Interview with Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton on Education Reform

I really really start my watch. I get a thank you for joining us this evening. During the recent legislative session in a press conference you mentioned that you had invested more time and energy in trying to get support for your education program than anything you had worked on in your entire adult lives. But at the same time you have received some criticism from certain fronts including legislative fronts that during the legislative session you and your staff did not work hard enough to support education. How do you respond to that kind of criticism that the people who say it are trying to find an excuse for the failure of the House to support adequate funding for public schools and vocational education and higher education. I proposed a sweeping set of revenue reforms which would have raised more money without burdening the middle income and lower income people in the state who are already burdened with tax increases. They've raised their property taxes we've raised the

sales tax we've done all these things. So I proposed a sweeping set of tax reforms which would have left those people virtually unscathed but would have provided adequate funding for education higher education in order to do that I had to step on some lobbyist toes and frankly every time I try to do something the House of Representatives try to water it down they water down my income tax bill took 30 percent of the money out of it. I wouldn't pass a lot of the other bills that would have repealed exemptions enjoyed by special groups. So now that it's over. The temptation always is to say well Bill Clinton's never lost anything before so people educators said maybe if he'd tried harder to raise the money or the people out in the legislature don't want to tell the truth. I don't mean that they're being dishonest but what that it's uncomfortable for them to say. The truth which is that I had to decide was I going to raise taxes and make an interest group. Was I going to raise taxes and make people back home that I

was I going to make to people what was I going to refuse to raise taxes and then make the people mad who didn't get the money. Now I have a lot of sympathy with the House they have. They had tough decisions to make it's not easy to make these decisions after we've made the commitment we have the last four years. And in the in the context of an economy which is very good in half the state and terrible on the other hand. So it was a very tough time and I had a lot of sympathy with the house but I don't think it's fair for them to try to say the reason they couldn't exercise that responsibility is that I didn't put the squeeze on hard enough because I worked very hard to lobby those programs through. But it was just more than we could do. Let's talk a little bit more about the House of Representatives we've heard certain excuses and reasons but in your opinion why do you think the House did not pass the quarter of a cent sales tax increase to support education what do you think was the real reason. Well I think some of the people who didn't vote for it generally thought they shouldn't raise any rates. They were people who wanted to make the system more progressive.

Others. Thought they shouldn't do that without going home and talking to the voters. But others basically just didn't want to raise any money. I don't believe that it's important enough to fund higher education Human Services prisons and public schools. Well enough for them to risk being turned out of the legislature. That's basically what they don't believe that they don't believe the state needs the money or that they have persuaded the people back home that they did it was pure politics they didn't think that they could do it and now that I'm interviewing them for a potential special session I'm hearing the same thing. Let's talk about attitudes because that it all goes back to that how much do attitudes have to do with this. Do everything people of Arkansas really care at this time about the quality of education provided by our public schools and up to put funding behind it. I think they do I think they care about that very deeply. And we very nearly got where we need to be with the public school

standards. We run the risk of having a third year with next to no teacher pay increase which I think is very bad because it hurts us in recruiting and keeping good teachers. But we do have other significant incentives we've improved working conditions and French benefits a great deal. The problem that I had most severely in the last session was trying to get the legislature a particular the house to see all of education together. That is they basically would suit them fine if Higher Education spends less money next year than they started this year with. They didn't understand and don't I think that our state has got to make a major commitment there also if we're going to have a modern economy. We have to get more of our working class kids into histories of higher education we have to get them out we have to hook the higher education system up to the economy we've been working on that for four years and we just can't allow this investment we've made to deteriorate which is precisely what we're doing. It's bad for the Arkansas economy. I think how many legislators view it is. It's nice to

give money to the colleges and universities when you have it when you don't it's okay to forget about it. My attitude is different. I see our state in a very dynamic changing period. A lot of good things are happening but we have an enormous burden to carry to restructure our economy away from those things which are causing such high unemployment now. And one key element in the strategy of modernizing the Arkansas economy is having an aggressive comprehensive higher education program. Every state that's doing well is doing that. And we're making in my view a significant error in turning back the clock. But as I said the difficult number in the last session a majority of the House members either did not agree with me or believe that even though they agreed with me their people would turn him out of office if they voted. It wasn't because we didn't like an effort it was because they either didn't agree or thought they'd lose the election if they voted with us. There was that there was no big mystery to it. And if you look at the economic problems faced by a lot of their constituents you have

