Clinton Unveils Federal School Reform Strategy

President Clinton made his case Monday for a new federal strategy of school reform to perhaps the toughest audience in America--a roomful of governors who all style themselves as experts on overhauling public education.

And when the governors emerged from the White House, Republicans among them--who make up the majority--offered pointed critiques of Clinton’s plan to hold schools accountable for improved performance and students accountable for mastering their course work.

Some said that the plan would be a misguided intrusion of Washington bureaucracy in the affairs of local school officials. Many complained that the federal government is failing to reimburse states in full for complying with federal rules for teaching students with learning disabilities and other special needs.

Even some Democratic governors, who generally lauded Clinton’s plans, asked him to give state officials more flexibility in how they can spend federal dollars.

Road to Reform Faces Obstacles

The governors’ responses showed the obstacles Clinton may encounter as he promotes an ambitious plan to reshape, and significantly expand, the federal role in the school house.

All of the state chief executives attending a four-day conference of the National Governors’ Assn. agreed that whatever policy Washington adopts at a time when education tops the to-do list of most voters and public officials should complement, not complicate, local reform initiatives.

“Let’s have a national agenda for improvement of education, not a federal agenda,” said Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a Republican, who is vice chairman of the group. “There’s a big difference.”

Whatever the debate’s outcome, analysts said that school superintendents, principals and teachers should prepare for another flurry of get-tough directives this year as political leaders in the nation’s capital and 50 state capitals gravitate to the issue of school reform. Some warn that such mandates can backfire unless schools get adequate resources.

“It’s probably going to increase the pressure to do better--without putting any infrastructure in place to say how to do better,” said Frank Smith, an education professor at Columbia Teachers College in New York.

States across the country, including California, in recent years have toughened their standards for what children should learn and added new tests to make sure schools are up to the task, all in the name of “school accountability.” Many states also have adopted laws to crack down on the custom of “social promotion”--that is, passing students from grade to grade without ensuring that they have learned their lessons.

Clinton piggybacked onto those popular ideas in last month’s State of the Union address, proposing new requirements for school districts that receive federal aid. Among them were measures to halt social promotion, shut down schools that repeatedly fail, send all parents report cards on their local schools and require new teachers to pass performance exams. He also proposed boosting federal spending on after-school and summer programs, hiring more teachers to reduce class size, encouraging experimentation with independently operated “charter” schools and other steps.

The president’s proposals, if enacted, would represent a major shift in federal education policy, which until now has mainly stressed helping disadvantaged students. The Republicans who control Congress, while sympathetic to demands for improved performance from a public education system that they have long distrusted, are champions of reducing--not adding--federal requirements.

In his speech Monday, Clinton told the governors that he understands their concerns first-hand as the former governor of Arkansas. But he challenged them to work with Washington to improve the nation’s schools.

“Some will say the federal government should be giving states more flexibility, not demanding more accountability,” Clinton said. “I think it’s a false choice, and the federal government should be giving you more of both.”

He continued: “We don’t have any business telling you whom to hire, how to teach, how to run schools. . . . But let’s not kid ourselves. We are not doing our children any favors by continuing to subsidize practices that don’t work and failing to invest in practices that do.”

Several Republican governors said afterward that they were unimpressed. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that the proposed expansion of federal authority was “way, way out of control.” The proper role of federal officials in education, he said, is to “do as much as they can to stay the heck out of it.”

Republicans Skeptical of Clinton Plan

Said New York Gov. George E. Pataki: “What we don’t want to see is Washington telling every school district across America how to spend federal funds.” Even Michigan Gov. John Engler, whom Clinton has praised as an effective reformer, said that education priorities vary from state to state and are not always in sync with Washington. “We’ve got to have more flexibility,” Engler said.

Democrats, of course, were more charitable to a president from their own party. But even their comments underscored that the demand for local control of school affairs, following a long tradition in the United States, cuts across partisan lines. Kentucky Gov. Paul E. Patton, whose state is known as a national leader on school issues, said: “We need the federal government as a limited partner and us as a general partner.”

And California’s Gov. Gray Davis said that he has prodded Clinton to give states more freedom to spend federal class-size reduction dollars as they please. Davis complained that the state has been forced to apply for a waiver to spend such money in high schools, instead of the federally prescribed elementary schools. “Why go through all these hoops?” Davis asked.