Bush Faces Test on Education Plan

Wednesday, January 24th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) â€” President Bush is seeking consensus on a multibillion-dollar blueprint to help schools that fall behind. His supporters give him high marks, while skeptics of vouchers and testing say he has more homework to do.

``When I hear the word `vouchers,' I get scared and wonder how much they're going to take away from us,'' said Dave Oland, a social studies teacher at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kan., which has been on the path to better performance for three years. ``We improved because we put the resources into it.''

On Tuesday, Bush fleshed out his campaign promises of improved schools with a package of reading programs, after-school care, teacher training, student testing requirements and failing-school remedies.

Eager to get something done on education this year, Democrats quickly signed on to most of those ideas, but pronounced vouchers as a deal breaker.

Bush avoided using the term ``voucher,'' saying the federal funds taken from schools that fail three years in a row would be diverted to other choices for students trapped in bad schools.

To woo Democrats, Bush expanded the cost of his package by an undisclosed amount of extra money to schools that fail in two consecutive years.

But most of the lawmakers who ultimately would vote on the plan rejected those overtures.

Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., called vouchers ``dead on arrival as far as I am concerned.''

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also vowed to fight Bush on vouchers. ``Private schools aren't going to take the hardest-to-teach kids,'' she said. ``It will just be an out for the kids who can afford it.''

Even if Bush returns with another plan that limits the number of participating children, simply introducing the proposal was enough for conservatives seeking to have a White House champion.

``We must have this debate,'' said House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas. ``The American people must hear both sides of this issue, not just the defenders of the status quo.''

Armey's plan to give vouchers to District of Columbia students was vetoed by President Clinton in 1997. Roughly 20,000 children attend private schools with publicly funded vouchers in five small programs in Maine, Vermont, Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Some educators applauded Bush's proposal.

Ken Johnson, vice president of the Milwaukee school board, said that before there was school choice in his city, ``the only way out was for wealthy parents.''

``We don't own the children,'' he added. ``Their parents own us. It's a matter of seeing parents as customers.''

But Bush's announcement left a number of questions unanswered: Would private schools have to accept special-needs youngsters; could children take their vouchers out of state; and what would happen to crowded school districts hit with an influx of students from a recently failed school?

Under a current federal program, the states have deemed 8,000 of their schools as failing and thus eligible for school-improvement funds.

Bush aides had no estimate for how many schools could end up in his program, adding that states would set the standards and be the judges of how a school fared. They would, however, have to test children in grades 3 through 8 in reading and math.

The Education Department would use a national sampling test as a barometer for results from the states' own test scores.

Many teachers see excessive testing as a threat to students.

``They just don't give the whole picture,'' said Fred Albert, a sixth-grade math teacher in Belle, W.Va. He said a single test score last spring could have finished one of his most promising pupils.

The student, who expertly solved word problems just days before, sat through a standardized test in a panic over finishing 40 equations in 50 minutes, Albert said.

``It's unfair,'' said Albert, who incorporated the student's classroom work into his final passing grade. ``I believe in high standards, but I also believe a child is capable of doing so much more than one test reflects.''

In the end Bush and Congress will have to compromise, said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy think tank and a former congressional Democratic aide. ``The Democrats will have to agree to merge many current programs, and the Republicans will have to agree to put aside tuition vouchers for public schools,'' he said.