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35 of 46 DOCUMENTS The Bulletin's Frontrunner August 29, 2000

Bush Assails Clinton-Gore Record On Education.

LENGTH: 2329 words The Houston Chronicle (8/29, Robison) reported, "George W. Bush ripped into Democratic rival Al Gore over education Monday, contending that Gore would do virtually nothing to hold schools accountable for the quality of their work." Said Bush, "Vice President Gore could be president for four years without parents ever knowing how their students were doing on his watch. " He continued, "Seven years in office and my opponent presides over a national tragedy. Seventy percent of fourth- graders in our highest-poverty schools still cannot read, and he's offered little to do anything about it." Bush "made the remarks at the Governor's Mansion to help kick off a campaign week that will take him to five other states and, he hopes, divert attention from Gore's continuing attacks against him over health care." Bush also " announced a new campaign organization, 'Education Leaders for Bush.' He was joined by Houston Independent School District Superintendent Rod Paige and other educators from several states." ABC News (8/28, Gibson) reported last night, "Bush was focused on education. He touted his own record on the subject. And attacked Al Gore for his." Bush was shown saying, "Schools should not be rewarded for failure, and neither should this Administration." ABC added, "George Bush said (Gore) presided over a national tragedy in American schools." CBS (8/28, Roberts) reported last night, "It was the same message, education, as Governor Bush talked by satellite to a Washington B'Nai Brith convention." Bush was shown saying, "My top priority as president will be better schools in every neighborhood so no child is left behind." CBS added, "And in Texas, Bush turned the tables on Gore, and criticized the Vice President for lacking a detailed education plan." Bush was shown saying, "My opponent only offers vague promises; no specifics and no meaningful requirements for classroom discipline." The New York Times (8/29, Dao) reported, "Seeking to pull the campaign debate back onto what he considers his turf," Bush "sharply attacked Vice President Al Gore on education policy today, asserting that the Clinton administration had complacently presided over 'a national tragedy' in the public schools." The Akron Beacon Journal (8/29, Hoffman) reported, "Canton educator Ruth Mingo appeared yesterday with Texas Gov. George W. Bush during a news conference in Austin to kick off what the campaign hopes will be a national, grass-roots organization called Educators for Bush." Mingo, "family intake coordinator and co-founder of the Passages school in Canton, met with Bush in June." The Boston Globe (8/29, Johnson) reported, "Bush yesterday unleashed some of his harshest criticism of Al Gore to date, accusing the vice president of offering an education plan ''with an illusion of accountability,' of presiding over a 'national tragedy' in reading, and of being 'locked in old ways.'" The AP (8/28, Kellman) reported Gov. Bush "pressed ahead with his education reform message on Monday, resisting rival Al Gore's efforts to knock him off-balance again." Bush said, "What I've got to do is continue to draw distinctions about where we differ." The AP added that while "talking about education, as planned, Bush had to deal with Gore's proposals on health care and the cost of drugs for senior citizens -and the Democrat's questions about Bush's stance -- a week after Gore's pressure on taxes prodded Bush to acknowledge he needed to do a better job making his case to voters." But "taking his own shot at Gore," Bush " talked up Texas education improvements and accused the vice president of offering only 'failed ideas of the past.'" He said Gore "doesn't understand that in order to reform education you've got to hold people accountable and there needs to be strong accountability and local control of schools." The AP added, "Educators from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Texas were among those appearing at the Governor's Mansion to proclaim support for Bush, the Republican presidential nominee." Reuters (8/28, Wilson) reported Bush " launched a new offensive against his surging Democratic rival, charging that Al Gore had presided over 'a national tragedy' in U.S. schools." After a week "in which Bush watched the vice president erase his once double-digit lead in the polls, the Texas governor turned from defending his $1.3 trillion tax cut proposal to attacking Gore for having nothing to offer teachers, parents and students except 'the status quo.'" Bush said, "Seven years in office and my opponent presides over a national tragedy. Seventy percent of fourth graders in our highest poverty schools still cannot read and he's offered little to do anything about it." Bush also "cited a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) study released last week which showed the achievement gap between rich and poor,

