THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary
                       (Clarksdale, Mississippi)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                       July 6, 1999

       PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES MARC S. TUCKER AND GEORGE BECKER 
           AS MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL SKILL STANDARDS BOARD

The President today announced his intent to appoint George Becker and to reappoint Marc S. Tucker to serve as members of the National Skill Standards Board.

Mr. George Becker, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, began his career as a steelworker in Granite City, Illinois in 1944, and has served as the International President of the United Steelworkers of America since 1993. Prior to his election as president, Mr. Becker served two terms as international vice president for administration, having been elected to that position in 1985 and re-elected in 1989. As an AFL-CIO vice president, he chairs the AFL-CIO Executive Council's key Economic Policy Committee. He has served on the President's Export Council and the U.S. Trade and Environmental Policy Advisory Committee, and currently serves on the Federal Trade Deficit Review Commission. In addition, he is an executive committee member of the International Metalworkers Federation and chairman of the world rubber council of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine, and General Workers' Unions.

Mr. Marc S. Tucker, of Washington, D.C., is President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, a not-for-profit organization. NCEE is among the nation's leaders in the use of standards to raise student performance in the nation's schools and training systems. With Governor James Hunt of North Carolina, Mr. Tucker created the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He serves as Co-Director of New Standards, a national program to create internationally benchmarked academic standards and matching performance examinations for the schools. He has conducted research on academic and occupational skill standards systems in North America, Europe and Asia. He is the author of Standards for Our Schools: How to Create Them, Measure Them and Reach Them. He was first appointed to the National Skill Standards Board in 1994, and serves as chair of the Board's Committee on Standards, Assessment and Certification Policy. He was educated at Brown, Yale, and George Washington University.

The National Skill Standards Board (NSSB) is building a national system of voluntary skill standards that will enhance the ability of the United States to compete effectively in a global economy. These skills are being identified by industry in full partnership with education, labor, civil rights and community-based organizations. The standards will be based on high performance work and will be portable across industry sectors.

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