Bush Spanish-Language Ads Hit Kerry Education Record

President Bush accused Democratic rival John F. Kerry of waffling on education reform Wednesday in a new television and radio offensive in pivotal Spanish-language markets across the Southwest and Florida.

The commercials were the president’s first in Spanish in several weeks, countering a Democratic campaign against Bush in Spanish-speaking markets underway since early March.

Both the president and his Democratic critics are focusing on the controversial No Child Left Behind education law. Their exchange shows that school reform is likely to be an issue in this year’s election -- especially for Latino voters -- if not the major national theme it was four years ago.

In a new 30-second television spot approved by Bush, a narrator asserts that Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, once praised the president’s school reform proposals for mandatory testing, student achievement standards and school accountability to deter failure.

“Even voted for them,” the narrator says, according to an English translation supplied by the Bush campaign. “But now, under pressure from education unions, Kerry has changed his mind. Kerry’s new plan? Less accountability to parents.”

The ad makes reference to the fact that Kerry voted for the legislation two years ago, but has been critical of its implementation.

The Kerry campaign replied that Bush has failed to provide enough funding to make the school reforms work.

“This is just another one of George Bush’s false and misleading attack ads aimed at obscuring the fact that the president has broken his promise to improve our schools,” Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said.

Bush’s TV ad and a 60-second radio version that expands on the same message are airing in Arizona, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico. Those states, all with significant Latino populations, are considered up for grabs this year.

In an education forum Wednesday at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., Bush reinforced his reform message.

“My job as the president is to continue to challenge and push and insist on high standards,” Bush said. “And we’re making progress.”

The law Bush signed in 2002 had broad bipartisan support. It was, as the president claims in his ads, one of the biggest shakeups of federal education policy since the 1960s.

Kerry, in voting for the legislation, joined many Democrats, including his home-state colleague Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who had a hand in writing it.

The law authorized billions of dollars in new federal aid for disadvantaged children in exchange for stricter scrutiny and more testing to determine whether students are learning reading and mathematics in critical elementary and middle-school grades. Under the law, schools that fail to make adequate progress face the threat of escalating federal sanctions.

Now, as districts across the nation are grappling with the new rules, many local educators complain that the federal government is intruding too deeply into their affairs without giving school systems enough money to cope. Bush administration officials and Republicans in Congress insist that federal education aid is at record levels, and growing.

But Democrats, including Kerry, have sensed an opportunity to dent the president’s education credentials by criticizing his implementation of the law.

The New Democrat Network, a group separate from the Kerry campaign, has aired radio and TV ads in Spanish that accuse the president of breaking his word on education. In all, the group has spent about $1 million on anti-Bush and pro-Democrat ads in Spanish, said spokeswoman Maria Cardona. This week, it is expanding its ad buy in key markets such as Reno, Tucson and Miami.

Cardona said the group has outspent the Bush campaign in Spanish-language ads by a significant margin, an assertion the president’s team does not dispute.

Kerry ran one ad in Spanish during the primary season but has not aired any since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee on March 2.