to have sympathy with them. So I sympathize with them but I don't think it's right for any of them to to lay the decision they made off on the governor because that's just not what happened they're all grown people gather in a special session most of the talk is centered around needed funding for prison and Human Services. Higher education VO technical education. Does that mean at this time you have given up on any efforts to raise additional revenue for public schools. No. I would like to see some more money going to the schools because I want to see these standards met not just on paper only. And I don't want to wind up doing what could well happen in some school districts under the present budget which is that they get up the next year and they can make a kind of a colorable argument that they meet the standards and then they spend all their reserves and they're out of money and they fall out of compliance the very next year I don't think we want that. So I think we should try to include public education in our funding strategy

and I will do that. When you talk about the school standards most of them deal with academic skills but of course a lot of the problems that we have in our schools deal with other things that teen pregnancy dropout drug abuse even suicide. Are we doing anything enough in our schools in those areas. Well whether we're doing enough is a question you have to ask and answer. District by district I think but we are from a state perspective trying to attack all these problems let me just mention a few things. First of all. Those are the problems of school dropouts and while the other problems that kids have relate to their home circumstances and the disadvantages they bring to school. That's why we've worked so hard to get these class sizes down the early grades but the elementary school counselors in the elementary school so they can help the children who really need it. The dropout rate is going down. The test scores are going up. The racial and regional differences among our kids are going down on those scores Arce our students are not

competing very well with students from other states. We have the lowest dropout rate in the south. And we're going to make a major effort next year with the federal funds we're getting in the drug abuse area to have a much more sweeping prevention effort in the alcohol and drug abuse area. And we've got the National Foundation to give us some money to try to do more work on the teenage pregnancy problem. So I think it's fair to say that we're moving aggressively on the non academic side too. But the key is in my opinion to all these things giving the kids a sense of self-worth and the ability to learn in those early grades I think that is terribly important there was a study which came out a few months ago indicating that. The acquisition of strong basic learning skills had as big a deterrent effect on a young girl becoming a teenage mother as anything else. So I think we still got to keep it our main task. You mentioned that Arkansas was dropout rate was the lowest in the south 23 percent I believe is the figure that's right.

That still is an alarming figure over and I'm sure you're greatly concerned about that what is the answer how do we keep people in school. Well I believe over the long run you'll see a drop in the dropout rate going down for two reasons that are kind of indirect to what happens when a particular person drops out. Number one people know education is more important or economic survival than ever before. So I think in pure self-interest terms they'll be fewer dropouts. Number two the work we're doing in the elementary schools with the smaller class sizes greater emphasis on the basics reading instruction things of that kind. What that's going to do is to make children capable of learning better when they get to the age where they start dropping out junior high high school and they won't do it so readily because they won't need to they won't be bored they won't be incapable of learning they'll have those skills. I think in addition to that in the areas which have higher dropout rates there need to be specific strategies to bring adults educators or others

into contact one on one with kids who might drop out or who have more trying to get them back in. And we may also need some schools which are alternative schools which are business sponsored along with school districts to give kids who are chronic dropouts just kind of misfits in schools that are capable of learning an alternative setting and we're exploring that. These days kids are a little bit different than when you and I are in school. My little boy has a computer that he learns emasculates automates and it's different. But I'm wondering in our schools today are we keeping up in Arkansas through the year state part of education. With advances in technology are we incorporating these kinds of skills in the classroom. Well I think we've certainly done a good job of that and a better job than our our income level might suggest would be able to do. In 1983 I sponsored legislation which created the impact program which was designed to put innovative computer programs into school starting at the elementary level. With a council of people who would decide what would be done including

computer experts people from the private sector. The program is received nationwide recognition. We now have the ratio of computers to students is about one to 30. It's one of the 10 best in the country. We've got almost 100 percent I think 96 percent of our schools now offer some sort of computer education in 83 it's beginning the school year was only 15 percent we got 15 96 percent in just four years I think that's impressive. And now we're beginning to get into the satellite technology which I think is has great potential for the future especially for the smaller districts and the Educational Television Network I think about. Twenty five hundred tapes supplementary educational tapes that they can make available to the school district. So for the TV for satellite technology and for computers in schools I think we're moving ahead. But I will say this as the technology changes so rapidly all the time.

