Gore Calls for ‘National Commitment’ on Schools

Vice President Al Gore, contrasting his education plan with Republican George W. Bush, stressed his commitment Monday to tougher school standards and remedial action for failing classrooms.

With Bush aggressively emphasizing his plans to require greater school accountability, Gore underscored his own emphasis on the issue and pledged that he would require failing schools to reopen with new staffing.

“The phrase higher standards and more accountability . . . has to be integrated into the fabric of everything we do when it comes to education,” Gore said in an appearance at Morehouse College in Atlanta. “We need a national commitment and a specific plan with resources to turn around every failing school in this country.”

But he also pushed his proposals for new federal spending to help districts hire more teachers, expand preschool programs and build new schools.

Gore then suggested Bush’s plan was inadequate because it did not offer schools enough new resources to meet the new standards the Texas governor would impose.

“We must demand more results and more accountability but accompany those demands for accountability with the resources and the help necessary in order to achieve those results,” Gore said.

Gore and Bush have offered starkly contrasting ideas for intervening in schools that fail to improve performance for low-income children receiving help from the massive federal Title I program.

The Clinton administration has proposed to provide additional aid to schools that fail to lift student test scores after three years. However, it would also require school districts receiving the help to undertake remedial measures, such as providing parents the opportunity to send their children to other public schools or, as a last resort, “reconstituting” the school with a new principal and new teachers.

“If a school does not measure up, then it should be shut down and reopened under new leadership,” Gore said Monday.

Bush, on the other hand, has said that schools that fail to improve the performance of core children after three years should have their federal Title I grants converted into vouchers that parents can use to send their children to private schools.

Gore spoke at a conference examining ways to close the “digital divide”--the fear that low-income Americans will be left behind in the information revolution. Gore repeated proposals he first issued in February, including a pledge to finish wiring every classroom and library to the Internet by the end of his first term, and a plan to locate “technology centers” with computer and Internet access in low-income neighborhoods.

After the conference, Gore spoke at a $50,000-a-plate Democratic National Committee dinner in suburban Atlanta that raised $1.5 million.

For their contribution, the guests dined on fennel and onion salad, beef medallion with mushrooms and orange white chocolate mousse.