Plenary Session Transcripts

• Agriculture (AG) - agriculture and rural development
• Criminal Justice and Public Protection (CJ) - Governors as leaders in the war on illegal drugs, including sealing the U.S. borders and attacking the problem of "crack" through intergovernmental cooperation
• Economic Development and Technological Innovation (ED) - rebuilding regional economies-a discussion of interstate and intrastate public programs to relieve economic distress; liability insurance; and the state role in housing
• Energy and Environment (EE) - global natural resources issues; and presentation on the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors
• Executive Committee (Exec1) - update on tax reform; update on the federal budget; the importance of geography in public education; and the state-local component of federalism
• Executive Committee (with Education Task Force Chairmen) (Exec2) - implementing the 1991 Education Report
• Human Resources (HR) - welfare reform from the recipients' perspective
• International Trade and Foreign Relations (ITFR) - U.S. Canadian trade; and state partnerships with small-and medium-size companies to promote international trade
• Transportation, Commerce, and Communications (TCC) - briefing on status of the "Consensus Agenda" on motor carrier procedures; Governors' roundtable discussion with industry leaders on implementing the "Consensus Agenda;" and discussion of the Surface Transportation Act of 1986
• Other Governors' Sessions - private session on "Bridging the Gap"—quality communications within the family; Task Force on Liability Insurance; Welfare Reform Task Force; Governors'-only work session on information management; Governors-only session on the impact of federal tax reform legislation on state taxes; work session on high level nuclear waste; roundtable discussion on the telecommunications revolution - implications for users; and U.S.-Canadian Task Force
• 1985-86 Chair Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander's Initiative: Time for Results
• Plenary Session Discussion Subject: Education

• The leadership and management task force concluded that in order to raise student performance, the selection, training, and support and evaluation of school leaders would have to be improved.
• The teaching task force noted that 40 percent of teachers left their jobs within two years after starting. To ensure the best-qualified teachers possible, it was critical for colleges and universities to rebuild the teacher education system, for educators to redesign schools to forge greater cooperation among school boards, principals, and teachers, and to devote more attention to teacher recruitment and retention.
• The choice task force looked at the question of why "choice" should be any less an option in education than it was in any other area of life, and how parental involvement in the educational system could be increased.
• The readiness task force focused on at-risk children and recommended state initiatives such as placing all 5-year-olds in kindergarten, providing half-day programs for at-risk 4-year-olds, and developing support systems for parents. To keep children in school, the task force also discussed the provision of extra assistance in basic skills, the establishment of parent-school relationships to encourage parental involvement, the provision of incentives for teachers and principals to implement more effective learning methods, and the reward of schools that improved the quality of education.
• The facilities task force urged greater use of school property for community activities and invited the more active involvement of states in restoring buildings to safety and good repair. The task force also called for the adoption of policies for the disposition of old and obsolete facilities, the development of greater expertise by national education organizations in alternative school use and design, and the appropriate use of facilities for day care and after-school programs.
• The technology task force looked at the role of technology as a teaching tool in the classroom. It was suggested that states could provide funds and resources for this purpose.
• Finally, Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test scores had declined, raising the question of whether colleges and universities were succeeding in preparing students for the labor force. The task force on college/university preparation of students recommended that the missions of these schools be defined and an assessment of their progress be required by accrediting associations, and that schools meeting both requirements be rewarded.

Commenting on the work of the task forces and education reform generally were a number of experts, including the Secretary of Education and the heads of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Among their observations were that (1) the U.S. needed to do a better job of educating its children in order to remain competitive with other nations, (2) there needed to be better systems of rewards and incentives to retain teachers and to encourage them to excel; (3) the breakdown of the family structure left teachers with greater responsibility for the care of at-risk children, requiring that they receive more and better training; (4) "choice" carried the risk of losing top-ranked urban students to suburban schools, leaving city schools to deteriorate; and (5) fiscal equalization among schools was a critical issue for the federal government to address.

Lou Harris briefed the Governors on the results of a poll that his firm had done for the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, in which respondents had given poor marks to the American public school system. Harris said that 77 percent of the public and 65 percent of top business leaders responded that they were willing to pay higher individual and corporate taxes to improve the quality of education in this country. And he said that 3 to 1, people were prepared to see less money spent on administration and more on teaching. Among the Carnegie Forum's recommendations were that teachers be required to demonstrate a full command of their subjects; teachers be given more autonomy in exchange for their accountability for student progress; the number of minority teachers be increased; and teacher salaries and career opportunities be made competitive with those of other professions.

Education Secretary William Bennett said: "Educational choice does make for better schools, better students, and more satisfied and involved parents. Indeed, it's the best for those students who need it the most—those students who have the most to gain from school and those students who are hurt the most by the operation of the current system. A student who is poor, who does not get much intellectual stimulation at home, and who is at a school that is not serving him well, that is the student who needs choice the most."

Al Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers, expressed concern that if parents could switch their children's schools, there would be no one left in poorer performing schools to fight for improvement: "...nobody is left to argue that you need improvement in the school because the dissatisfied people move out, leaving only those who either don't know what is going on or who don't care, or don't have the time or the energy to move. When you are all finished, I think our society is not going to tolerate a system in which you have all the rigidities of the past in which there is no choice...But I don't want to do it all at once...I want to experiment. I want to make sure we don't decimate the cities...If each parent can rescue his or her child, they are less motivated to do something about who is the principal, who are the teachers, what are the policies in the school...Teachers are...treated very much like the old factory model; told what to do, told what textbook, told how many minutes to teach something. It's almost as though we are saying to them we don't trust you, you have got no judgment. We will tell you every little thing to do and we will come in and watch you every once in a while."

Governor Bob Kerrey of Nebraska said this about the coming potential for telecommunications technology: "I think that it's important for the Governors to consider that we must involve ourselves in telecommunications policy...We understand what telecommunications can do. We feel the urgency as we consider delivering technology to school children. We feel the urgency as we consider delivering technology to businesses. We have, I think, a much better perspective to evaluate not just what our state telecommunications policy should be, but also what this nation's telecommunications policy should be...And I think it's important...for us as policymakers to begin to imagine what is possible with this telecommunications system of ours, begin to imagine that it's possible for an individual to sit in their home in the most remote of locations, at any time of the day or night, and to access data, to access sound and to access visual information. The technology is there today to make that possible. We have got to begin to imagine what that will do to our individuals. They will have the ability to be able to communicate directly with people that can teach them foreign languages. They will have the ability to communicate directly and access information that will give them greater understanding of the world and make them more...not just competitive, but also make them more understanding of what other people in other parts of the world are doing. It will open up the world to our people in ways that we can't even imagine today."

Selected Policy Positions Adopted:
(1) Affirming that in peacetime the Governors were constitutionally in command and control of National Guard units in their states; (2) calling for a uniform national product liability code in order to overcome inconsistencies in state product liability laws; (3) supporting programs to enhance the export of American agricultural products; (4) outlining a framework for redistributing federal and state economic and human resources programs to rural areas of chronic poverty and areas suffering from sudden severe economic dislocation; (5) supporting continuation of the Small Business Innovative Research program to set aside federal research and development money for small businesses; (6) opposing federal requirements for states to raise revenues and appropriate funds to provide health care for the uninsured; (7) endorsing bilateral trade negotiations underway between the U.S. and Canada; and (8) urging reauthorization by Congress of the Surface Transportation act of 1986, the Clean Water Act, and the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program.