Bush To Launch Education Plan

Tuesday, January 23rd 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) â€” President Bush â€” trying to attract Democrats to his education program without abandoning school vouchers â€” is proposing new money for the nation's public systems while offering the worst schools more chances to shape up before losing federal funds to private institutions.

The president, who unveils his signature campaign issue Tuesday in a White House ceremony, is not backing off vouchers, the most divisive part of his plan to hold schools accountable for student learning. In that plan, failing schools have three years to get up to standards, so that the children are able to achieve, before federal funds are stripped for other uses such as the vouchers.

``If children are trapped in a school that will not teach and will not change, there has to be a consensus,'' Bush said as he met with top congressional Republicans and Democrats who oversee education policy-making.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said Bush made clear his position on vouchers ``is unchanged.'' But despite those differences, Kennedy said, Democrats are eager to work with Bush on education.

``The areas which he pointed out where we are in agreement, I thought were very substantial. I, for one, am interested in getting some action,'' Kennedy said outside the West Wing.

``What is important today is that we have a president that wants to make this a strong priority on education and I think we have those that have leadership positions in the House and Senate that want to work with him and get something meaningful done,'' the Democrat said.

A Bush official, speaking on condition of anonymity Monday, said Bush had decided on some changes to his voucher plan to win over hostile Democrats.

Bush is proposing additional funding â€” beyond even what he proposed during his campaign. Corrective measures for such schools would include allowing students to use federal money for transportation to a public school with a better record. Removing the school principal would be another second-year option.

Bush, who called education ``the most fundamental of American issues,'' is making education his first major policy initiative, sending Congress a multibillion-dollar plan to shape up failing schools, increase the student-testing regimen, hand districts more control over federal dollars and make sure all children can read by age 9.

Democrats and some moderate Republicans in Congress rushed this week to formally reject federally funded vouchers. Roughly 20,000 children nationwide already are using state-funded vouchers for nonpublic schools.

The rhetoric heated up over the v-word.

``There's so many areas of agreement, let's not get sidetracked on the issue of vouchers, '' said Jim Manley, spokesman for Kennedy, the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

``This has been stamped a voucher program by the forces that do not wish to see it succeed or do not wish to try anything else,'' said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a member of the Senate committee that oversees education policy. Gregg says Bush's plan is school choice for children trapped in chronically low-performing schools.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the unsuccessful vice presidential candidate and voucher supporter, and other centrist Democrats are offering their own plan that cracks down on failing schools â€” but excludes vouchers.

The Democratic approach, Lieberman said on ABC's ``Good Morning America,'' is to ``pour more money into poorer schools, give the teachers and principals more flexibility on how they are going to use that money and ... if they are not working, close the schools down and radically restructure them, give parents an opportunity to send their kids to a higher-performing public school''

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, told ABC that Bush wants to make all options available. ``I think having the ability to go to a better-performing public school is a great option. But in some urban and some rural areas, there may not be that option, there may not be a better public school,'' she said.

Tuesday's ceremony, following morning meetings with top lawmakers, marks Bush's second weekday on the job. On Monday, he started his presidency by imposing strict restrictions on U.S. funds to international family-planning groups involved in abortion â€” pleasing his conservative supporters but angering abortion-rights groups.

In a meeting Monday with Education Secretary Rod Paige and other educators, the president focused on teacher training and literacy.

``Reading is the new civil right, the cornerstone of hope and opportunity in America,'' he said.

Bush is seeking bipartisan compromise from lawmakers who couldn't agree last year to renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The deeply divided lawmakers, expected to unleash a flurry of competing bills this week, must try once again to revamp about $44 billion in federal programs, which are mainly aimed at poorest of the nation's 53 million schoolchildren.

Bush's plan will reflect his campaign trail vows to reform the nation's schools on the order of policies enacted in Texas, where he was governor. They included annual student testing, more charter schools, reading lessons that stress phonics, and bilingual education that favors English immersion.