Bush Seeks to Retool School Funding

Continuing his effort to reshape the Republican Party’s message, Texas Gov. George W. Bush proposed Tuesday that Washington provide states much greater flexibility in the use of federal education funds if they strengthen their own systems of accountability for students and schools.

“What I am proposing today is a . . . pact of principle: freedom in exchange for achievement,” Bush declared in a speech to the conservative Manhattan Institute in New York City.

Along with Bush’s proposal last month for reforming the federal programs aimed at low-income students, it shows the GOP presidential front-runner is seeking to define a more aggressive role for Washington in leveraging school reform than congressional Republicans have been comfortable with.

“Too often,” Bush said in an apparent swipe at the GOP congressional leadership, “my party has confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself.”

The plan continues Bush’s effort to balance the public demand for school reform with the Republican resistance to federal involvement in education decisions. It contains a potentially huge infusion of federal funds for vouchers parents could use to pay for private school--a top priority of conservatives. But it also challenges the Republican willingness to accept new federal intervention by requiring the states to test students and hold schools accountable for the results.

“I don’t want to tinker with the machinery of the federal role in education,” Bush said. “I want to redefine that role entirely.”

For all its federal activism, the plan still establishes a clear contrast with Vice President Al Gore. While Gore (like President Clinton) wants to give states new federal grants to replicate specific reforms sprouting in some communities--like reducing class sizes, expanding access to preschool or enlarging after-school programs--Bush argues that the best way to encourage improvement is to give states more freedom to use existing federal dollars as they see fit, so long as they produce results in student achievement.

In his reaction to the plan, Gore and his aides seized on its support for vouchers. “You can’t have it both ways--you can’t profess to be for helping poor kids and then be for vouchers that will drain money from public schools,” said Chris Lehane, Gore’s spokesman.

By proposing to decentralize authority and then hold schools accountable for results, Bush’s plan follows the same reform model that many states are pursuing--notably California. The education package that Gov. Gray Davis pushed through this spring requires annual tests for students from third through eighth grades--with bonuses for schools that improve performance, and requirements for intervention at schools that don’t.

“It sounds like he’s been reading the governor’s education agenda,” said Michael Bustamante, Davis’ press secretary.

Bush’s proposal--the second in a series of three speeches he’s planning on education--contained three major components: the accountability for flexibility swap; two new measures that could ultimately provide billions of dollars to support parents who send their children to private schools; and a new federal fund that would guarantee up to $3 billion in loans to cover start-up and expansion costs at charter schools--public schools that operate largely independent of local school board control.

The plan’s cornerstone is the proposal to take virtually all federal spending on elementary and secondary education and create block grants, or lump sums, in return for state commitments to improve their own accountability systems.

Under the plan, Bush would consolidate about 60 specific federal education programs into five broad block grants for states--including categories for improving academic performance for disadvantaged students; training and recruiting teachers; and encouraging school safety.

In return for the increased flexibility--which conservatives have long sought--Bush would require the states to test every student in grades three through eight annually in math and reading. States that showed progress on the tests would receive bonuses from an “achievement in education fund” that Bush would fund at $100 million a year; those that fail to gain ground would have 5% of their federal funds redirected into a program to support charter schools. States that refuse to impose the annual tests would face larger cutbacks in federal dollars.

In his speech, Bush reiterated his opposition to the voluntary national tests that Clinton has proposed as a means of establishing a national benchmark for state exams. (Congressional Republicans have blocked the idea.) Instead, under Bush’s proposal, states would write their own tests--though the federal government could refuse to recognize them if students in the states are not also showing progress on the National Assessment of Education Progress, an annual exam that measures the performance of a statistical sample of students in the states.

Bush’s plan overlaps with House and Senate Republican proposals this year to convert most federal education programs into block grants if states sign “contracts” with Washington to improve student performance.

But it goes far beyond the congressional plans in specifically requiring the annual tests--so much so that it would probably encounter resistance from Capitol Hill Republicans should Bush become president. The plan might also draw GOP resistance for requiring states to implement policies to intervene in poorly performing schools; congressional Republicans have opposed a similar proposal from Clinton this year as unduly intrusive.

Those conservative sentiments were reflected in comments denouncing the Bush plan from J. Kenneth Blackwell, the national chairman of Steve Forbes’ presidential campaign. “The governor must explain why he is insisting on more big government mandates and controls on local schools,” Blackwell said.

Democratic critics, meanwhile, predicted that the block grants would not generate as much innovation as Bush hopes--though others, conversely, cited the plan’s similarities to proposals by Clinton and the centrist Progressive Policy Institute.

The sharpest point of partisan difference came over Bush’s proposals to subsidize students in private schools.

Last month, he proposed converting Title I funds for low-income students into vouchers that parents could use for private schools--but only in schools that had failed to improve performance for poor kids after three years of testing.

In Tuesday’s speech, he went well beyond that on two fronts. First, Bush proposed to allow parents to invest up to $5,000 annually in tax-free accounts they could use to help pay for private education (as well as tutoring or home-schooling); Clinton recently vetoed a GOP proposal that would have allowed parents to invest $2,000 in such “educational savings accounts.” Bush officials estimate his more generous plan would cost $92 million initially and $1 billion annually when fully phased in.

Even more important, Bush would allow states to use one of the five block grants to fund private school voucher programs. That could redirect toward vouchers as much as $2 billion annually now spent on existing programs--an unprecedented federal commitment to support the voucher movement.

In all, Bush aides estimate the plan would cost $462 million in new funding in its first year. That would include $150 million to fund the loan guarantees for charter schools; $115 million to help states pay for the tests; $100 million in the performance bonuses for the states; and $92 million in the new education savings accounts.