LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Richard Riley : Rebuilding the Nation’s Public Education System

In the mid-1950s, while in the Navy, Richard W. Riley developed a degenerative bone disease that caused intense, chronic pain for many years and eventually curved his spine. Determined not to become dependent on pain relievers, he chose to endure the pain. Throughout his career as a lawyer, politician and education reformer, he has exhibited the same fortitude and tenacity that he has displayed in dealing with the disease, which now prevents him from turning his head or standing up straight.

In the 1960s, as a state legislator in South Carolina, Riley fought an uphill battle for school desegregation. While many white parents put their children in private schools to avoid integration, Riley continued to send his children to public schools. Largely through his children’s education, Riley learned how miserably the schools were failing South Carolina’s children.

Riley was an underdog when he launched his second attempt for the governorship, but he came out on top after a campaign that stressed overhauling the schools--which, at the time, spent less per pupil than all but one other state. His reforms, paid for by a special sales tax, are credited with helping South Carolina’s students make the nation’s biggest leap in SAT scores, increasing employment opportunities for graduates from vocational education and encouraging far more high-school graduates to go on to college.

Now, as secretary of education, Riley, 61, is trying to do the same thing for the nation’s schools. The linchpin of his strategy is legislation to create national scholastic and skills standards, called Goals 2000. Riley has shunned the bully pulpit--where his predecessors waged their wars. Instead, he has used his persuasive powers in closed-door sessions with key members of Congress. In these moments, the secretary’s dogged determination combines effectively with his genteel Southern courtliness.

President Bill Clinton and Riley are friends and were fellow warriors in the battle for better schools as governors, but the President has pretty much left him alone to fight for national education reform. This has made Riley’s job of pushing the Administration’s initiatives through Congress particularly difficult.

Riley and his wife, Ann, known as “Tunky,” have four children. Riley has passed his passion for public education on to his children--his daughter, Anne, chose teaching public school as her profession.

Question: What is the state of education?

Answer: It’s mixed and fragmented. In any school district, you find grand examples of schools that are working, and classes that are working, and kids engaged in education and parents involved. And, in the same region, you find some where that’s not the case--some where it’s mediocre, and some where it’s poor.

Q: You talk, in particular, about how public schools fail poor children. Why is that so and what should the government do to change that?

A: Research shows that poor children have a more difficult time achieving in school--that’s a fact. It shows further that poor children in a poor school have a double difficulty in achieving. By the same token, poor children in a more wealthy school, surrounded by kids who are well-educated, and motivated in an educational way, do better. That’s part of what the elementary and secondary act is about--Chapter 1, which we call Title 1--and that’s why we’re paying special attention to that. That is, money--$9 billion over the major act, and Chapter 1 is $6 or $7 billion. We are trying to target more of those enrichment funds in Chapter 1 to the poorest schools . . . .

The high standards we are talking about are for all kids--no more watered-down Chapter 1 curriculum, no more watered-down Chapter 1 assessment. Every kid will be expected to learn under Goals 2000. Every kid will then be given the responsibility to study and prepare. It will take several years for that to sink into the system, but that is going to be an enormous change for this country. When you go into kindergarten, every single child is expected to learn. You aren’t out hunting for kids to pull out and put into slow groups, but you are expecting all kids to learn.

Q: Teachers often say they now have to play more of a parenting role, because children do not come to the classroom with the same preparation they had in previous generations. What is the role of parents and communities in education reform?

A: When I talk to teachers, it has been my observation that they don’t talk to me about their pay or their long hours or the difficulty of their jobs. They talk to me about the fact that they can’t get parents to help them with the education of their children. That is a real problem in American education . . . .

Goals 2000 is the answer to that. It is a way that each school can develop their own systemic reform--which means parents are involved in it. Each person can begin by working with their own children every night--and take a special interest in what is happening in their school and what their teacher is telling them and develop respect for teachers and schools and learning. Every parent can do that.

For people who are not parents, there are so many needs for mentors and tutors in the neighborhoods and the schools. I think it is tied to this whole idea of building community spirit back into this country--something we’ve kind of lost. It used to keep the country great, because we had this community spirit. The school should be the center of the community spirit; and people involved in helping the young people grow and become leaders in the community. That’s why I tell parents not just to get involved, but to spend time with their own children and spend time supporting the school. Do not get frustrated and stay away, but go into the school and participate.

Q: It seems schools have to deal with more serious issues now than they did in the past--life-and-death issues, like violence and AIDS.