minority and non-minority students had stagnated or gotten worse, calling it 'an indictment of the status quo and of the last seven years of neglect for our public schools.'" Reuters added Bush " takes his message on a three-day, five-state road trip beginning on Tuesday in Maine and New Hampshire." Aides said he "planned to hammer home his proposals for accountability, ensuring every child reads by the third grade, greater flexibility and power for the states and a voucher program to help parents take their children out of failing public schools and seek an alternative." CNN (8/28, Inside Politics, Shaw) reported Gov. George W. Bush " tried to draw attention away from prescription drugs, and back to what he's billing as his number one issue, education." Bush "accused Vice President Gore of offering only an illusion of accountability in the nation's schools." Bush was shown saying, "Without comprehensive regular testing, without knowing if children are really learning, accountability is a myth and standards are just slogans. Without real accountability, children will be shuffled through school, they won't know how to read, and they will be left behind. And recent studies show us children are being left behind under the Clinton-Gore Administration." Carl Cameron reported on Fox News (8/28), " Trying to get back on offense, George W. Bush focused on education reform and unleashed a blistering attack at Al Gore." Cameron added, "Most of Bush's education ideas actually came out months ago. On this day, he unveiled a new grassroots organization called Educators for Bush, but the appearance had all the earmarks of an event designed to use accountability in education as a weapon to put his rival on defense." Bush "was trying to kick off the second of a two-week tour on education, the issue on which he is most comfortable, but, last week, Bush seemed off message and off balance to many, forced by Gore's post-convention bounce in the polls to react to Gore's criticism of his tax cut and other proposals. Bush hopes, with Labor Day, the unofficial beginning of the home stretch, just a few days away that he can regain the upper hand using education to provoke Gore." Bush "rattled off a series of charges knowing that Gore would be unlikely to leave him unanswered." Cameron added the Gore camp "responded to Bush's criticism by disputing virtually every charge and accusing Bush of a desperate attempt to regain his footing by using exaggeration and distortions. While Bush is a long way from being desperate, he also seems a long way from putting Gore on the defensive." Asked if the Bush camp believes "it can get back on track and back on top by Labor Day." Bush education adviser Nina Rees was asked on Fox News (8/28) what is wrong with Gore's solution to fix public schools and make them impose discipline. Rees said, "I'm all for improving the public school system. I'm all for investing money and making sure they're improving, but there ought to be a time limit. If the schools are not going to improve after one, two, three years, there ought to be a point in time where the parents can take the funding that is attached to their students technically and take that funding to a better school. Oftentimes in a lot of center city schools, there is a good private school or religious school that can do the same exact job at a lower price and do -- and get much better results." Under the Bush plan, poor schools get "years to clean up their act, and if they don't do it, then the parents get vouchers." Rees was asked, if the public schools get their act together, "there will be no vouchers in three years under Governor Bush's plan." Rees said, "That is one thing you can say, yes." Voucher Study Poses Potential Problem For Gore. Bush education adviser Nina Rees was asked on Fox News (8/28) about a study showing improved academic performance by African-American students who were allowed to attend private schools using vouchers. Asked, "Do we make much of that, or is this just, as many people say, a small sample that is just sort of indicative but not necessarily conclusive," Rees said, "Oh, absolutely. I think the sample is large enough for us to make some conclusive statements, not just the fact that students are doing better academically in the schools of choice but that the longer they stay in these programs, the better they do. In the case of the students in Washington, D.C., for instance, what the researchers have found is that the black students who comprise 94 percent of the student population in D.C. are doing better by 9 percentile points compared to their counterparts in the public school system." Asked about the fact that the results "seemed to indicate the black students were doing better, but Hispanic and white students who had the same sort of voucher opportunities didn't do better," Rees said, "That's something that the researchers have to look into a little bit more. Our hunch says that one of the reasons for this is because the students -the black students tend to attend schools that are unsafe, that are academically bankrupt, and the amount of homework that these students get is usually less than the amount of homework you get when you're in a white school or Hispanic school, but I think they need to research that a little bit more. Another thing I wanted to mention about this study is that, in the world of education reform, there are a lot of education studies out there." Rees added, "This study is one of the best studies ever done on education because they're... comparing the academic achievement of these students to a control group of similar students whose parents were interested in these programs but were unable to enroll them in the schools of their choice. So you're controlling for parental involvement. We haven't had that in the past. So, from that aspect, it's a very good quality research that a lot of people are going to pay attention to." Juan Williams was asked on Fox News (8/28) what impact, if any, the voucher study will have on the campaign. Williams said, "Education is clearly the top issue among the voters and it's very interesting if you talk about minority voters. Minority voters like vouchers. This is just, it's just incontrovertible. And last week there were some very interesting numbers that came out that

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showed that the gap in terms of education testing continues to exist between black and whites, Hispanics and whites and lots of people are saying you've got a failed public school system, why is it -- and this is the Bush argument -- why is it that Al Gore is so in bed with the unions and defending, in essence, the status quo? I'm using Bush's language here. And Gore has not come back and said here's what I'm willing to do because Gore needs that union vote. He needs those teachers. Don't forget, Joe Lieberman angered those teachers with his talk of love for vouchers and proposing that people go around with it." Bill Sammon said on Fox News (8/28) in his press conference, Bush "came out hammering Gore on his education policy, saying essentially the state of public schools hasn't improved over the last eight years. And he was trying to get the subject off of health care and back onto ground that he's more secure on. But I agree, again, it comes down to a Lieberman liability. Lieberman has supported vouchers so this hurts." Gore Refuses To Take Stand On California Voucher Initiative. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/AP (8/28, Lindlaw) reported Proposition 38, "a school voucher initiative on the state's November ballot," represents "an area of deep disagreement between the two nominees, with Bush proposing a national voucher system and Democratic candidate Al Gore opposing that plan. Yet the two refuse to take a stand on California's ballot measure." In his "nomination acceptance speech, Gore opposed 'any plan that would drain taxpayer money away from our public schools and give it to private schools in the form of vouchers.'" But Gore has "never explicitly come out against the measure, which would let parents use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools, regardless of family income." Gore's running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, "has done so, telling the Los Angeles Times last week: 'I can't see how it would not drain the public schools of large amounts of their financial support. That's why I would not support it.'" The Press Democrat added teachers "are a formidable political force in California by virtue of their numbers and the money their unions spend on elections. They have pressured Gore to oppose Proposition 38." Barbara Kerr, a "convention delegate and vice president of the California Teachers Association union, called on Gore to come out firmly against the measure. 'We'd love his support, ' she said during the gathering." Interviewed again after the convention, Kerr "said she was satisfied with Gore's blanket opposition to vouchers and Lieberman's comments on Proposition 38." But Gore "could go further." Kerr " interpreted Lieberman's comments to the Times as signaling Gore's view, too, she said." LOAD-DATE: August 29, 2000 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH Copyright 2000 Bulletin Broadfaxing Network, Inc.