THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

           PRESIDENT CLINTON: HONORING TEACHERS OF THE YEAR AND
                      ENSURING HIGH QUALITY TEACHING

                             April 19, 1999

President Clinton will honor the National and State Teachers of the Year and will thank the teachers for their efforts to bring excellence to our schools, and reiterate his call to strengthen the quality of teaching in the Nation's schools.

PRESIDENT CLINTON RECOGNIZES NATIONAL AND STATE TEACHERS OF THE YEAR. Each April, the President introduces the National Teacher of the Year to the American people in a ceremony held at the White House. The National Teacher of the Year program began in 1952 and continues as the oldest and most prestigious national honors program that highlights excellence in teaching. Co-sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers and Scholastic Magazine, the National Teacher of the Year is chosen from among the State Teachers of the Year by a national selection committee representing the major education organizations. The 1999 National Teacher of the Year, Andrew Baumgartner, a kindergarten teacher from Augusta, Georgia, will spend the year traveling nationally and internationally as a spokesperson for the teaching profession. Fifty-five Teachers of the Year -- including those from Department of Defense schools, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the District of Columbia -- will attend today's ceremony.

PRESIDENT CALLS FOR INITIATIVES TO ENSURE HIGH-QUALITY TEACHING. President Clinton will reiterate the call he made in his State of the Union Address for Congress to enact legislation to ensure that states and school districts require new teachers to pass performance exams, phase out the use of teachers with emergency certification, and require secondary school teachers to have a major or minor in the subject they teach. The President will also discuss several initiatives he announced earlier this year to help schools meet these higher standards and to attract talented, well-prepared teachers into our classrooms.

These initiatives include: (1) a second installment of $1.4 billion on the President's class size reduction initiative to hire 100,000 teachers to reduce class size in the early grades to a national average of 18; to ensure that this initiative supports high-quality teaching, school districts may spend up to 15% of these funds for teacher training and other related activities; (2) $35 million in funding -- up from $7.5 million last year -- to provide scholarships to 7,000 outstanding students who commit to teaching in high-poverty urban and rural public schools; (3) an $18 million initiative to build on the successful Troops-to-Teachers program to train and place thousands of retired military personnel and other mid-career professionals as new teachers in public schools, especially in high-need subject areas like math and science and in high-poverty schools; (4) a new $10 million initiative to begin recruiting and training 1,000 teachers who commit to teach in schools with high concentrations of Native American students; and (5) $18.5 million for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards -- a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and nongovernmental body devoted to strengthening the teaching profession by developing rigorous standards of excellence in teaching, recognizing and rewarding outstanding teachers, and keeping our best teachers in the classroom where they are most needed.

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