Bush and Kerry back reform efforts, but they offer different strategies

Author: Betsy Hammond

Published: October 20, 2004

No president in the past 35 years has had more impact on public schools than George W. Bush.

With his No Child Left Behind law, he's gotten the attention of educators and parents in every state and helped reset priorities at thousands of schools.

But John Kerry says the law has stopped short of its promise because it is underfunded. Schools have gotten notice their results are inadequate but not enough help to enable them to improve, he says.

During the two years the law has been in full effect, U.S. schools have placed new urgency on raising test scores, particularly among special education, minority and limited English students.

That's because the Bush administration lowered the boom on schools: Get enough students to pass state reading and math tests or be branded inadequate.

Among schools that receive federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students --and more than half the nation's schools do -- falling short twice in a row triggers a requirement to offer students a free bus ride to attend a higher-scoring school.

Many schools, including Marshall High in Southeast Portland, are rushing to remake themselves and achieve a test score turnaround to avoid the law's most extreme remedies, such as a state takeover.

Previous federal education laws also called for Title I schools to meet test score goals or face consequences. But lower standards and more lenient deadlines in those laws -- combined with a gentler approach by the U.S. Department of Education -- meant that most years, not a single school made the federal troubled schools list.

Tighter standards put schools on list

This year, by contrast, more than 5,600 U.S. schools, including more than 200 in Oregon, were deemed inadequate. Thousands, including 40 in Oregon, were required to help students transfer to a higher-scoring school.

In Portland, more than 1,100 students accepted that offer and left their neighborhood school.

At the same time, schools are getting record federal funding. Goaded by Congress to pump money into No Child Left Behind, President Bush is proposing $57 billion for fiscal year 2005, up 36 percent from 2001, the Office of Management and Budget reports.

Educators who scarcely took note of previous federal education laws talk a lot about No Child Left Behind -- often in derisive tones. Many are upset by its cookie-cutter approach to judging schools by their test scores.

Despite the impact of the law, and the strenuous push-back by many teachers, principals and state lawmakers, this year's presidential election cannot be cast as a referendum on No Child Left Behind. That's not simply because the shaky economy, the high cost of health care and the war in Iraq have overshadowed education in most voters' minds.

It is because Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts who voted for No Child Left Behind when it passed with bipartisan support in 2001, still supports its central tenets. He says he would add "flexibility" to it but would not change course.

Instead, the biggest difference between Bush and Kerry on education comes down to one word: money.

Increasing school accountability

Bush plans to keep pushing for increased school accountability with only modest funding increases to accompany it. He wants to extend the accountability provisions, which have mainly affected elementary and middle schools, to high schools, requiring them to test students in ninth, 10th and 11th grades and make public their yearly results.

Kerry, on the other hand, proposes massive infusions of money to help schools fix performance problems that have been spotlighted by No Child Left Behind.

Kerry said he will "fully fund" the law, pumping an additional $10 billion a year into helping schools meet the law's demands and adding rewards for schools that do well. He also wants to add $5,000 to the salaries of teachers who attain superior results or who agree to teach in high-poverty schools or in shortage areas, such as special education. He wants to start after-school programs for 3.5 million children.

Both candidates say they want to improve teachers' skills, although Kerry gives it more emphasis. Bush proposes to spend $500 million on reward pay for teachers who get outstanding results. Kerry would spend roughly six times as much -- about $3 billion a year -- to improve the pay, training, mentoring and monitoring of teachers.

Both candidates talk about college access. Bush proposed increasing Pell Grant spending by nearly $1 billion in 2005 and wants to do more for community colleges.

Again, Kerry's proposals dwarf that. He says he wants to give a $2,500 "college opportunity" tax credit on the first $4,000 of college tuition each year.

Kerry also wants to lure young people into two years of community service by offering them four years of college tuition. And he has a $10 billion plan to reward states that keep their public college tuitions low.

Expensive proposals

Altogether, Kerry education proposals would cost $207 billion over 10 years, according to his domestic policy adviser, Robert Gordon.