A: What I say to people is identify your needs, find out what your special problems are. If it is teen-age pregnancy, then you have a need to deal with it. Sit down with good people in your community and state and decide how you think is the best way to deal with it. Don’t not deal with it. It’s not my place to tell you how to deal with it. If it’s a problem that affects children and their learning, then deal with the problem the way you think is best. I think it’s important for me, as a national leader, to say: Don’t turn your back on these problems.

Q: How can the federal government help states and localities educate immigrant children--legal and illegal ?

A: The law of this country is that all children are entitled to have an education, that’s universal. That means we do not go into whether their parents have a green card or whatever other kind of card. If there are children who live in a region, under this country’s laws, they are entitled to an education.

That works a special hardship on the education systems in many areas--the L.A. region is a good example of that. When I was in L.A., I visited several schools where 40 or 50 languages were spoken. I recognize all that. We have bilingual programs and other ways to recognize certain support. Chapter 1 is a key way that helps especially disadvantaged kids who would come here as immigrants.

The recognition of foreign language being a competency--that every child should be educated in two languages--is another way we can help. It’s good for kids who grew up speaking English as a first language to learn Spanish or French or German or whatever; and it’s good for a kid who has Spanish to learn English.

Q: Why has the Administration focused education on apprenticeships for high-school students who do not intend to go on to college?

A: If you stood back and looked at the American education system, I think you would have to say that those young people who are not studying for a four-year college program have been somewhat neglected. Our systems have been devised to provide a good education for those going on to a four-year education and to help the others get by. It has caused a disconnection of young people from the learning process and from our economy and society in general. In the high schools you see that problem begin to show up in graphic ways--in violence issues, drug issues, truancy and drop-outs; 82% of those in prisons are high-school dropouts. A lot of that can be prevented if, from the very early years, we drive the education system with high standards for all students and make their academic standards important to them and have them connect that with success and jobs and a place in the community.

Q: Why do you support public-school choice but not public vouchers for private schools?

A: I don’t see any way that you can say a voucher--paid with tax dollars to pull students and active parents out of the system--can help the schools . . . . One is designed--public-school choice--to improve public schools for the children, and the other is designed for what would amount to destroying the public schools for the purpose of getting them so bad that you have to start over. I don’t think that makes good sense, and it would be very damaging to schools and to children.

Q: Has the role of public education changed in America?

A: It has changed dramatically. I was asked the other day, what is the problem with public education--in a philosophical way. My answer was that the needs and requirements in education itself have changed in the world and we are having to change the education system, the schools and the process to make the changes that are already out there.

We are in a world-competitive economy. We are in a global society. It used to be, in terms of literacy, if you could sign your name, you were perceived to be literate. Now that’s not enough. The person who can’t read and write well is not going to get a meaningful job in this country today. You could do that in the agricultural era and under the industrial era. There was a place for manual labor and domestic labor. But that is relatively nonexistent today.

Things have dramatically changed and we have to do more in those school years in terms of education . . . . In this era, all kids are going to have to be productive; and to be productive, they’re going to have to be well-educated.

Demographics also make it more important--because we have more older people, more people going into retirement, percentage-wise. So, it is more important for all kids to learn and be well-educated. We have never in this country needed young people who can do things, and who know things, like we do now. So it becomes more important to take kids with a learning disability or with a disability and say, “We expect more of you. We are going to give you more opportunities to learn but we are expecting you to learn and produce and participate in our great economy.”

We can’t spare anyone. I don’t care if they’re an immigrant who has just come here and can’t speak the language, or a kid who has a learning disability or a brilliant person who is hanging out and is not interested in studying. All kids are going to have to get into this world of knowledge and education and become part of it.

And that is going to happen. Goals 2000 is the first step for it to happen, and it is going to energize all states and all schools. Then you’re going to see a patriotism develop--if you want to serve this country’s future, the way to do it is to become well-educated.

Q: Are charter schools and contracts with private companies to run public schools good options for preparing young people for the demands of the next century?

A: The trend in several places of contracting for management services or operating schools is an option, but it should be accompanied with a criteria, and that criteria is hard to reach. And that criteria are more resources in the classroom instead of fewer.

If you can contract with the private sector and have more resources in the classroom, and have high academic standards prevail, and be the driving force and have flexibility and accountability--then it makes sense in some cases. But that’s going to be awfully hard to come by if you start talking about a large profit being taken . . . .

You must be careful with all these options. You are dealing with children’s lives and the future of the country. There is no easy magic bullet. The magic bullet is teaching and learning.