Gore, Bradley Spar On Schooling

Democratic rivals Bill Bradley and Al Gore focused on education Wednesday, with Bradley arguing the Clinton administration has been "long on promises and short on progress."

Gore countered that Bradley was discovering the education issue only after "14 months have passed in this presidential campaign and three states have had elections" rejecting Bradley.

The vice president was in Michigan to detail his proposal for a national college-tuition savings program. It would ensure that state plans transfer from state to state and would have the federal government cover the amount that inflation eats away from a family's investment.

At a St. Louis school, Bradley announced an $8.5 billion proposal that would double funding for the main program financing schools in distress and would triple money for charter schools.

"Vice President Gore says education is his top priority" but would spend more money elsewhere, Bradley said. "Parents know that the last seven years have been long on promises and short on progress."

Bradley's proposal would allow parents to choose the public schools their children attend and put in place a grading system for schools, as well as adding money.

He said his package would give schools incentives to improve, hold schools and teachers more accountable and give parents better information about the education their children are getting.

"We require those who receive that money assure that there's a quality teacher in every classroom, that they are accountable for results," said Bradley.

Coupled with earlier Bradley proposals to double the number of slots in the Head Start program and provide incentives to find 600,000 new teachers, aides said Bradley is offering a far more aggressive package than Gore.

Much earlier in the campaign, Gore offered a $115-billion, 10-year package of school construction and modernization funds, preschool grants and teacher salary increases.

Hardly ceding the issue now, Gore went to a Detroit-area child-care center and squeezed himself into a miniature seat to snack on carrots and broccoli with preschoolers. To their parents, Gore offered a contrast between his education agenda and Bradley's.

"Fourteen months have passed in this presidential campaign and three states have had elections now, and only today, for the first time in 14 months has Senator Bradley made his first speech on education," Gore said at the Bussey Center for Early Childhood Education.

"What good is an education plan that does not have universal preschool and does not have new help for middle-income working families to pay college tuition?" Gore asked.

The biggest single piece of Bradley's proposal would be to double funding for the basic federal program helping to pay for disadvantaged and low-income school districts, expanding the current $8 billion effort to $16 billion.

A portion of the money would go for programs aiding youngsters when a gap etween high performing students and low performers grows.

Bradley also calls for "public school choice," or allowing parents to choose the public school their youngsters attend. To help them make that choice, schools would be given grades and rated.

Significantly for schools, money flows on a per-pupil basis and that money would move to the new school as the child made the shift.

Bradley's package also contains a requirement boosting testing requirements for teachers. "We will require that all teachers be qualified to teach their subject," he said.

Bradley has already proposed grant and loan programs for teachers in training who agree to teach in distressed rural and urban high schools, and the new focus on teacher quality meets the demands of parents.

The school choice issue is a touchy one for Bradley, because he routinely is attacked by Gore for votes he cast in favor of experiments with school vouchers.

Vouchers allow parents to pick the school their child attends, public or private. That's denounced by many in the education community, who argue it would drain money from the public school system.

Bradley's aides were careful to note that the school choice plan they offer allows parents to pick among public schools only.

The issue of education is hotly fought in Democratic politics, because polls have shown Democratic primary voters rank education among the top issues they consider when making a voting decision.