CURRENT EVENTS UPDATE

By ERIC POOLEY

Ask political strategists about the presidential race, and you’ll hear that Al Gore has an edge over George W. Bush on the big domestic issues. A majority of voters agree with Gore that tax cuts should be modest and the budget surplus should go to save Social Security and Medicare, that health coverage should be expanded and women should retain their right to abortion. But on at least one traditional piece of Democratic turf, Bush is sure he can beat Gore. Public education “is a bright and dividing line in this campaign,” Bush said repeatedly in recent days. He called it “a defining issue” and (in case anyone missed the point) “a deciding issue.” According to a new survey by the bipartisan Battleground Poll, Bush does about as well on the issue as Gore—44% said the Vice President would “do a better job” on education, and 42% gave the nod to Bush—erasing the usual Democratic advantage.

Education, of course, is the Texas Governor’s policy home page—the place where the reformer really does have results, where he seems to speak from his heart and mind, not an invisible set of cue cards. Public schools in Texas have improved dramatically on Bush’s watch. And although the structural reforms that made it happen were in place when Bush took office, he has built on them year after year. Black and Latino children have made galloping gains in math and reading scores during his years in office, narrowing the achievement gap that bedevils school systems around the country. Because of that, Bush has a chance to argue that he is both competent and compassionate—a message that was all but lost in the grim heat of his primary battles with John McCain.

Bush and his strategists also believe education gives them an opportunity to define Gore as a coddler of special interests, a roadblock to reform. On Friday, Bush’s campaign unveiled the first tv commercial of the Bush-Gore contest, a spot on education reform running in Illinois and reaching parts of Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri. “Gore and Clinton had eight years, but they’ve failed,” the ad says. “As President, George W. Bush will challenge the status quo with a crusade to improve education.” In response, Gore put up an ad pointing out that reading scores “are going up across America,” styling himself a champion of “revolutionary improvements to our schools” and attacking Bush for attacking him.

Bush’s charges may sound like ordinary campaign rhetoric, but he has a point. He has a plan for comprehensive school reform—flexibility and local control coupled with high standards and consequences for failure—and Gore, so far, does not. Gore gets part of the equation right—he backs statewide standards and testing—but comes up short on the issue of holding schools accountable for student performance. During his time as Vice President, the Education Department has done little to reward schools that flourish and nothing to sanction schools that persistently fail. And Gore remains fuzzy on the subject today. He says failing schools “should be shut down fairly and fast,” but his campaign proposals don’t spell out how he would do that as President. “Gore has been very, very soft on school accountability,” says Amy Wilkins, a principal partner at the Education Trust, a center-left school-reform group. “I’m a black Democrat,” she adds, “so it’s frightening for me to see Bush more concerned about minority achievement than Gore.”

Washington can’t and shouldn’t call the shots on education. But the Federal Government sends more than $13 billion in education aid to the states each year, much of it to help impoverished children under a program known as Title 1, and the government can use the money to leverage reform through a carrot-and-stick approach. Gore’s plan, however, is all carrot, no stick. He proposes $115 billion in new spending over 10 years, calling for an array of valuable programs—universal preschool, training and pay raises for teachers, smaller class size, school construction and new technology. But he seems to have given little thought to making sure that all the new money actually boosts student achievement. “The Vice President hasn’t defined or articulated his thinking on school accountability,” says Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Gore’s reform-minded friends are waiting to see whether his ties to the “educrats” will keep him from extracting real results from public schools. The Vice President is backed by unions like the American Federation of Teachers, which has endorsed him and given more than $300,000 in soft money to the Democratic National Committee since 1997. So far, he has shown some willingness to buck the teachers—for example, his call to triple the number of public charter schools. But “he’s under a lot of pressure to go with the feel-good theory that all schools need is more money,” says a Gore ally on Capitol Hill. In a tight competition with an education-savvy Bush, the ally says, “it would be a big mistake to simply propose spending our way out of the problem.”

When Bush’s education team put together his plan, it drew not only from Texas but also from a more surprising source—the Progressive Policy Institute. Last April the New Democrats’ think tank kicked out a proposal for consolidating federal education spending into five broad categories while giving states far more flexibility as long as they met achievement goals. It also called for Washington to embrace “performance-based funding”—cutting administrative aid to districts that consistently fail. When Bush unveiled his plan last fall, it bore a striking resemblance to the institute’s—the same consolidation ideas, the same kind of sanctions. “I can’t criticize his plan because it’s ours,” says Marshall.

Bush proposes a five-year, $5.5 billion spending increase for education, but most of it would go to pay for tax-free Educational Savings Accounts and vouchers to let low-income parents buy after-school programs for their kids. Bush offers no money for teacher training, school construction, class-size reduction or preschool. And his plan is silent on boosting teacher quality—a baffling lapse, since it is the most important factor in a child’s education. Bush also would do nothing to help supply the 2.2 million new teachers needed in the next 10 years, while Gore proposes federal scholarships that he says would reel in 75,000 a year. “Put Bush and Gore together,” says Wilkins, “and you start to get a pretty decent education policy.”

Questions
1. What contrasting ideas for school reform have Bush and Gore proposed?
2. Why does Bush believe he can beat Gore on the issue of education?