Education precedent

President Bush followed through on one of his central campaign promises this week by making education reform the first major initiative of his administration. He got a good start on a second by demonstrating a certain degree of skill as a unifier.

The proposals presented almost simultaneously by the White House and centrist Democrats led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman are strikingly similar in the broad strokes: more federal spending for education; more discretion for the states on how it is spent; more testing to measure results. Both parties got the new government off to a comradely start by emphasizing just how close they are.

The devils, as always, are in the details and, in this case the big demon to be confronted is the issue of vouchers. Though a major part of Mr. Bush’s campaign presentation, it is a major problem for Democrats and, polls strongly suggest, for the public as well. The new president showed considerable discretion in downplaying the voucher element of his plan, demonstrating another valuable presidential skill.

Even without the most divisive component, there are plenty of differences to be worked out. The Democrats want to inject another $35 billion over five years in new federal aid; Mr. Bush’s offer, though undetermined for now, will almost certainly be somewhat less. How well he and his new centrist friends can keep the debate from degenerating into the old spendthrift-tightwad accusations so common in Washington will a telling indicator of what the next four years will bring.

The president wants students tested every year from the third through the eighth grade, the Democrats every couple of years. This may seem on the surface to be a mere squabble over scheduling, but it could be the most controversial and, if the public is lucky, informative part of the debate.

Testing is one thing; doing something with the results is quite another. Mr. Bush seems already to have grasped the distinction – on the campaign trail, the tone was strongly of punishing bad schools; now, he speaks of rewarding good ones. Both parties are equally guilty of talking about holding schools accountable without expanding on exactly what that means; the coming debate either will produce definitions or be utterly meaningless.

States already test students extensively, some say excessively. The federal tests, whether every year or every other, will only confirm what is already known: truly bad schools, urban or rural, are found where poverty reigns. The manifestations of poverty can vary – hunger, crime, drugs, abuse, neglect – but the end result is an environment in which students simply cannot learn and teachers cannot teach. It is rare that a new president and an opposition party are so close on something of such importance. It is extraordinary that the White House and Congress both seem so eager to come together to confront something that has been so divisive.