Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
October 22, 2000, Sunday 4 STAR EDITION
SECTION: A; Pg. 24
LENGTH:
1427 words
HEADLINE: Women's votes seen as key to White
House;
Bush, Gore focus on education as a top issue while wooing the
undecided for crucial ballots
SOURCE: Staff
BYLINE: KIM COBB
BODY:
If
anyone understands why Al Gore and George W. Bush keep talking about a crisis in
American education, it's Tracy Richardson.
A single mother in Pensacola,
Fla., Richardson lives in a neighborhood where the public school was so bad the
state of Florida gave her a $ 3,400 voucher to use for tuition at a private
school.
Her 9-year-old daughter, Khaliah Clanton, got an "opportunity
scholarship" reserved for students stuck in chronically failing schools.
So you might assume that Richardson would be a big supporter of
presidential hopeful Bush, the candidate whose education plan calls for a
national voucher program similar to the one in Florida.
And you'd be
wrong. "I have not made up my mind," Richardson said last week. "And I saw
portions of the debate (Tuesday) night. I just don't know."
That puts
Richardson in the category both candidates are wooing with all their might in
these waning days of the campaign - the undecided female voter. With Gore and
Bush running neck and neck in the polls, and women holding the potential to
swing the election, education is at the top of their campaign agendas.
"There are plenty of other issues," Richardson said, noting that she has
an elderly mother, for whom questions of Medicare and Social Security also come
into play. "I have to kind of weigh them all, but education is a big thing for
me right now."
A national survey in mid-September commissioned by
Emily's List, an organization that raises money for women candidates, showed
women were three-fourths of the undecided vote.
"Health care, education
and Social Security top the list of concerns that voters - particularly women -
identify as important to them in deciding how to vote," said Celinda Lake, who
conducted the Emily's List poll. Forty-four percent of women selected health
care as their priority issue, 41 percent identified education, and 31 percent
chose Social Security.
"Women are poised to decide this election because
the issues they vote on are the dominant issue of the day, and because women
make up the vast majority of the undecided electorate," said Ellen Malcolm,
president of Emily's List.
That was certainly clear last week as Bush's
mother, Barbara, and his wife, Laura, headlined the "W Stands for Women"
campaign tour, aimed at whittling down the advantage Gore is believed to hold
among women voters.
A survey by the Pew Research Center early this month
showed Gore leading Bush among women, 49 percent to 40 percent. But a
Reuters/MSNBC tracking poll released Thursday revealed a much narrower gender
gap - Gore was leading among women only 45 percent to Bush's 42 percent.
The September Emily's List poll showed Gore with double-digit leads over
Bush in several categories that matter most to women. On education, Gore had an
18-point advantage over Bush.
But the Pew Center Poll showed Gore has
lost ground among women on the education issue. Pew polling in June indicated
Gore had a 9 percentage point lead over Bush among women on education, but that
lead had shrunk to 3 points by this month.
"It's clear when you ask
voters . . . what is the single issue most likely to affect your vote, education
comes out very high," said Susan Carroll, senior research associate at Rutger's
University Center for American Women and Politics. "That's why I think it's
getting that much discussion, not because the federal government can do that
much about education."
Using dollars as a measuring stick, the federal
role in local education is relatively small.
The average American public
school gets just under 7 percent of its budget from federal dollars in the form
of Title 1 programs for disadvantaged children. In poor schools, that percentage
of federal aid is greater.
The federal government can use that money as
leverage to exert influence proportionately greater than 7 percent - just how
much is a point of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans. Both parties
agree that the president inherits a bully pulpit on issues like education from
which he can shape public opinion, but it will take Congress to implement the
education plans Bush and Gore envision.
President Clinton submitted the
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to Congress in May
1999, but Congress has yet to act on it.
The 1994 reauthorization marked
a fundamental change in the scope of Title 1 programs for poor children,
spelling out that low-income children should be expected to meet the same
education goals as other kids. The law said states should develop academic
standards and tests aligned to those standards - but it didn't mandate a course
of action for poorly performing schools, and there was no money authorized for
intervention in failing schools.
"The big decisions about who teaches,
and what is taught, and how it is taught and so forth still remain very much in
state and local hands," said Chester E. Finn, president of the conservative
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and former assistant secretary of education under
President Reagan.
But both Bush and Gore are proposing a more "muscular"
role for the federal government in education, Finn said. Much of Gore's plan is
an extension of the ESEA reauthorization already pending in
Congress.
Both candidates stress that schools must be accountable,
balancing rewards and punishments to encourage the delivery of a quality
education. But there are four major differences between the two plans, starting
with the price tag:
Gore envisions spending an additional $ 115 billion
on education over the next 10 years, while Bush proposes to spend an additional
$ 47 billion.
Bush would require testing of every child, from third
grade through eighth grade. Gore would call for voluntary testing in fourth
through eighth grades, and would challenge states to institute a high school
completion exam.
Gore is calling for various types of "crisis
intervention" for failing schools, including shutting them down briefly and
re-opening them as charter schools. Bush says he would make vouchers available
to children stuck in chronically failing schools, both to deliver a quality
education to the child, as well as to pressure the failing school to improve.
Gore envisions broadening the government's role in helping disadvantaged
children with major expenditures for teacher training, reducing classroom size
and universal pre-school. Bush thinks he can close the current education gap
swallowing low-income and minority children - the goal of current Title 1
funding - with tough-minded accountability and a much narrower financial
investment.
Gore's plan comes as no surprise from the standpoint of
traditional Democratic Party philosophy. But the Republican Party called for
abolishing the U.S. Department of Education in its 1996 platform, so Bush's
plans to beef up the national government's role in education mark a
philosophical point of departure.
"Yes, this is different from the
historical Republican view that Uncle Sam should butt out, fold his tent and go
home," Finn said. He said the Republican Party as a whole has been forced to
shift its education philosophy because of the successes Clinton has had in
enlarging the federal role.
"I think the man in the street now believes
if there's an education problem, the federal government should address it," Finn
said. "It's dumb politics for anyone to just say no in this regard."
Democrat Andy Rotherham, director of the 21st Century Schools Project
for the Progressive Policy Institute, says he'd take that conclusion a step
further:
"It's not just dumb politics, it's dumb policy," Rotherham
said. "Kids are not just citizens of individual states - they're U.S. citizens."
It's ridiculous to argue that the federal government should have no role
in setting education standards, Rotherham said, when there are such differences
in academic achievement among states.
"We live in a connected society,"
Rotherham said. "It screams for national attention on an issue like this."
Education was a dominant theme in the last presidential debate in St.
Louis Tuesday night, with members of the audience submitting 18 questions on the
topic.
Bush stuck to broader education themes while Gore talked about
specific programs, like more money for class size reduction and universal
preschool. Gore said he envisioned "a day in the United States of America where
all our public schools are considered excellent - world class."
"There's
just not going to be enough money," Bush said of Gore's plans. "I would worry
about federalizing education if I were you."
GRAPHIC: Photo: Tracy Richardson and daughter
Khaliah Clanton, 9, are part of the parent-led group suing to keep the Florida
school voucher system in place. Clanton attends a Montessori school under the
program.; Tony Giberson / Pensacola News Journal
LOAD-DATE: November 20, 2000 
