Gore and Bush launch air war: Education, ethics are focus of TV ads

"Gore and Clinton have had eight years, but they've failed," an announcer says in Mr. Bush's spot, which is airing in Illinois and three adjacent battleground states.

The 60-second commercial, coming just days after the Texas governor sealed the Republican nomination, says that reading scores have stagnated and that U.S. students rank near the bottom in math.

Mr. Gore fired back with a commercial of his own, accusing Mr. Bush of negative campaigning.

"George W. Bush - from South Carolina to New York, he used dirty politics to trash John McCain's record. Now he's running attack ads against Al Gore," the ad says.

Operatives in both camps said the dueling ads will run through Tuesday in southern Illinois markets, including stations that reach into Kentucky, Iowa and Missouri. Illinois holds its primary election Tuesday.

Bush aides say they want to put education high on the agenda in a bid to attract women and independents, both crucial voting blocs in November.

"This is the first ad of the fall campaign," said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, underscoring that there will be no break between the nominating process and the November election.

"When it comes to education, Governor Bush is a different kind of Republican. He's setting a different tone," he said.

In his ad, Mr. Bush charges that national reading scores have leveled out during the Clinton-Gore administration. According to national statistics, scores dropped through the 1980s, including a period in which Mr. Bush's father was in the White House, and have effectively stayed the same in the 1990s.

Gore campaign spokesman Douglas Hattaway said that under Mr. Bush, Texas ranked 45th in the SAT, the leading college entrance exam.

Mr. Fleischer said it is unfair to use the SAT to compare states because Texas has so many minorities.

"SAT scores are a misleading measure," he said. "One of the great benefits of education in Texas is we have such a large and diverse pool of people taking the SATs that, as the sponsors of the test note, it is misleading and unfair to compare state-by-state SAT rankings."

Campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker blamed the poor SAT results on Mr. Bush's predecessor as governor, Ann Richards.

"What you have to remember is that Governor Bush has been in office since 1995, and in 1995 his first reforms were passed," she said. "Anybody who is taking the SAT test now was educated under the policies of Gov. Ann Richards."

Mr. Fleischer said a better measure of student performance under Mr. Bush is the National Assessment of Education Progress exam.

Mr. Bush has touted the results on that test during his campaign, noting that African-American fourth-graders were near the top nationally in math and that African-American and Hispanic eighth-graders excelled in reading.

The fourth-grade results cited by the Bush campaign were from 1996, when the governor's proposals to reduce state regulation and strengthen accountability were just being put in place.

The Texas fourth-graders had, for the most part, been in school during the Richards administration.

"I think it's fair to say for anything that's related to '96, credit can be shared," said Mr. Fleischer. "Governor Bush isn't seeking sole credit."

In his campaign for the White House, Mr. Bush is proposing to duplicate nationally his efforts in Texas to remove regulations that govern the spending of education money.

Under Mr. Bush's plan, schools in which students fail to make improvements would lose federal money, which parents could use to pay for private schools. At the same time, Mr. Bush has proposed boosting federal spending for education by more than $5 billion over five years.

Mr. Gore has proposed a massive federal investment - $115 billion over the next 10 years, to be paid for out of the projected budget surplus. The money would be used to triple the number of charter schools, provide universal access to kindergarten, modernize old schools and construct new ones, recruit new teachers and give raises to high-performing instructors.