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THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release February 7, 1997 REMARKS BY MRS. CLINTON AT THE EDUCATION AWARDS CEREMONY The State Department Washington, D.C. MRS. CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you, Terry, and thank all of you from the Department of Education who are here for your hard work and vision, not only in this area, but in so many of the others on which we have made progress in the last four years. I want to thank the sponsors of these awards. Terry's already mentioned Nortel and Glaxo-Wellcome and Keenan and the regional education laboratories. This is one of the most important statements that we could make about how we will achieve the high educational goals that the President outlined in his call for action last evening. I had the opportunity as all, I hope, of you did as well to listen to that speech -- (laughter) -- and to hear the emphasis that the President placed on education as a national security issue, as one that we should turn our attention to with the same commitment and nonpartisan zeal that we in the last 50 years gave to our foreign policy in our efforts to win the Cold War. (Applause.) There are some who still will question why is the President of the United states, on the eve of a new century, spending about half of his State of the Union talking about education. To those who might ask that question, I would reply, as the President did last evening, that it is through education and a national commitment to education that we have the best opportunity to lift up all of our people to be in a position to take advantage of the opportunities that will be available to them in the future. You saw last evening that there were two students and a teacher who had participated in a rather remarkable consortium in the area north of Chicago to put together best practices so that 20 school districts could pool that information and they could prepare their students to compete in the Third International Math and Science Study Test. For a number of years, starting back in 1983 when my husband asked me to chair the education standards committee in Arkansas, I have followed with great interest the international measurements that have been utilized to determine where our students stacked up against their peers around the world.