Bush, by contrast, prefers tax cuts to new federal programs and is proposing $82 billion in new spending on all domestic programs combined, The New York Times reported last week based on interviews with tax and budget experts.

Kerry would pay for his stepped-up education spending in several ways, Gordon says: -- Undoing Bush tax cuts for taxpayers earning more than $200,000. -- Bringing back the estate tax. -- Ending a sweetheart deal that let banks earn 9.5 percent service fees on student loans. -- And cutting corporate tax loopholes.

The biggest of those, ending the tax cuts for the wealthy and resurrecting the estate tax, would generate $844 billion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That's enough to pay for Kerry's education programs along with other initiatives, Gordon said.

Bush says he's running on his track record in education -- not dollars spent, but attitudes changed and results achieved.

Bush and his education secretary, Rod Paige, a former Houston schools superintendent, have refused to lower standards for any schools or students, they say with pride. They have staunchly defended the toughest provisions in the law and insisted on hewing to its requirements.

And, they say it has worked. Both have claimed that test scores are rising and the achievement gap is closing because of No Child Left Behind -- a claim that is premature, according to Jack Jennings, director of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy.

In the past two weeks, researchers have issued a pair of dueling studies -- one by California professors emphasizing the stagnation in test scores since 2001, another by The Education Trust emphasizing the improvements, especially in minority students' performance.

Yet both had the same overall conclusion: The nation's reading and math achievement is not rising much faster than before No Child Left Behind. And it is not going up nearly fast enough to meet the ambitious targets in the law, which call for 100 percent of students to meet their state's benchmarks by 2014.

Reform plan wins praise

"Some states are really accelerating their progress in impressive ways, and the president deserves credit, " said Ross Wiener, policy director at The Education Trust, a nonpartisan group that champions No Child Left Behind. "There is a new sense of urgency to education reform efforts. It would not have happened this time without the president's leadership."

Doug Carnine, a University of Oregon education professor on the Educators for Bush national steering committee, also credits Bush for his leadership on education -- something Carnine first experienced in Texas when, as governor, Bush helped bring attention to the importance of learning to read.

"No program of accountability is done easily. And education in particular has a history of a lot of faddism and nonsense and things that are not good for children," Carnine says. "Accountability helps clear that up, and he's really drawn on the lessons learned about accountability in Texas. No Child Left Behind is a huge step forward."

Wiener, of the Education Trust, said Bush undermined his own cause at times. His administration was too inflexible in the first two years of implementing the law, turning potential supporters into foes. And, he said, the administration failed to use strong provisions in the law to correct a lack of skill and knowledge among some teachers, particularly those in high-poverty schools.

Based on research about school effectiveness, "Nothing is more important than focusing on teacher quality," Wiener said. "The deep-seated achievement problems in our schools are not going to be solved by pointing at them more emphatically."

Oregon schools suffer from cuts

In Oregon, test scores have turned stagnant after years of steady improvement. In 2004, despite plenty of warning that No Child Left Behind sanctions were coming, reading and math achievement stalled, and more schools failed to hit federal performance targets than in 2003.

No Child Left Behind didn't cause that problem -- the main cause was state budget cuts and the rising class sizes and shortened school years they spawned, educators concluded. Nor was No Child Left Behind powerful enough to counter the state budget woes.

That is why Oregon Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo, a Democrat and an outspoken supporter of No Child Left Behind, says a Kerry presidency would be better for Oregon. She says Oregon badly needs a share of the billions Kerry is talking about spending on schools.

"He is proposing that he would fully fund No Child Left Behind and would fully fund our special education mandates as well. . . . That would be so helpful."

Kerry can detail all the spending plans he wants, but that doesn't mean they will happen, because Congress must agree, she noted. But she said it's clear that Bush won't deliver that level of funding, given his track record and campaign talk.

"The difference I see is funding. We know that either way we will continue to have No Child Left Behind -- the question is whether our federal funding will go up a lot or take a little dip."