It's something that we really have to stay on top of. And I think we've got the mechanisms in place to do that but that's something we offer we just continually continually ask ourselves there's Amanda that I spend an hour with the other day from Northern Virginia made a lot of money in the private sector and some devote the rest of his life to educational improvement. And he believes that what we really need someday is a computer terminal in every school child desk in America which can be interface with every other one in America with a massive data bank on every kind of educational subject you can imagine. And I can forsee a day when that will occur. Of course when you talk about computer banks at every desk you're talking about a lot of money and it takes a great deal of money as you well know great education but you could start with having that one class with on every desk you know of course and and the technology is improving to the point which is where the cost the unit costs are going down that's one reason we've been able to get so many

computers in schools in the last four years. The question I was leading to was that. To improve Arkansas's economy obviously we have to improve the schools. But at the same time we're having a hard time because of the situation with our economy right now to fund the schools it's a difficult two sided problem. It's a token and I thought well there is no easy resolution of it that's why I expressed at the outset the sympathy I feel for the legislature because if you come from a region where the unemployment rate is high and the economy is deflating land values and farm income going down and the perception is that people are in trouble it's hard to justify under those circumstances raising more money even though you know that's what you have to do to get them out of trouble just a few years down the road. But it is perfectly clear that our state needs education transportation infrastructure and a good aggressive economic development effort. We have done what we should have done I think for the last four years on public education

on roads and water and sewer and on economic development. Our revenues have fallen off and our cost have gone up because of the decline in eastern Arkansas primarily in the other farming areas. And I just think what I'm trying to get the legislature to do is just raise a little more money to put our programs back on a path of progress rather than on decline. During the last legislative session during a meeting of the revenue and Taxation Committee Representative John Dawson asked you about some of the special interest groups and a conference call that he said you'd had with some of the major money in the state. His question was if education is so important why can't you convince these big corporations to chip in for a couple of years instead of trying to put a quarter of a sales tax a quarter percent sales tax increase on the people how do you respond. Well Mr. Dawson I have is on the House floor of the tax committee he had a lot of opportunities to vote for progressive revenue measures which would have been paid for by higher income groups and those corporate executives

who were asked by me to support a quarter cent sales tax included a lot of people who had also been supporting the other reform initiative. There were more than willing to pay. But they didn't get out of Mr. Dawson's committee either. So it kind of takes me to hear that sanctimonious talk from from out of the house from the tax committee which wouldn't even vote out some of our progressive revenue measures. So the question to be answered by the person who asked it. That's right. I think it was an unfair attack on those business leaders those business leaders or people who know that Arkansas needs to invest more money in education and higher education to keep it from slipping away because the revenues are down. They were doing what they were doing because they thought it was good for the state and by the way a lot of those companies pay significant sales tax bills. So I don't think that's a fair criticism. More than half the people who were on that conference call had also supported other revenue measures which would have required them to pay more including our income tax reforms

which were watered down by that committee. Many of the schools in the state of Arkansas have had great difficulty in funding the cost of the standards. Just the basic implementation of the standards. Is this going to continue to be a problem keeping up with the standards down the road. Sure it is. I mean it is because in Arkansas Our people want to maintain a more school district in any other state in the south and it's pretty hard if you want to if you want a first class school system in a state with a fairly low per capita income which wishes to keep its per capita taxes low and wishes to have a very large number of school districts it's harder. There are basically you know and there's no way out of that except we're going to have to we have three choices. We can give up on our economic future and just quit trying to advance education that's an unacceptable choice. We can can continue to pay for a system which our rural people

love culturally but which it costs us more and because the more school districts you have the more administrators and teachers you need to provide all these courses. Or we can reorganize our school districts but our people are ready for that here. So we'll just have to keep working on it the only thing that's that's unacceptable to me is the first alternative we can't continue to push. We can't quit pushing for quality education as long as we're pushing for it. Then the people will have to work it out along with their political leaders over that time about whether we can afford it. Over 300 school districts we have eliminated I think 10 percent of our school districts in the course of the school reform program and I thought another 10 percent that would probably consolidate which haven't yet but we simply have to realize that that's a decision that people all over Arkansas have made you know I had a legislator tell me oh they will I can't vote for any more money for Harriet revoked because people one of my rural school districts had double their property taxes. Well my answer

to him was that's what they should have done if they want to have a national competitive education for their children and still keep a school district that is far smaller than than any other southern states trying to keep I mean we have Mississippi bigger than we are and they have fewer than half as many school districts as women. South Carolina is half again bigger than we are 50 percent bigger. We have 330 districts they have 92 Tennessee twice as big as we are. They have one hundred forty six school district. So if we want to keep this system which by the way has some benefits are they one of the reasons we got a low dropout rate is we got so many school districts that means real small classes in the early grades and a lot of personal contact you know there's some to be said for the small district but I don't think we should kid ourselves it cost more money. Yeah.