Boxer, Fong Focusing on Education

In the final stretch of an arduous reelection fight, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer is returning to an issue that has been a personal passion and a political asset: education.

The California Democrat’s campaign schedule is packed with school visits, like the one she made recently to the low-income, racially mixed Curtis Middle School here, where she talked enthusiastically about increasing federal support for after-school programs to keep youths from drifting into crime and drugs.

In the Senate race, as in many elections, education has been cited by voters as the top issue. And two recent opinion polls indicated that voters prefer Boxer’s views on education to those of her Republican opponent, state Treasurer Matt Fong.

The independent Field Poll showed voters preferring Boxer over Fong on education by 40% to 28%. And a Los Angeles Times poll found that among voters for whom education is the top issue, 49% are for Boxer and 37% for Fong.

But Fong is not conceding the education vote. He has his own credentials on the issue, and education is a common topic in his speeches.

He is a recruiter in urban schools for his alma mater, the Air Force Academy; as state treasurer, he has worked with school districts to sell construction bonds at the lowest possible interest rates “so they still have money to hire teachers,” and he is the father of two teenagers who are now in public schools.

Both candidates have adopted the contemporary mantra that public education is ailing and needs emergency help. But their solutions are at odds.

Boxer believes that public education has been starved for money and needs more support at both the state and federal levels. Fong thinks that more money is only a Band-Aid unless the structure of public education is changed to reduce the power of teachers unions.

Boxer opposes the voucher system, under which parents would receive public money to be used for either private or public education for their children. She sees it as the potential death knell for public education. Many affluent parents would opt for private education, she says,and schools would be left with a higher percentage of low-income students.

Public education, she fears, would then quickly lose political importance.

The cornerstone of Fong’s education position is support for a voucher system and tax credits for parents sending children to private schools, although a voucher plan was turned down overwhelmingly by California voters five years ago.

Under a voucher system, schools would have to compete for students.

“Choice breeds competition, and competition will bring reform,” said Fong, using a line that often brings applause during his speeches.

Among the reforms that Fong favors is merit pay for better teachers and an end to tenure so that weak teachers can be fired.

Boxer blasts Fong’s voucher idea as one that would help only a small percentage of students.

The voucher dispute is part of a larger philosophic split between the candidates. Boxer and Fong are on opposite sides of whether the government and teachers’ unions, such as the politically powerful California Teachers Assn., help or hinder efforts to rescue schools.

Fong would like to greatly curtail the U.S. Department of Education and calls it a wasteful bureaucracy. He says that teachers unions put the job security of members above all else and thus thwart reform and protect incompetent instructors.

Boxer believes that the state and U.S. education departments serve useful roles in pursuing national priorities and that teachers associations deserve respect and gratitude. Teachers unions have been among her most loyal supporters, providing contributions and campaign workers.

Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at UC San Diego, says that stressing education is a good way for Boxer to reach middle-of-the-road voters and Republican women, particularly the “suburban soccer moms.” Fong’s views, he says, are popular among the more conservative wing of the Republican Party but will not help him attract more centrist voters.

“Hitting at the Department of Education and teachers unions and flogging the voucher system will help Fong with his political base among conservatives, but that’s not where he needs help,” Jacobson said. “Most people do not have a negative view of teachers unions, and only Republican ideologues are still furious at the Department of Education.”

When she came to Curtis Middle School, Boxer was met by Mikki Cichocki, president of the 2,400-member San Bernardino Teachers Assn. The group’s members work the telephones nightly to encourage voters to support Boxer.

“We’re with you all the way,” Cichocki told Boxer.

Meanwhile, Fong’s campaign is looking for a venue for an eleventh-hour reprise of a speech that he gave in August blasting teachers’ unions for blocking reform and alleging that Boxer “votes the teachers union position right down the line” to protect the status quo.

Boxer came to Curtis Middle School to talk about its aggressive efforts to cobble together enough money and resources for an after-school program. She brought news that federal money may soon be on the way, thanks to an education bill sponsored by President Clinton.

“This is really a treat,” Boxer said after seeing a program that allows students to stay after school for tutoring, counseling or recreation. “These kids are going to be happier, more comfortable and safer.”

After-School Bill Introduced

Nearly three decades ago, before she dreamed of elective office, Boxer helped start an after-school program at her children’s public elementary school in Marin County. After 10 years in Congress and six in the Senate, it remains one of Boxer’s proudest boasts that the program is still operating.

