Sunday, November 29, 1998

Hill GOP should heed Gov. Bush

By Morton Kondracke

NEW ORLEANS -- When Republican governors and Congressional leaders meet next month, the best thing that could happen is for the Washington gang to begin absorbing Texas Gov. George W. Bush's philosophy of "compassionate conservatism."

While congressional Republicans have been preoccupied in past years with political positioning and ideology, the governors who gathered here last week for the Republican Governors Association meeting were emphasizing improvements in the lives of real people.

The governors, with Bush in the lead, won big in November partly because they were "conservative" in cutting taxes and "compassionate" in improving education.

By contrast, House Republicans lost five seats after first passing a political budget with outlandish tax and budget cuts, then too late passing a modest tax cut that the Senate wouldn't agree to, getting nothing done on the "conservative" front.

And while sensibly dropping attempts to eliminate the Department of Education, congressional Republicans put forward an ideologically charged education program basically focused on private-school "choice," while the governors were working to improve their public schools.

Although Bush, for instance, favors a small pilot program to allow low-income students in low-performing public schools to get tuition aid for private schools, by far his main emphasis has been on bolstering public education. And he has succeeded. A just-published study by the National Education Goals Panel shows Texas and North Carolina lead the nation in test score improvement, especially for minority and disadvantaged children.

Both states have followed similar policies -- ones long advocated by "conservative" education reformers rather than liberals associated with the education establishment.

Instead of merely spending more money per pupil, lowering teacher-pupil ratios or ensuring that teachers get advanced education degrees, both states have emphasized high standards, tough curricula, testing and holding schools accountable for pupil performance.

Bush inherited a school reform movement launched in the early 1980s by Ross Perot. A standards-and-testing regime was in place when Bush became governor in 1994. Under him though, curricula and standards were strengthened, and testing was put in place for every child in grades three to eight and for graduation from high school. The test results are published and used to rate schools as "exemplary," "recognized," "acceptable" or "low-performing" based not just on average scores, but on the performance of minority and underprivileged kids.

When Bush learned in 1996 that a quarter of Texas children couldn't read at grade level, he launched a program of testing and tutoring aimed at ensuring all children can read at grade level by age 9 and remain at their grade level.

At the RGA meeting here last week, Bush sounded like a Southern preacher touting his reading drive, saying the goal was clear: Kids would read, and there'd be "no excuses, no 'ands' or 'buts,' no claiming 'it's the parents' fault' if they don't."

Bush's newest crusade is to end "social promotion." It means kids who can't read at grade level will be held back, but it will also mean extra help for those at risk and will ensure those who are promoted can actually perform.

Enjoying a $6 billion budget surplus, Bush's new two-year budget proposes an additional $1 billion for education, $2 billion for property tax relief, $400 million in sales-tax cuts tilted toward low-income consumers and $250 million in business-tax cuts.

Bush's emphasis on education has drawn raves from liberal groups such as the Education Trust. The president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, Gayle Fallon, told me Bush "has the support of teachers, and you have no idea how hard that is for me to say as a Democrat."

She added, "I have tremendous respect for him and I like him as a person. He's going to be an awesome candidate. He can look into a camera and make you love him."

In the November election, education was the subject most on the mind of Texas voters, and Bush won with an astounding 69 percent of the vote, winning 60 percent among women and nearly half among Hispanics. "Reaching out" to Hispanics and African-Americans was a major theme of last week's conference. Consultant Mike Murphy told the gathering that the party will be "unable to win the presidency in the 21st century" unless it solves its "Hispanic crisis."

In Washington this year, congressional Republicans stopped doing things to offend Hispanics and blacks -- like restricting immigration and trying to end affirmative action -- but they did little to appeal, either.

Newly installed RGA Chairman Frank Keating of Oklahoma says he wants to hold regular meetings with congressional leaders and offer them a governors' agenda. It'd be good for them to listen, especially to Bush. There's plenty of conservatism on the Hill, but too little compassion.

Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.

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