School Accountability Is a High Priority, Bush Says in Wis. Visit

President Bush brought his campaign for school and teacher accountability to Wisconsin on Wednesday, part of a broader Republican push to shore up public confidence in the party’s handling of education.

The effort underscores the importance many GOP strategists attach to education as a topic crucial to shaping the party’s image with voters now that domestic issues are beginning to reemerge from the shadow of the nation’s post-Sept. 11 focus on national security.

Bush’s visit to Wisconsin was his seventh stop devoted to education in recent months, with more envisioned as the November elections near. The tour aims to highlight the landmark education reform law he signed in January, which requires greater accountability through new annual reading and math tests in the third through eighth grades.

“We must have high expectations and high standards,” Bush said at Logan High School in La Crosse. “This business of shoving kids through the system’s got to end.”

Even as Bush visited three public schools, House Republican leaders encouraged their members to emphasize GOP accomplishments and plans on education. Their hope is to maintain and build on a significant shift in the public’s view of which party has the edge on education policy.

Education traditionally has been solid Democratic territory. In May 1999, for example, GOP pollster David Winston found that voters preferred Democrats’ handling of education policy over Republicans’ by 50% to 29%.

But Winston and other pollsters of both parties have seen that gap close since Bush became president and began lobbying for the school reform initiative.

Surveys found the GOP ranked even with the Democrats on the issue when Bush signed the education bill.

At the time, he marked the event with a multi-state tour by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who helped steer the bill through Congress.

But GOP standing on education has begun to erode--in part, Winston’s polls indicate, because Republicans have stopped talking about the issue. That’s why GOP congressional leaders last week began touting a new wave of education initiatives including greater efforts to promote early childhood literacy.

They also urged each House Republican to hold at least one education-oriented event a week in their home districts.

“We haven’t been talking about it as much as we should,” said Kevin Schweers, spokesman for the House Republican Conference.

Democrats, concerned about the erosion of their traditional advantage on the issue, have responded with their own drive to persuade voters that the Republican Party’s commitment to the nation’s schools is based more on talk than substance.

They have focused their attacks on Bush’s proposed budget for 2003, charging it would inadequately fund the education reform law he is touting. To press the Democratic case, Kennedy is holding hearings to scrutinize implementation of the new education policy.

“It’s enormously frustrating to a lot of Democrats that George Bush has been able to capture some credibility on this issue,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. “What’s especially frustrating is the fact he’s been able to capture come credibility without delivering the goods.”

In his remarks on education in Wisconsin, Bush emphasized not dollars but accountability.

Turning to several hundred high schoolers at one end of the packed Logan High gymnasium, the president said, “I know you don’t like to take tests. Too bad. It’s important.”

“The truth of the matter is we’re not educating every child right now. We’re letting a lot of them just go on through--the tough-to-educate.... That’s going to quit, as far as I’m concerned. That’s not the America I know.”

Before the speech in La Crosse, Bush stopped in Milwaukee, where he visited Rufus King High School and Clarke Street Elementary School.

At every stop, Bush urged young people to consider a career in teaching, hailing it as a noble profession.

Chen reported from Wisconsin, Hook from Washington.