The Bush Formula

By Eric Pooley/Austin

The trendiest phrase for republicans right now is "compassionate conservatism"--Texas Governor George W. Bush's term for the crossover message that fueled his landslide re-election. But what does it really mean? The way some pundits have been carrying on, you'd think the Republican Governor had shared a good, long hug with every last Democrat in the Lone Star State. Bush's victory, one of the few points of light in this dismal Republican moment, surely was remarkable--he took 69% of the vote, including 6 out of 10 women, 1 in 3 Democrats, and almost half of Hispanics--and it sealed his position as the G.O.P.'s post-Gingrich guiding light and Y2K front runner. But there was something patronizing about those who chalked up his success among women and minorities to gauzy rhetoric ("I wish I knew the law that would make people love one another"), speeches that veered into serviceable Spanish, or frequent visits to Hispanic strongholds like El Paso.

In fact, such atmospherics would never have drawn so many women and Mexican Americans to his cause had he not already delivered on crucial issues--most notably in the public schools. Education was the No. 1 issue among Texas voters, and it has been Bush's No. 1 priority as Governor. His father wanted to be "the education President," but never figured out how; for conservatives who believe education is a strictly local issue, says New York University scholar Diane Ravitch, who, as a Democrat, worked in President Bush's Education Department, "it makes a lot more sense to be an education Governor." And that's what the President's eldest son has become. For George W. Bush, a commitment to public education has been a way to prove that a tax-cutting Republican can be compassionate and create opportunity for minorities. And it has helped answer the question asked most often about him: What's the boy done?

On education, he has done plenty. In 1994, the year he first ran, just over half of the state's students managed to pass all components of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), a battery of reading, writing and math tests. This year more than three-quarters did. And the number of blacks and Hispanics passing TAAS has jumped from 37% to 65%--making Texas the state where the gap between white and minority performance is narrowing fastest. Add his support for bilingual education and his refusal to take part in Pete Wilson-style illegal-immigrant bashing, and it's no wonder Bush polls well among Hispanics. "I don't know where it comes from, but he has an unusual amount of concern for poor and minority kids," says Kati Haycock, director of the liberal Education Trust. "This is a guy who cares about improving education for them." In September 1996, Haycock sent an aide named Amy Wilkins to El Paso to help the school district with its new standards. Wilkins, a former staff member at the Democratic National Committee and the Children's Defense Fund, says she was "frankly skeptical" when she heard Bush was planning to visit. But she came away a believer. "His remarks were on target and deeply felt," she says. "I was impressed with his command. He really knew the issues."

Education will emerge for the first time as a key issue in the coming presidential primaries, and Bush's success on the subject stands in stark contrast to the dismal record of his party's fallen Washington leaders. Congressional Republicans have backed away from their disastrous plan to abolish the federal Department of Education, and some took strange pride recently in blocking Bill Clinton's multibillion-dollar public-school construction plan. They have remained wedded to conservative shibboleths like education savings accounts and private-school vouchers, which have little appeal to the 89% of Americans who send their children to public schools. Says Ravitch: "Bush is so far ahead of the national party that the people in Washington can't even see how behind they are."

In part, he's been lucky. When he took office, Bush was the beneficiary of a decade's worth of reform efforts beginning with Ross Perot's mid-'80s movement to reduce class sizes and install statewide testing and accountability. By 1995 the state education code had been scrapped and the legislature was at work on a new one that would push authority down to the local school districts. Like any gifted politician, Bush commandeered the train, adding some cars of his own and taking credit for laying its track.

But then he drove it further. "Most school systems tend to have no standards and tons of regulations," says Ravitch. "Bush reversed the paradigm, and backed higher standards and fewer regulations, leaving districts free to teach how they want as long as they get results." He reduced the regulatory authority of the Texas education agency but increased accountability by beefing up and enforcing state standards. Most important, he started tracking results by race and ethnicity, rewarding schools that boost performance--especially minority performance. He also took on state teachers' colleges, telling them that 70% of graduates in each minority group must pass the state teacher-certification exam or the schools would risk losing accreditation; 35 of the state's 86 colleges are now on probation. Says Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, "Few Governors have been willing to test as much as he has. Texas is well on its way toward real accountability and real reform, and that movement wasn't there before Bush was Governor. He's at the top of a small pack of Governors."

