Think Portability, Not Vouchers

...But of course that's easier said than done...

...And it has a further advantage...

...Though governors claim to want more control over federal education dollars, up to now they've shunned the heavy political lifting...

...switch from funding school systems to aiding needy kids...

...Exit vouchers...

...In Rod Paige, he's picked an able reformer for education secretary...

...Washington's money, however, stays in the public school system where the family lives...

...Thus Washington actually impedes school choice...

...The core issue is that today the money belongs to school systems rather than to students...

...The principal Senate marksman was attorney general-designate John Ashcroft...

...Hence a huge political ruckus will surround this little mouse of a program...

...Striding into this briar patch is the most serious "education president" since LBJ...

...As for tests, nearly every state has lots of them, but they can't be compared with each other and they don't always tell the truth...

...Talk about a mouse upsetting an elephant...

...Bush-style exit vouchers would be imposed everywhere, including places that want no part of school choice...

...Everyone agrees that states and schools must show improved academic results, but how to cajole or coerce this from the banks of the Potomac...

...But many of those are vague and touchy-feely...

...Following a strategy that brother Jeb pioneered in Florida, he would let poor kids take their federal Title I money (about $800 apiece) to the school of their choice if—and only if—their original public school failed to make academic gains for three consecutive years...

...Accountability...

...Will Bush and Paige second-guess the states...

...It's past time to move from a "compliance" model (in which states and communities merely show that they're following Washington's rules) to a "tight-loose" strategy that frees states and schools to do what they think best so long as they produce student-achievement gains...

...Congressional Democrats have warned Bush that persevering with any sort of voucher will cause a legislative train wreck...

...Most important, "exit vouchers" don't solve the central problem of the LBJ-era education programs...

...Despite the furor, the Bush voucher proposal is barely that...

...The teacher unions, school boards, old-line civil rights organizations, and other potent interest groups cling doggedly to the Great Society-era status quo...

...Many states and communities—including Rod Paige's Houston—have made impressive strides in opening education options for children...

...Federal moneys would move precisely as far as each state allows its own funds to travel...

...Far from conferring the right to choose their schools upon millions of federally aided youngsters, it's really a small part of the public-school accountability scheme, to be triggered only in rare circumstances...

...Will the Bush team press for funding children instead of institutions...

...Portability, though affecting far more children, should be easier to enact so long as federal law leaves the states in the driver's seat...

...And if the White House tries to convert the existing National Assessment into a high-stakes test, it will corrupt our surest indicator of how U.S...

...In 2002, the big "special education" program for disabled children also comes due for renewal...

...students are doing...

...Congress has never wanted to grant or withhold education dollars on the basis of academic performance, a practice that is said to enrich schools that are already succeeding while weakening those in greatest need...

...Portability would do far more good than exit vouchers by way of reforming Washington's troubled K-12 programs...

...It's a moment of great potential and high drama...

...It merely gets Uncle Sam out of the way...

...The key is for Washington to wrap itself around the principle of neufralit:y with respect to school choice...

...Limited as it is, the Bush voucher proposal terrifies the public-education blob...

...and consequences for kids and schools based on how they perform on those tests...

...This will kick off the busiest two years of education policy-making in Washington since Lyndon Johnson's day...

...The Clintonites lacked the will— and congressional backing—to do so...

...During the campaign, Bush proposed to use "exit vouchers" to punish errant schools by allowing their students to depart for greener education pastures...

...Nor is $800 enough to pay tuition anywhere...

...And weak-kneed transitioners have already hinted that they won't fall on the voucher sword...

...Don't count on it...

...Even if the White House were inert, the 107th Congress would have its hands full with reauthoriza-tion of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—on which the previous Congress made good headway but eventually gave up— and the tangle of federal education research, statistics, and assessment programs...

...Listen for the word "portability," the third key test...

...They aren't worth it...

...Yet federal programs remain stuck in the 1960s, protected fiercely by the school establishment...

...Even if the standards and testing parts could be worked out, what would Uncle Sam use for rewards and sanctions...

...But that strategy is top-down and centrally controlled, dependent on three forms of leverage that Washington currently lacks: explicit academic standards...

...After a miserable experience with national standards during the first Bush administration, Congress isn't going there again...

...So do most of the editorial writers...

...Such changes would bring federal education policy into the modern era, would harmonize it with promising state-level reforms, and would alter Washington's role from troublemaker to partner...

...Watch how these are handled...

...It defers to states to work through the thorny choice issue in their own ways...

...This is not a federal voucher program...

...It's past time to Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation...

...As the play unfolds, watch for three signals: First, how does the Bush team handle "accountability...

...It's a formula that's worked well in Texas and some other states...

...Worry, too, if exit-vouchers are allowed to become either panacea or train-wrecker...

...Worry if you see the Bushies putting all their policy eggs in the standards-and-testing basket...

...During the campaign, Bush painted a sweeping reform vision (before succumbing to Clinton-Gore-style programmitis...

...PRESIDENT BUSH has pledged to send his first education bill to Capitol Hill within hours of his inauguration, a symbol of the priority he assigns to the issue that garnered so much campaign attention and looms so large in his Texas record of accomplishment...

...The White House and Congress should make the federal dollars portable but invite each state to set its own limits...

...Clinton proposed a "voluntary national test" but that idea was shot down from the left and right...

...And he rounded up all the available GOP education talent to help with the transition...

...A family may opt for a charter school, for a public school in a nearby district, even (in Milwaukee or Cleveland) for a private school, and it can count on state— and sometimes local—dollars moving with the child...

...But can it be imposed from Washington...

...Higher education policy got there in 1972 when a Democratic Congress and the Nixon White House, after much debate, agreed that Washington's main vehicle for aiding post-secondary schooling would be grants and loans attached to individual students rather than direct campus subsidies...

...Talk about a mouse upsetting an elephant...

...Which means states will continue to set their own standards...

...It's the single reform that would do the most good...

...annual tests of student performance...

...Nor would a battery of new tests...

...It's past time to shift from an archaic focus on how and where the money is spent to an emphasis on whether children are actually learning...

...Limited as it is, this proposal terrifies the public-education blob...

...Despite the whopping spending increases that Clinton and Congress lavished on education programs of every description, none of them is working well...

...He's installed a trusted Austin education staffer as chief domestic strategist at the White House...

...And congressional Democrats are understandably wary of ceding any of the education territory to Republicans...

...The Texans seem to think they can extend Lone Star-style reform to the entire country...

...But cheer when you hear the word portability...

...Which brings up the second litmus issue: vouchers...