Last week was "education week" for John Kerry's campaign, during which he unveiled a series of proposals that likely comprise the main education plank of his platform. They definitely warrant a look, though in part he seems to be recycling Al Gore's ideas from 2000 - and also Gore's chief strategy: a deft balancing of crowd pleasers, teacher pleasers and demagoguery, all resting atop billions in "new" money. These proposals are supposedly shielded from rival spending priorities via a "trust fund" arrangement whose cash will come from raising taxes on well-to-do Americans. The platform covers a lot of territory (see http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/education/ and http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/college/) and, as usual in a campaign, contains a mix of the astute and the absurd, some well developed notions, others ultra-hazy. For example:
- More money for effective teachers in return for some teacher quality improvements, including speedier mechanisms for dismissing bad teachers. This is Gore redux - and not half so bold as Kerry himself was in 1998 when he called for "ending teacher tenure as we know it." Still, it's the best of his ideas - IF one can picture Congress insisting on the "give back," i.e., stipulating that this money will only be available to states that get serious about offloading weak teachers and overriding contracts (and union opposition) to give more pay to good ones. Else this proposal morphs into a new federal teacher-pay supplement, minus the conditions that could make it worth enacting. The NEA has doubtless figured that out - no doubt the reason this key Kerry supporter isn't denouncing its candidate for heresy.
- Some nebulous proposals to boost high-school graduation rates, centering on tutoring, mentoring, and tougher enforcement of a squishy NCLB provision that calls on states to curb their dropout rates.
- Several schemes for making higher education more affordable, headlined by the spectacularly bad idea of giving everyone a $4,000 annual tuition tax credit. Just picture how greedy U.S. colleges, feeling pinched by state legislatures, would respond to the discovery that almost every one of their students suddenly has four Gs in his pocket to be used for paying tuition.
This week is education week for the Bush campaign, which continues to sing the praises of NCLB - beyond its merits, considerable as those are - while trotting out a series of Clintonesque mini-proposals, many of them fine (e.g., improving 12th grade NAEP) but none amounting to a big idea.
No wonder the President's re-election campaign has been faulted for its dearth of meaty domestic-policy ideas and what one commentator terms a "very, very weak" White House policy-development process. In education, they never really got beyond NCLB, which was a whopping big idea but which deals mainly with reading and math in grades 3-10 and the consequences for schools that don't teach enough of it and kids who don't learn enough. (To be fair, NCLB addresses scads of topics. But it was yesterday's news and even its fans acknowledge that years will pass before it shows much effect on U.S. education. In any case, since Kerry voted for it and seems to buy its main precepts, its campaign salience has shrunk to arguing over whether enough is being spent on it.)
It's common knowledge in Washington that the administration has been AWOL on most other education policy debates of the past few years. It had next to nothing to say about the Higher Education Act, was barely audible on vocational education (though a belated proposal has just popped out), and - despite terrific recommendations from an outside commission - essentially a non-player on special ed. As for Head Start, the White House offered stellar reform ideas, then bungled this domain's tricky politics. And when it comes to the school lunch program, if the Bush team has played any role in that reauthorization, it must have been under cover of darkness.
This isn't necessarily the end of the story. Several of these major education laws won't get completed by the molasses-like 108th Congress, so will return to Capitol Hill next year. Hence there's still time for the White House to devise serious proposals for how to rework these hoary, troubled programs as boldly as it did with NCLB.
But reforming extant federal programs is a Potomacentric way of seeing the education world. In an election, what's needed are either small, grabby proposals or big, important ideas that reach past the Beltway. The White House needs no help with the former. Regarding the latter, they may need a hand. Herewith, five suggestions:
- Pre-school for every child who needs it. Not day care - quality pre-school, voluntary, with a serious pre-literacy curriculum built in, with families able to choose among competing providers, and with a sliding price scale that subsidizes only those who need it. A big idea indeed for a Republican. (In a perfect world, Head Start would be folded in.)
- Ensure that every young person learns the country's history. Bush has access to proposals aplenty here, starting with those of Humanities chairman Bruce Cole and Senator (and former Education Secretary) Lamar Alexander. There are a hundred ways to approach this, but any serious plan must include testing kids' knowledge of U.S. history - and holding schools to account for whether their pupils learn it
- Principals. (Kerry is already onto this one.) Press states to eliminate today's dumb certification rules for school principals. Instead, think of them as CEOs and pay them CEO-level wages linked to their schools' performance. Empower them to make big decisions. Perhaps create a new nationwide principals' corps - expert leaders deployed to schools that need them - or fund states that devise their own.
- Choice. This rivals standards-based reform as the big idea for transforming K-12 education in the U.S. - and Kerry dares not go there. Bush could be as bold on this front as with standards-testing-accountability and could place the GOP squarely on parents' side. Choice can be advanced in any number of ways. For starters: voucherize special ed (?? la Florida's McKay Scholarship Program); replicate the D.C. voucher program in fifty more cities; re-energize the flagging charter-school movement; enact Senator Alexander's new "Pell Grants for Kids" proposal.
- Are we getting our money's worth from college? America should press for accountability from higher ed just as from primary/secondary schools. Let the Democrats demand more money to pay the soaring price of college. Republicans should demand that colleges become more efficient and prove that their students are learning. Professors will fulminate, sure, but their institutions get more than $15 billion a year in federal aid (not counting billions more in aid to their students) and the taxpayer deserves to know what it's buying. If Congress doesn't complete work on the higher ed act, there's even a handy legislative vehicle.
Only the first of those suggestions carries a sizable price tag. The others, by Washington standards, can be done for relatively little money. Though it's commonly assumed that big numbers impress a jaded electorate, Republicans never win bidding wars in education. Far more important to be the party of big ideas than the party of big government. Let Kerry run on that platform. He's off to a swell start.
Proposed Carl D. Perkins Secondary and Technical Education Excellence Act, Department of Education
"Conservatives restive about Bush policies," By Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, May 10, 2004
"Education law will stand, Bush tells its detractors," by David Sanger and Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, May 12, 2004 (registration required)
"Remarks by President Bush in a conversation on Reading First and No Child Left Behind," Kansas City Info Zone, May 13, 2004
