A Course in Politics

By Maureen Dowd

Reagan and the Democrats try for high marks on education

The gymnasium in the Minneapolis suburb was hot and airless. Students squirmed T in the bleachers while a panel of teachers and politicians discussed the quality of education. One shirtsleeved speaker, however, held the audience rapt. "I just have a feeling that maybe the generation that went through the Great Depression and the great war, World War II, maybe we thought we ought to make things easier for our children," mused the President. "Maybe we're partly responsible for what has happened." Ronald Reagan's main message to the forum in Hopkins, Minn., sponsored by his National Commission on Excellence in Education (N.C.E.E.), which was appointed by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, was that the time has come to put the starch back in education. Reagan called for merit pay for teachers and a return to basics. "You have to say, 'Is just purely money an answer, or don't we have to look deeper for some of the answers to the problems we have in education?' "

Democratic Presidential Front Runner Walter Mondale also flew to Minneapolis last Thursday, countering the President with his own news conference. He attacked Reagan for offering empty rhetoric -- "voodoo education" policies, he has called them --for a crisis that the former Vice President believes requires generous federal aid. "He's willing to fight to the death on the MX," Mondale said, "but he won't lift a finger for education." Not since Sputnik's triumphant flight in 1957 rattled Americans' faith in their public schools has there been such a clamorous national debate on education. With dueling initiatives, Reagan and Mondale have transformed the ordinarily sleepy is sue into the first hot battleground in the 1984 presidential campaign. Once again the nation's progress and global clout have been linked to the quality of its schools.

This time the debate was sparked by a slim book published by the Government Printing Office: A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. Warning of "a rising tide of mediocrity" in public schools, the 36-page report by the N.C.E.E. is already into a third printing, with 81,000 copies distributed. It recommends a basic core curriculum for all high school students, stricter admission requirements for college, longer school days and years, more homework, and the recruiting and rewarding of better teachers. Echoing the Sputnik scare, the report concludes, "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."

While not particularly new, the findings hit a nerve among parents who are increasingly concerned that their children are receiving an inadequate education and, in a depressing reversal of the traditional American pattern, an education inferior to their own. "It came at the right time, under the right auspices," says Jack Peltason, president of the American Council on Education. "It reconfirmed what a lot of people were saying."

Reagan, who rarely broached the subject of education during his first two years in office, at first seemed oblivious to the report's political potential. Addressing 150 educators, politicians and business leaders at the White House on April 26, the day the report came out, he merely reiterated his support for tuition tax credits for private schools and prayer in the public schools, neither of which, understandably, was even mentioned by the N.C.E.E.

It was Mondale who first focused on the issue with a May 9 speech at Harvard University attacking Reagan's tepid reaction to the report.

The President, Mondale charged, had "turned his back on the country, its children and its future." Mondale proposed an $11 billion program of federal aid that would offer block grants to communities to improve math and science labs, raise teachers' base salaries and develop computer-technology courses.

The Administration moved quickly to take the offensive. White House pollsters discovered that as economic worries have begun to ease, schools have emerged as a strong public concern. Moreover, the education issue could be used to broaden the President's image beyond Reaganomics and defense. A push for better schools, aides reasoned, would help him woo women and regain some of the blue-collar workers who were part of his 1980 coalition but have since strayed. "With education," a White House adviser explains, "you reach out beyond liberal-conservative lines."

Reagan began a full-court press. On May 21 he delivered a commencement speech at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., promoting an old idea that had been rejuvenated in the report: merit pay. "Teachers should be paid and promoted on the basis of their merit," he said. The powerful 1.6 million-member National Education Association and other teacher organizations have traditionally fought the notion of rewarding better teachers with more money, arguing that there is no objective way to measure a teacher's competence and that it would lead to favoritism and bad morale. But Reagan strategists think the President is on the popular side of the meritocracy issue. Says one aide: "It may turn out that parents are a more potent political force than teachers."

Mondale, who is actively seeking the N.E.A. endorsement, has generally avoided the issue of merit differentials. On Friday, however, he edged a bit closer to endorsing the idea. Said he: "If merit pay means rewarding superior teachers and getting incompetent ones out of the classroom, then I'm for it."

