3 Candidates Spell Out Education Programs

As a college student, Bill Clinton held so many jobs that he cannot remember them all. But one thing he cannot forget: Without working, he could not have afforded a Georgetown University education, much less three years at Yale Law School.

Clinton also benefited from Yale’s pioneering program that allowed law students to repay tuition loans as a percentage of their income after graduation.

Now, based largely on such experiences, the Democratic presidential nominee vows to scrap the nation’s student loan programs and replace them with a National Service Trust Fund that would lend anyone, including graduate students, full college tuition--”no questions asked.” After graduation, borrowers would repay the loans with a percentage of their income or with community service.

The proposal is just one of several differences among Clinton and his two rivals for the White House, President Bush and Ross Perot. The candidates and their plans:

BUSH: The centerpiece of the President’s education proposals is what he calls a “GI Bill for Children.” It involves giving low- and middle-income children $1,000 vouchers, which their parents could use to send them to public, private or parochial schools.

He contends that public schools would improve if the free market cost them students, and therefore money, and that his proposal would give lower-income families the same educational choices that more well-to-do families have.

Bush has substantially increased funding for Head Start, although Democrats contend that the program still lacks enough money to serve all eligible children. He has called for development of innovative “model” schools, providing vouchers for job training and developing an apprenticeship program for non-college-bound youths.

As for college aid, the President plans to boost the major source of aid for needy students, Pell grants, which provide 3.4 million students between $400 and $3,700 a year. He advocates increasing funding for Pell grants to $6.6 billion--a 22% hike, the largest one-year increase.

Bush also wants to give “Presidential Achievement Scholarships” of up to $500 to every Pell grant recipient with high grades and has proposed making loans of up to $25,000 to individuals for higher education that could be repaid as a percentage of income.

CLINTON: He has proposed a list of changes: fully funding Head Start; creating a Youth Opportunity Corps for high school dropouts; starting a national apprenticeship program; instituting national testing standards; giving teachers, principals and parents more decision-making power, and replacing the current student loan program with his trust fund idea--which he calls “the symbol of what this campaign is all about.”

Community service options would include police work, health care, education, drug counseling, teaching and working with the elderly and the disabled. Recently, he and his running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, have suggested that the community service could be performed before attending college--in effect, storing up credits to finance education.

Clinton says the program would cost $7 billion to $8 billion a year and would serve 250,000 to 500,000 students. (In fiscal year 1990, the United States spent more than $9 billion on such aid, primarily Pell grants and guaranteed student loans.)

As for primary and secondary education, Clinton pledges to allow parents to send their children to any public school they choose, but he opposes using federal funds for private schools on grounds that that would take precious dollars away from already strapped public schools.

PEROT: He led a crusade in Texas to reform the public schools in 1983 and 1984 and traces his ideas to that effort. In his book, “United We Stand: How We Can Take Back Our Country,” he advocates comprehensive preschool education, restoring autonomy to local schools, establishing national standards and measuring results, empowering parents by giving them information on how their children’s schools stack up, making learning--not extracurricular activities--the first priority, boosting teacher pay and getting more uses out of school buildings--such as day care centers and medical clinics.

The first thing, he says, is to give parents a choice about where their child goes to school among all public schools within their district. He proposes a pilot project that would expand that choice to private and parochial schools. “We won’t know if this will work until several states try it on a pilot basis,” he says. “The time to debate is after the results are in.”

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: Financial assistance to college students has not kept pace with the rising costs of higher education, now averaging more than $16,000 a year at private schools. Despite the overall increases in Pell funding, for instance, individual recipients likely will get less than before, because the eligibility requirements have been broadened.

“That’s the fallacy when George Bush says more money than ever is being spent,” says Frank Burtnett, executive director of the National Assn. of College Admissions Counselors.

Edward Kealy, director of federal programs for the National School Boards Assn., said one potential byproduct of Clinton’s proposal to allow students to pay for college with service could be an influx of teachers into less advantaged school districts--if teaching in disadvantaged areas counted as payback.

As for Bush’s proposal to give vouchers to parents to send their children to private schools, Kealy warned that it would undermine public schools “when they need all the support they can get both financially and from the strength of the presidency.”

Polls showing widespread public support for this type of proposal are misleading, he said. “If you ask people what they would like to see done, it’s a peripheral issue. They would like to see safer schools, better funding, smaller classes and better facilities.”

Experts disagree over whether the proposal could become law. Richard Elmore, a professor at Harvard University’s School of Education, says no. “The private-school-choice proposal is dead on arrival on the Hill. It’s a pointless thing, except for ideological purposes,” he said.

But Michael Edwards, manager of congressional relations for the National Education Assn., says if Bush was reelected the plan would get new respect: “Should he be reelected with this as the linchpin of his education policy, we would have to take it seriously.”

But the proposal’s merits are dubious, he said. “It’s very, very, very simple economics to say that competition would improve the public schools.”

What really happens in situations like this, Elmore said, is that those most likely to push for changes have an option of leaving the system, and schools are left with little incentive to improve.

But Michael Guerra, director of the National Catholic Education Assn.’s Secondary Schools Division, calls Bush’s choice proposal “a step in the right direction.”

“The reform of American education begins with full parental choice,” he said.

Guerra dismissed the idea that the measure would undermine public schools. It is important that bad schools be put on notice that they have to change, he argued.