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Bush Has a Chance to Lead on Education President Bush and his Secretary of Education have an important choice in the coming weeks as they grapple with HR-1 and S-1, the school reform bills that have passed their respective houses of Congress but now need to be reconciled before a House-Senate conference committee. If it wants to, the administration can score cheap debater's points by criticizing Democrats for trivial delays as the newly reorganized Senate appoints members to the joint committee. There is, however, an alternative. President Bush could make use of the delay to push for substantive improvements in the bill trading off increases in funding for tighter provisions on school accountability and less federal and state bureaucracy. It could push for restoration, either in conference or in a supplemental bill, of creative education programs such as "test case" experiments with school vouchers, parental choice, and tax credits for children with special needs. How the White House responds will tell us much about the likely path of federal education policy under Bush. To date, the evolution of Bush's program has gone something like this. Bush sent Congress a proposal which would have increased federal education spending more per year than any administration going back at least as far as Jimmy Carter. The bill would also, however, have made many federal funds dependent on schools improving how their students perform on math and reading tests. And it included some small but important pilot programs for school choice, charter schools, and other controversial ideas. In Congress, Democrats, some Republicans, and the now famously Independent Senator Jeffords of Vermont, have added money to Bush's proposal, and clamored for even more. At the same time, they have softened provisions for school testing, and removed many of the most creative aspects of the package, such as parental-choice school vouchers, and block grants designed to minimize federal regulatory interference with teachers in the classroom. Throughout, the administration has more or less accepted these changes, including, according to recent news reports, the weakening of the program's funding linkage to test results. To some, as one House Republican commented in May, it seemed that the White House was not so much determined to achieve meaningful policy changes as it was to have a bill labeled "education reform," no matter what the provisions. It was this evisceration of the president's original program that led Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, perhaps the most knowledgeable education reform advocate in Congress, to comment ironically recently that he was voting against HR-1 "because I support the Bush education reform proposal." The changeover in the Senate, and the ever-progressive weakening of the bill's substance, now presents President Bush with an interesting opportunity. All President Bush would need to do is spell out, before the public, what key items he feels need to be put back in order for some reasonable portion of the effort to be restored in a bill he would sign. "Getting a real education reform is more important to me," such a talk might conclude, "than simply rushing through a bad bill a few days sooner. That is why any version of HR-1/S-1 that I sign must contain the tough provisions on testing that were in my original proposal. And any further increases in the already large spending amounts already in the bill will have to be attached to a new or revised bill that spends some small portion of the money on pilot programs for more basic reforms in the system, such as parental choice and deregulation experiments in a meaningful number of cities or states that want to try." Bush could - indeed should - emphasize that he's not unwilling to spend even more money on education. That would take the debate off of dollars, where reformers lose education debates, and onto a discussion of what principles the president think are vital to improving our schools, where he is right and can win. He should also say he'd rather wait, and have a good reform bill, than have a bad one a few days or even weeks sooner. He'll lose an opportunity to tweak Senate Democrats over unimportant delays in the congressional conference, but gain much more. A talk like this would also be an act of character for the president and his administration. It would show that he really does have certain ideas he's willing to fight for and take risks for. The result might even be a serious discussion of education policy, centered in Washington, D.C., led by a president with solid ideas about school reform. Imagine where that might lead. Gregory Fossedal chairs the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, which studies the promotion and perfection of democracy in the U.S. and the world. |