Union leaders reacted angrily to Reagan's proposals. The N.E.A. said the President was making a "disgraceful assault" on the teaching profession. Albert Shanker, president of the 600,000-member American Federation of Teachers, lambasted the President's views on education as "embarrassing and destructive." But over a lunch of shrimp salad at the White House last week, Reagan and the feisty union leader had a convivial talk and, in a coup for the President, Shanker said he was willing to explore different methods of compensation for teachers. "Ronald Reagan has been a disaster," he said. "But if he does something right, I'm not going to dump on him."

In another significant move, the President abandoned his promise to dismantle the Department of Education, which he was fond of describing during the 1980 campaign as "President Carter's new bureaucratic boondoggle." His strategists hope this change of heart will deprive the Democrats of a symbolic target. Instead, he is "redirecting" the department. Reagan has told Bell, a mild-mannered sort who is enjoying a sudden burst of prestige, to develop an "agenda for excellence" based on the report's findings. The agenda, says Bell, will entail more federal lobbying rather than more federal money. The Secretary will encourage state legislatures to pass new taxes to support the public schools and impose stiffer high school graduation requirements. He will urge the states to draft master-teacher plans like the one pushed by Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, who wants to offer incentive payments to outstanding teachers. The President will meet with Alexander, a Republican, in Knoxville this week as part of a campaign-style swing across the country to drive home his concern about education.

The Democrats are scrambling to blunt Reagan's offensive. Four prominent Democrats--Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, House Majority Leader Jim Wright and Carl Perkins, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor--held a news conference on Capitol Hill last Friday to rebut the President's speeches. Said Wright: "We have a President and an Administration which exalts education in its rhetoric and denigrates it in its deeds." Among the Democratic presidential hopefuls, Senator John Glenn of Ohio is readying a major initiative on education to present at the end of the month, and Senator Fritz Rollings of South Carolina is working up a set of recommendations on teacher pay.

The Democrats say Reagan will not be able to control the education debate for long. "He has played the issue like a Stradivarius," says Bob Neuman, director of communications for the Democratic National Committee. "But he's vulnerable on logic." For instance, in Minnesota last week Reagan conceded that the merit-pay proposal would cost more money, but his only suggestion for covering the cost is that the local school systems could cut other "lower priority" programs. Seeming ill prepared, Reagan stumbled on questions about how he would implement the report and was forced to refer them to Bell.

The President also appears vulnerable on the numbers. He continues to insist that the huge expansion in post-Sputnik federal aid has not "borne fruit" in the classroom. But he sidesteps the issue of federal cuts by giving audiences aggregate figures, saying that total federal, state and local school spending amounted to $215 billion last year, compared with $179 billion for national defense. "The truth of the matter is we haven't cut any budgets," he said. "What we've done is reduce the proposed increase in the budgets."

But the Administration's budget for 1984 shows that federal education outlays for 1981 were $15 billion, compared with $14.4 billion estimated for this year and $13.5 billion proposed for next year. Funding for elementary and secondary education declined from $6.8 billion in 1982 to $6.5 billion in 1983, and guaranteed student loans fell from $3 billion in 1982 to $2.3 billion in 1983.

"Reagan doesn't have the credentials to carry off this issue," insists Mondale Pollster Peter Hart. "He has three years of David Stockman's green visor staring him in the face." White House aides concede that the impetus on the education issue will be hard to sustain, since the Administration is simply urging state and local action rather than offering a program of its own. "We have to hit the issue hard now," says an Administration official, "and then bring it back next year." But White House aides feel that for the short term, at least, the President will be able to control the issue and remain "on a roll" politically. His approval rating has risen from 44% to 55% since January, according to Presidential Pollster Richard Wirthlin. Simply by showing his concern, Reagan has proved once again his adroitness as a politician. "Whether the President does anything is not relevant," says one adviser in a fit of candor.

"What is relevant is the image we want to create."

The Democrats, however, are providing a lively challenge, as both sidesvie for high marks on the education issue.

--By Maureen Dowd. Reported by Douglas Brew and Ame Constable/Washington

With reporting by Douglas Brew, Anne Constable This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.