Education Summit Closes With Vow to Stop Decline

President Bush and the nation’s governors, closing their unprecedented summit conference on education, agreed Thursday to set national performance goals in education by early next year to prevent the country from sliding into what the President called “mediocrity, social decay and national decline.”

Hailing their joint pledge “to define national goals in education for the first time,” Bush told the governors: “From this day forward, let us be an America of tougher standards, of higher goals and a land of bigger dreams.”

The President and the governors, in a joint declaration, also pledged “to dramatically alter our system of education.”

“We share the view,” they said, “that simply more of the same will not achieve the results we need.”

Although the governors and the President, in their two days of meetings on the campus of the University of Virginia, never came close to defining their goals in detail, both Democratic and Republican governors hailed the joint declaration prepared by the conference as a historic step toward changing education in America.

The governors insisted that they had drawn President Bush into a commitment to both establish detailed goals and to be measured against them. Moreover, the President acknowledged that the federal government has the key role in funding education programs that help poor children, minorities, the handicapped and the labor force. And he agreed that “priority for any further funding increases be given to prepare young children to succeed in school.” This appeared to be a ringing endorsement for increased funding of the widely praised Head Start program.

Some of the gubernatorial praise, however, was tinged with tones of skepticism. “The governors made enormous progress in education for six years during the (Ronald) Reagan Administration,” said Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate defeated by Bush in 1988. “What was needed was presidential leadership to say once again that public education is important. This was an important conference.

Sees Contradiction

“But now we have to see how it works,” he said. “We have set the goals. But we also have had a vote in Congress giving a tax break to the rich. The two don’t go together.”

Although Dukakis, like several other governors, talked about the conference setting goals, the President and the governors actually only set down seven broad areas in need of detailed goals: the readiness of children to start school, achievement on international tests, the dropout rate, illiteracy, training of the work force, the supply of qualified teachers and the establishment of safe, disciplined and drug-free schools.

Gov. Terry E. Branstad (R-Iowa), chairman of the National Governors’ Assn., said that a task force of governors will meet with White House officials and educators to recommend the detailed goals by February. Both Branstad and Gov. Bill Clinton (D-Ark.), who was credited with drafting the declaration, stressed that both the President and the governors expect to be held accountable for meeting the goals.

“We stand by you to tell you that we are going to be held personally responsible,” said Clinton.

General Recommendations

In calling for a restructuring of American education, the joint statement of the President and the governors did not endorse any single innovation. “There are many promising new ideas and strategies for restructuring education,” they said. “These include greater choice for parents and students, greater authority and accountability for teachers and principals, alternative certification programs for teachers and programs that systematically reward excellence and performance.”

The President and the governors also turned their attention to a complaint of many governors and called for “greater flexibility” in federal regulations governing grants of education funds to the states. Governors have complained, for example, that federally funded equipment for remedial education during the day cannot be used as well for other programs like adult education at night.

The issue of federal funding caused the most bickering at the conference. Although states and local communities finance more than 90% of the costs of education in the United States, the federal government traditionally has covered the cost of special programs like Head Start. But federal funding of education was cut during the Reagan years and many governors complained that Head Start only covers one of every five children in need of it.

President Bush and some governors evidently resisted including the commitment to federal funding in the joint statement, but Clinton told reporters that it was included because “a heavy majority of the governors thought it should go in.”

In a speech to University of Virginia faculty and students earlier in the day, President Bush described some of the ills of American education. “The National Assessment of Education Progress,” he said, “estimates that fewer than one in four of our high school juniors can write an adequate, persuasive letter. Only half can manage decimals, fractions and percentages. And barely one in three can locate the Civil War in the correct half-century. No modern nation can long afford to allow so many of its sons and daughters to emerge into adulthood ignorant and unskilled.”

Bush said that he agrees with the governors about the need for a restructuring of the American educational system. “The American people are ready for radical reforms,” he said. “We must not disappoint them.”

Many governors said that the job of restructuring would prove difficult. “The difficulty,” said California Gov. George Deukmejian, “is that many people in the education community resent change. They like the status quo. It’s not going to be easy to move the education community in the direction we think it should go.”