Building on those innovations, Bush has been pushing what he calls "the most profound goal I have set as Governor: teaching every child in Texas to read by the third grade." The initiative includes a back-to-basics reading curriculum, a new set of diagnostic tools to identify problem readers in the earliest grades, programs for teacher training, "school-within-a-school" reading academies and after-school programs. So far, however, it has been underfunded. In 1997 and 1998 it received a total of only $32 million from the state, enough to help just a small fraction of Texas' 1,050 school districts. Now Bush is asking for an additional $203 million for reading, enough to extend the program and pave the way for Bush's other big goal: doing away with the "social promotion" of children who fail the statewide reading tests yet are moved along to the next grade level. It is a controversial plan that few other states are even considering, because holding back tens of thousands of children would anger parents and bust state education budgets. But Bush, who hopes to get the plan through the state legislature in the next session, argues that failing to do so would be far costlier.

"Teaching kids to read is the best juvenile-justice program I know," he said in an interview during a campaign-plane hop from Midland to El Paso a few days before the election. And if a disproportionate number of those failing are black and Hispanic, he says, "it's discriminatory. A poor education system denies people the opportunity to realize their dreams."

For Bush, education has been a way to establish centrist credentials--this tax-cutting, small-government conservative likes to boast that he has increased state education spending by $4.7 billion, or 31% (and he exaggerates the figure, a very unconservative thing to do). It's all part of navigating a tricky course down the right side of the political center. In 1997, when he pushed through new curriculum standards, he angered both the right and the left: first rejecting the initial effort as being too full of "mushy" liberal pedagogy, then rejecting the arguments of the religious right that the revised standards weren't tough enough. "I met with him in June 1997, when he was under heavy criticism from the right for not backing what they regarded as tougher, more prescriptive standards," says Ravitch. "He responded very forcefully, and made it clear that he was not going to be bullied. This is not a soft guy."

Bush's battles with the religious conservatives on the Texas state board of education may point to a difficulty he'll confront in 2000: how to appease right-wing primary voters while sustaining the compassionate image that makes him an appealing national candidate. For all his success, Bush may be vulnerable to the charge that he has been inattentive to some litmus-test conservative education issues. A strong backer of charter schools--more than 60 have sprung up on his watch--he has been less successful with voucher programs, and some on the right grouse that he hasn't pushed hard enough for them. Two pilot private-school voucher programs haven't made it through the legislature; allies say Bush is concerned that vouchers on a massive scale would drain money from the public schools. "Some on the far right don't much like him--or his education stuff," says Chester E. Finn. Jr., a former Assistant Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan. "They think [his approach] is much too top-down and not sufficiently attentive to the will of parents."

If Bush decides to run for President, he'll have to find a way to refocus his education vision on the national level. Governor Bill Clinton managed that in 1992, but Clinton is a believer in the efficacy of federal policy; Bush thinks the federal role should be limited to "sending money to states with no strings attached. It should be a disbursing agent, not a governing agent," he told TIME. And he distrusts national tests and standards, he has said, because he is "skeptical about a one-size-fits-all mentality." That's a solid enough position for a conservative Governor, but it might pose a problem for a presidential candidate. On education, says Finn, "a Governor has to switch gears in national elections in a way he doesn't have to on other issues."

And when he does, Bush will at least be able to point to Texas as a model for what other states might try on a voluntary basis. One state that's already looking to Texas is Florida, where Governor-elect Jeb Bush is consulting some of the same thinkers and pushing an accountability program based in part on what George W. has done in Texas. Like his brother, Jeb is assuming control of a state where reform is already under way, and like his brother, Jeb wants to teach every child to read by third grade and end social promotion for those who can't. If Florida schools show improvement, it will help make the case that George W.'s policies can be bottled and transported across state lines--just as his inclusive rhetoric was bootlegged by Jeb in the campaign just past.

Bush's elixir can be bottled, but will it keep? Between now and 2000, his rivals are going to be working to bump Bush off the pedestal. On education, at least, that will be difficult, for those who have worked with him rhapsodize about his enthusiasm and command. "He knew about phonemic awareness," says Isabel Beck, an education professor at the University of Pittsburgh who was consulted on the Texas reading standards. "That's very technical business. And he was able to spout off about it and say why it's important. That's shocking and delightful...And I say that as a Democrat." Maybe "compassionate conservatism" will turn out to be more than another cheap cliche, after all.

--With reporting by S.C. Gwynne/Miami and Romesh Ratnesar/New York

With reporting by S.C. Gwynne/Miami and Romesh Ratnesar/New York