, but the best thinking of theGroup I have named.
We think the great opportunity you haveis to remold the entire
American System forhuman resources development, almost all ofthe
current components of whi ch were put inplace before World War I I
. T he danger is t hat
each of the ideas that Bill advanced in thecampaign in the area
of education and train-ing could be translated individually in
theordinary course of governing into a legisla-ti ve proposal and
enacted as a program. Thisis the plan of least resistance. But it
willlead to these programs being grafted ontothe present system,
not to a new system, andthe opportunity will have been lost. If
thissense of time and place is correct, it is essen-tial that the
administrations efforts beguided by a consistent vision of what it
wereto accomplish in the field of human resourcedevelopment, with
respect both to choice ofkey official s and the program.
What follows comes in three places:F irst, a vision of the ki nd
of national not
federal human resources development sys-tem the nation could
have. This is inter-woven with a new approach to governingthat
should inform that vision. What is es-sential is that we create a
seamless web ofopportunities, to develop ones skills thatliterally
extends from cradle to grave and isthe same system for everyone
young andold, poor and rich, worker and full-time stu-dent. I t
needs to be a system dri ven by cl ientneeds (not agency regulat
ions or the needs ofthe organization providing the services),guided
by clear standards that define thestages of the system for the
people whoprogress through it, and regulated on thebasis of
outcomes that providers produce fortheir clients, not inputs into
the system.
Second, a proposed legislative agenda youcan use to implement
this vision. We propose
four high priority packages that will enableyou to move quickly
on the campaign prom-ises:
1. The fi rst woul d use your proposal for anapprenticeship
system as the keystone of astrategy for putting a whole new
postsecond-ary training system in place. That systemwould
incorporate your proposal for reform-ing postsecondary education
finance. It con-tains what we think is a powerful idea forrolling
out and scaling up the whole newhuman resources system nationwide
over thenext four years, using the (renamed) appren-ti ceship i
deas as the entering wedge.
2. The second would combine ini ti ati ves ondislocated workers,
a rebuilt employmentservice and a new system of labor marketboards
to offer the Clinton administrationsemployment security program,
built on thebest practi ces anywhere in t he world. T his i sthe
backbone of a system for assuring adultwork ers in our society t
hat they need neveragain watch with dismay as their jobs dis-appear
and their chances of ever getting agood job again go with them.
3. The th ir d would concentr ate on the over-whelming problems
of our inner cities, com-bini ng elements of the fi rst and second
pack-ages into a special program to greatly raisethe work -related
sk il ls of t he people trappedin t he core of our great ci ti
es.
4. T he fourth woul d enable you to take ad-vantage of
legislation on which Congress has
alr eady been work ing to advance the elemen-tar y and secondary
r eform agenda.
T he other maj or proposal we offer has todo with government
organization for thehuman resources agenda. While we shareyour
reservations about the hazards involvedin bringing reorganization
proposals to theCongress, we believe that the one we havecome up
wit h mi nimi zes those drawbackswhile creating an opportunity for
the newadministration to move like lighting to im-plement its human
resources developmentproposals. We hope you can consider themerits
of this idea quickly, because, if youdecide to go with it or
something like it, itwill greatly affect the nature of the
offersyou make to prospective cabinet members.
T HE V I S I O N
We take the proposals Bill put before the
country in the campaign to be utterly con-sistent wi th the
ideas advanced in AmericasChoice, the school restructur ing agenda
firststated in A Nati on Prepared, and later incor-porated in the
work of the National Alliancefor Restructuring Education, and the
elabo-ration of this view that Ray and I tried tocapture in our
book, T hinki ng for a L iving.T aken together, we think these
ideas con-stitute a consistent vision for a new humanresources
development system for the UnitedSt ates. I have tr ied to captur e
the essence ofthat vi sion below.
A N E C ON OM I C S T R A T E G Y B A S E D ON S K I L L
D E V E L O P M E N T
T he economy s str ength is derived from awhole population as
skilled as any in theworld, working in workplaces organized to
take maximum advantage of the skills thosepeople have to offer.A
seamless system of unending ski l l devel -
opment that begins in the home with thevery young and continues
through school,postsecondary educati on and the work place.
T HE SCH OOL S
Clear nati onal standards of performance ingeneral education
(the k nowledge and ski ll sthat everyone is expected to hold in
com-mon) are set to the level of the best achiev-ing nations in the
world for students of 16,and public schools are expected to bring
allbut the most severely handicapped up tothat standard. Students
get a certificatewhen they meet this standard, allowing
them to go on to the next stage of their edu-cati on. Though the
standards are set t ointernational benchmarks, they are dis-tinctly
American, reflecting our needs andvalues.
We have a national system of education inwhich curriculum,
pedagogy, examinations,and teacher education and licensure
systemsare all linked to the national standards, butwhich provides
for substantial varianceamong states, districts, and schools on
thesematters. T his new system of li nked stand-ards, curriculum,
and pedagogy will abandonthe Ameri can track ing system, combing
high
academic standards with t he abil it y t o applywhat one knows
to real worl d problems, andqualifying all students to a lifetime
of learn-ing in the postsecondary system and atwork.
We have a system that rewards studentswho meet the national
standards with fur-ther education and good jobs, providing thema
strong incenti ve to work hard in school.
Our public school systems are reorganizedto free up school
professionals to make thekey decisions about how to use all the
avail-able resources to bring students up to thestandards. Most of
the federal, state, dis-trict, and union rules and regulations
thatnow restrict school professional ability tomake these decisi
ons are swept away, thoughstrong measures are in place to mak e
surethat vulnerable populations get the help
they need. School professionals are paid at alevel comparable to
that of other profes-sionals, but they are expected to put in a
fullyear, t o spend whatever t ime i t tak es to dothe job and to
be fully accountable for theresult s of their work . T he federal,
state, andlocal governments provide the time, staff de-velopment
resources, technology, and othersupport needed for them to do the
job. Noth-ing less than a wholly restructured schoolsystem can
possibly bring all of our studentsup to the standards only a few
have been ex-pected to meet up to now.
T here is a real aggressive program ofpublic choice in our
schools, rather than theflaccid version that is widespread now.
All students are guaranteed that they willhave a fair shot at
reaching the standards:that is, that whether they make it or not
de-
pends on the effort they are wil li ng to make,and nothing else.
School delivery stand-ards are in pl ace to mak e sure thi s
happens.T hese standards have the same stat us i n thesystem as the
new student performancestandards, assuring that the quality of
in-struction is high everywhere, but they arefashioned so as not to
constitute a new bu-reaucratic nightmare.
P O S T S E C ON D A R Y E D U CA T I O N A N D W OR K S K I L L
S
All students who meet the new nationalstandards for general
education are entitledto the equivalent of three more years of
freeadditional education. We would have the fed-eral and state
governments match funds toguarantee one free year of college
educationto everyone who meets the new nationalstandards for
general education. So a stu-dent who meets the standard at 16 would
be
enti tl ed to two free years of high school andone of coll ege.
Loans, which can be forgivenfor public service, are available for
addi-tional education beyond that. Nationalstandards for
sub-baccalaureate college-levelprofessional and technical degrees
and cer-tificates will be established with the partici-pation of
employers, labor, and higher edu-cation. T hese programs wil l incl
ude bothacademic study and structured on-the-jobtraining. Eighty
percent or more of Amer-ican high school graduates will be
expectedto get some form of college degree, thoughmost of them less
than a baccalaureate.T hese new professional and t echnical cert i
fi -cates and degrees typically are won within