In the Senate, Boxer took the idea further, introducing the After School Education and Safety Act that is being included in an overall spending package and will mean money for after-school programs like that at Curtis Middle School.

She also wrote a successful bill to provide tax breaks for companies that donate computers to schools and led a fight on the Senate floor to urge the Department of the Interior to dun so-called deadbeat oil companies to forward about $75 million to California schools. She has been one of the Senate’s leading voices for increased funding for Head Start and college loan programs.

Along with Sen. Carole Mosely-Braun (D-Ill.), Boxer wrote a bill to provide federal funds for repairs at aging schools, which is still pending. And she teamed up with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to fight for Clinton’s education bill.

When he went to the Air Force Academy, Fong dreamed of being a jet pilot. But he found himself more temperamentally suited to a less glamorous assignment: searching urban high schools for talented but often underachieving or marginally motivated students. Although he left active duty, he has continued to act as an urban recruiter for the academy.

Fong says his experience visiting public schools across the country, especially urban schools, and his own observations as a parent have convinced him that sweeping changes are needed to break the stranglehold of the “educational establishment.”

He calls for the federal government to largely bow out of local schools and to remove “the rat’s nest of federal regulations and costly mandates.” He wants more magnet schools and charter schools and he prefers back to basics in reading and mathematics rather than “all the fads that have come out of teachers’ colleges in recent years.”

On the stump, Fong has sought to move away from the controversial term “voucher,” which was at the heart of the 1993 debate. His speeches and television advertising refer to “opportunity scholarships,” the GOP’s preferred description for vouchers.

If he employs a euphemism to describe his cure, Fong also may have a tendency to overstate the problems of public education.

He often tells audiences that two-thirds of high school graduates in California cannot read, write, speak English or do basic mathematics proficiently. Asked for documentation of this dire statistic, his campaign provided information about studies showing problems with education but nothing to support the two-thirds assertion.

Fong also tells campaign audiences that the Compton school district was picked as one of the 20 worst in the country “selected by a very special criteria: how many knives were brought to that school, how many guns, how many drugs [and] how many felonies.”

“What was Barbara Boxer’s answer when $30 million [in voucher money] was set aside to give these kids a passport out?” Fong told a Beverly Hills audience. “She said, ‘No, leave them there.’ ”

Although Compton’s fiscal woes and other problems have been well documented, it was never named one of the 20 worst schools or school districts in the country based on the criteria mentioned by Fong. In fact, the Fong campaign now concedes that no such list was ever compiled.

A bill introduced by then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in 1993 would have set aside $30 million in “opportunity scholarships” for students at 20 troubled schools across the country. But the bill was defeated in 1994 before any list was developed.

Fong supported Proposition 227, the measure to end bilingual education in California, and Boxer opposed it. Boxer also has voted against tax credits for parents whose children attend private schools.

The debate over education in the Senate race has become a referendum on the incumbent’s record and philosophy. Boxer “pays lip service to children and their education, but votes against them,” Fong says.

“I’m in the Senate for all the children,” Boxer responds.

To review Barbara Boxer’s and Matt Fong’s positions on key issues and see video clips from their debates, go to The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/elect98

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Plans for Better Education

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and her Republican challenger, state Treasurer Matt Fong, agree that public education is ailing. They disagree on the cure.

Vouchers

BOXER: Opposes.

FONG: Supports.

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Tax Credits for Private or Home Schooling

BOXER: Opposes.

FONG: Supports.

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Proposition 227 to End Bilingual Education

BOXER: Opposes.

FONG: Supports.

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President Clinton’s Education Bill

BOXER: Supports.

FONG: Says more money is a “Band-Aid” without reforms.

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Teachers Unions

BOXER: Backs teachers unions and has their political support.

FONG: Says union block reform and protect “status quo” and weak teachers.

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U.S. Department of Education

BOXER: Thinks department is good at setting national priorities and giving education a higher political profile.

FONG: Would curtail the department.

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Tenure

BOXER: Thinks tenure helps districts retain good teachers and set higher standards.

FONG: Wants tenure abolished so weak teachers can be fired.

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BOXER: Opposes national standards, prefers local control.

FONG: Supports voluntary national standards.