Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
The Washington
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January 31, 1999, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 1192 words
HEADLINE:
Senate Panel Passes Bill to Put GOP Stamp on the Education Issue
BYLINE: David S. Broder, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
It was a highly unusual meeting of
the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last Wednesday. A few
minutes after the Senate completed the day's session of the impeachment trial,
Chairman James M. Jeffords (Vt.) collected his Republican members and, in a
flash, reported out the first major education bill of 1999 by a 10 to 0 vote.
Democrats, who were talking to the television cameras about their next
move to defend President Clinton, found out only afterward that the bill had
been cleared -- without debate on any of their amendments.
It was not a
sneak coup, staff members of both parties say. Similar legislation had been
reported from the committee last year by a 17 to 1 vote and had nearly become
law, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) wanted to be sure it was
ready for floor action as soon as this week. What the speed indicates is the
eagerness of Republicans to put their stamp on the education issue that has
become of critical importance to voters and that Clinton and the Democrats have
largely owned until now.
The same anxiety is evident in the House, where
Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has reserved bill number H.R. 2 for a
Republican education package that will track or challenge several of the
elements of school reform included in Clinton's State of the Union address.
Still in the draft stage, the Hastert proposal may even include a Republican
version of new tax credits for school construction bonds, a Clinton idea that
went nowhere in Congress last year.
"My party," said a prominent
Republican pollster, "is still trying to recover from the foolish 1995 effort to
abolish the Department of Education. Republican governors have made a record on
education, but in Washington, we still have to prove to people we care about
schools."
The effort is complicated by the near-universal belief among
congressional Republicans that local control and parental involvement are
essential to good schools -- a philosophy that makes them wary of increased
federal intervention. Democrats, backed by teachers unions, are more ready to
open the federal treasury for education and worry less about Washington exerting
too much influence.
The bill Jeffords rushed out is the Education
Flexibility Partnership Act, called "Ed-Flex." It's a bipartisan measure, whose
lead sponsors are Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Strongly supported by the governors, Ed-Flex began as an experiment in
six states in 1994 and was doubled in size two years later. This legislation
would make its waivers available to all 50 states.
The waivers remove
federal regulations from seven education programs, including the largest, Title
I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which
steers money to schools with large numbers of disadvantaged youngsters.
To participate in Ed-Flex, states must dump their own regulations of
local school districts and develop a review system that holds them accountable
for improving their students' performance.
Frist said that "Ed-Flex
facilitates the development of a seamless system of services for students . . .
[and] removes the ability of local school districts to create excuses" for
failure by alleging they were hamstrung by regulations.
In emphasizing
both "flexibility" and "accountability," this measure -- likely to be the first
school bill to reach Clinton's desk -- links two terms that will echo through
the year's education debate.
As Michael Cohen, the special assistant to
the president for education policy, said: "Inherently, there is no conflict
between more flexibility and more accountability. Only in Washington could you
take such an obvious pairing and turn it into a food fight."
But that
became the pattern on education in the last Congress, as Republicans put up
roadblocks to most of Clinton's proposals and he stonewalled theirs with vetoes
or threatened vetoes.
It could happen again this year -- starting with
the relatively noncontroversial Ed-Flex bill. The White House is supporting an
amendment Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said is needed to "increase
accountability for improving student achievement, so that parents will have
useful information about how well their children are doing."
Republicans
argue that this is a back-door way to reimpose federal standards, and governors
on a bipartisan basis are leery of Kennedy's effort.
Even more
controversial are Clinton's plans, announced in the State of the Union address
and likely to be amplified in a Boston speech on Tuesday, to use the
reauthorization of ESEA as leverage for moving states and local
districts to adopt specific changes in schools.
Clinton proposed
incentive grants to states that end social promotions of pupils who have not
completed that year's requirements, that demand better credentials of new
teachers, that impose tough discipline codes and that set up a mechanism for
state takeover of chronically failing schools.
The Clinton plan would
also impose a slight financial penalty -- no more than 3 percent of the federal
aid funds -- to wave over the states' heads "to assure we are getting results
for our money," a White House official said.
Although many states are
doing what Clinton would require, governors object to mandating them.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R) told a House hearing that "education policies
and initiatives historically have been the domain of the states and local school
districts, not the federal government." Federal mandates are already too
restrictive, Ridge said, and new ones should not be added.
Freshman Sen.
George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who left the governorship barely a month ago, told
the same hearing that Clinton's proposals "send a clear signal that this
administration would like to change dramatically the role of the federal
government in primary and secondary education. Rather than being a very junior
partner in education reform, the president has offered a number of proposals
that would substitute the U.S. Department of Education for most local school
boards."
Cohen and other administration officials deny that charge,
saying the Department of Education has reduced regulations by two-thirds and
granted many waivers.
But a parade of Republican senators came before
Jeffords's committee last week, offering plans that would consolidate existing
federal education programs or convert them into block grants, with few if any
federal strings.
The Senate has twice approved that approach in
appropriations amendments sponsored by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) only to see
the provisions dropped from the final versions of the bill in the face of veto
threats by Clinton.
Sens. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) and Kay Bailey
Hutchison (R-Tex.) and others offered variations on the proposal to deregulate
federal aid to education.
Most of these will be considered as part of
the debate on renewing ESEA, and the stage is set for a
showdown that will test whether "accountability" and "flexibility" can be
reconciled in a decentralized school system where the federal government is
deeply divided on the right approach to education.
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