Clinton Flunks
FINN, CHESTER E. Jr.
Clinton Flunks by Chester E. Finn Jr. ANY DAY NOW, OUR “EDUCATION PRESIDENT” will strangle another newborn education program in its crib. The last victim was a small voucher program that would...
...But their core difference in philosophy and strategy is more conspicuous today than ever before...
...That difference was on display when the Senate debated the Coverdell bill...
...But practically everyone who has thought seriously about how to reconstruct American education has figured out that some authoritative body must do this...
...education policy, the stakes could not be higher...
...Elementary and secondary education, by contrast, remains in the iron grip of a government monopoly propped up by billions of federal dollars...
...And if a dollar, then how about the $15 billion or so that Congress will be steering when it takes up the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) next year...
...It will, however, almost certainly be vetoed by a president again declaring his fealty to “public education...
...One rumor has Ways and Means chairman Bill Archer tacking it to the hard-to-veto IRS-reform bill...
...The dead D.C...
...The GOP isn’t nearly so deft—and polls show most voters have greater faith in the Democrats’ handling of education...
...Opponents charge that the actual benefit would amount to just a few dollars per household and that little of it would accrue to poor families, who pay little in taxes in the first place...
...But when it comes to placing K-12 dollars in parents’ hands, even the will of the people cannot save programs that rile Bill Clinton’s establishment friends...
...is John M. Olin fellow at the Hudson Institute and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation...
...Practically nobody wants federal officials themselves to set those standards and interpret those scores...
...Dozens of amendments were offered...
...Currently making its way through a Senate-House conference committee, this bill has become an ornate assemblage of programs and prohibitions and is meant by its backers to embody the Republican national agenda for K-12 education...
...But it has fostered the world’s best-regarded higher-education system, a lively marketplace of competing providers, and choosy consumers with plenty of decent options...
...What’s really at issue is a crucial precedent: whether so much as a dime of federal education aid will be entrusted—even indirectly, via the tax code—to parents rather than public-school systems...
...The colleges naturally wanted all the money to come directly to them...
...Sure, Bill Clinton often panders, and nowhere more blatantly than in education—witness his promotion of smaller classes and “universal” college attendance...
...In terms of quality, this system falls near the bottom on most international rankings (except for spending levels...
...Today, as has been true since Lyndon Johnson’s time, all federal K-12 dollars sluice directly into state and local public-school coffers...
...Nevertheless, the Republican party is seeking to establish itself as the ally of education’s millions of consumers...
...But by 1972 it was settled that grants and loans directly to students would thenceforth be the main channel for federal assistance— and recipients were free to carry those dollars to the institutions of their choice, public, private, proto prietary, religious, whatever...
...After a huge fracas last year, responsibility for shaping voluntary, standardsbased tests of 4thgrade reading and 8thgrade math was turned over to the National Assessment Governing Board, which has been quietly and carefully vetting test questions to make sure they’re solid...
...Republicans lack the votes to override the veto, which means that federal K-12 dollars will continue flowing exclusively to producers...
...Both sides claim to be interested in quality and in better teachers, and they sometimes converge in support of innovations such as charter schools (a cross between public education and the free market...
...For if families can handle a dime, why not a dollar...
...And that, of course, is precisely what President Clinton and his allies have vowed to block...
...The next candidate for execution is the measure known in Beltway argot as the Coverdell bill, after the Georgia senator who introduced it...
...An epic debate had raged over whether Uncle Sam should aid institutions or students...
...At its core is Coverdell’s proposal to expand taxsheltered education savings accounts (a form of IRA) and— here’s the hot button—allow them to be used not only for higher education but also for K12 expenses, including private-school tuition...
...Barring a November upset, this will be the first time a GOP majority on Capitol Hill has had the chance to shape that huge mass of programs and outlays...
...The ESEA reauthorization isn’t all that lies ahead...
...That’s the real issue posed by Coverdell’s bill...
...Many were sound: permission for single-sex schools to receive federal aid, a phonics-based literacy program, a resolution that 95 percent of Uncle Sam’s money should reach the classroom, and so on...
...At heart, the Democrats remain the party of the publicschool monopoly, though they are shrewdly advertising such customer-friendly specials as more teachers, smaller classes, and new classrooms...
...The consumers (unless rich or lucky) must take what they are given...
...It’s worth recalling that, just a quarter-century ago, a Democratic Congress and Republican White House agreed to a very different strategy for higher education...
...residents— including three-fifths of blacks and two-thirds of publicschool parents—favor the kind of program that the president killed...
...In education, that mostly means test scores, child by child and school by school, tied to high standards that signal what welleducated youngsters should know...
...The last victim was a small voucher program that would have helped 2,000 impoverished residents of the District of Columbia flee the capital’s rotten publiceducation system for the haven of safe, effective private and parochial schools—just as the Clinton and Gore children have done...
...For U.S...
...This has not worked perfectly, to be sure...
...But those are debating points...
...These were rebuffed by the GOP majority, which managed to add a dozen riders of its own...
...voucher program embodied the same principle...
...And they still get sizable sums...
...Several key provisions have elicited veto threats from the White House, and the GOP leadership is weighing various parliamentary tactics to make the bill as awkward as possible for the president to kill...
...Higher-education policy would be driven by consumers rather than producers...
...The Senate blundered, though, when it assented to an amendment by John Ashcroft to ban further development of national tests...
...Standards and testing remain GOP blind spots, but the rest of the Coverdell bill is solid...
...We must strengthen the public schools, not abandon them,” thundered the veto message from the Oval Office...
...The 1998 and 2000 elections are in sight, and both parties are positioning themselves on the education issue, which has risen to the top of many voters’ concerns...
...To block such information, as a majority of congressional Republicans voted to do, is to play into the hands of the school establishment—and continue to deny consumers effective power...
...The cynical subtext, however, was, “Do as we say, not as we do...
...Can this be changed...
...The Democrats strove to insert subsidies for school construction and additional teachers...
...That’s what Ashcroft mustered a majority of his colleagues to forbid— as did the House of Representatives earlier in the year...
...The producers are totally in charge...
...But such data cut little ice at the White House...
...But it is not the only possible way of doing things...
...The next step is to “field test” those items to see what happens when children confront them...
...One of the riders—Slade Gorton’s conversion of most current federal programs into an optional “block grant” for states and c o m m u n i t i e s — i s almost as scary to the education establishment as Coverdell’s core proposal...
...Days later, the Washington Post reported the results of its own survey: Fifty-six percent of D.C...
...That’s the precedent that Republicans are keen to establish via Coverdell...
...And that, of course, is precisely what suits the teacher unions and the rest of the publicschool establishment—Clinton backers all...
...Though the current plan for national testing sprang from the Clinton White House, the concept of standards-based national tests goes back to the Bush administration, and Republican politicians should realize that it remains vital to the GOP strategy for reform...
...This is a vast subsidy reserved for education’s government-sector producers, completely out of reach of consumers and private-sector competitors...
...No consumer-based system works well unless the consumers have reliable information about how the competing producers are doing...
...Not all test questions “work...
...The stage will be set for a clash in the coming elections—as well as in the year to follow, when Congress turns to programs that dispense serious money...
...This year’s action is an important preview...
...While the bill wouldn’t give much aid to any family, it would mark the first time that Uncle Sam had entrusted even a pittance to the K-12 consumer—as bold a departure for education as private-investment accounts would be for Social Security...
...If it survives the conference, it’s veto bait, too...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 39
