Clinton Threatens Veto of School Bills

President Clinton threatened Saturday to veto a sweeping funding package for federal education and labor programs unless it provides money for his national school exam initiative and continues to support other administration programs for reforming public schools.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton lambasted the Senate for voting to combine funding for various education programs--including charter schools--into lump-sum block grants for states, and he took the House to task for voting against his proposal for voluntary national reading tests for fourth-graders and math exams for eighth-graders.

“In effect, they’ve cast their votes against better schools and for a status quo that is failing too many of our children,” Clinton said.

In the Republican radio response, Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) said Clinton’s veto threat shows that he believes the notion that Washington knows best.

“By taking this position, I think the president is telling parents and teachers, ‘I don’t trust you,’ ” Gorton said.

Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), the chief House opponent of Clinton’s national testing plan, insisted that the president’s veto threat would not deter House Republicans from their efforts to kill the “new education tests developed by Washington bureaucrats.”

Goodling also implied that a veto of the education and labor bills could have serious ramifications. “I am very surprised that the president would suggest a veto that could force a government shutdown,” he said.

Clinton made his veto threat on a presidential weekend full of education themes. On Friday, Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton dropped their daughter, Chelsea, off to begin life as a Stanford University student. On Saturday morning, Clinton met with parents, students and administrators of several California charter schools at one of the schools in San Carlos.

The president used the event to praise the fledgling charter-school movement and to announce that $40 million in federal grants--including $3.4 million for California--will go to support new and existing charter schools. Such schools, while publicly funded, are free from many of the requirements and bureaucracy that govern traditional public schools.

“I believe the only way public schools can survive as the instrument by which we educate our children and socialize them and bring them together across all the lines that divide us is if all our schools eventually--and hopefully sooner rather than later--are run like these charter schools,” Clinton said.

But as Clinton listened to charter-school founders, teachers, students and Silicon Valley high-tech executives talk about the success of these innovative schools, a battle was brewing in Washington over the funding that helps them run and the federal role in public education in general.

One of the measures that provoked Clinton’s veto threat was a Senate provision--offered by Gorton--that would consolidate Education Department funding for charter schools with other specific federal initiatives for elementary and secondary schools--such as bilingual education and safe and drug-free schools programs. The Senate would have the money go to states in the form of block grants, which they could use at their discretion.

Although 27 states have passed laws supporting charter schools, Clinton suggested that this Senate provision would hurt charter schools because the federal money specifically allocated to fund them would no longer exist.

Meanwhile, the House, in an unusual coalition of conservatives, who say the national tests advocated by Clinton would open the door to more federal control of schools, and some liberals, who believe that the tests would stigmatize poor and minority students, voted to block federal funding for the initiative. The Senate, however, approved a modified version of Clinton’s plan.

The House and Senate versions must be reconciled before the legislative package is sent to Clinton; it remains unclear whether the final version will include either the Senate’s block-grant plan or the House’s test-funding ban.

Back at the San Carlos Learning Center, Clinton was basking in praise for his support of charter schools. When Clinton took office there was only one charter school, but now there are 700 across the country. The president said that the $40 million in grants could support the planning and implementation costs for as many as 500 new charter schools. The administration has set the goal of helping to create 3,000 charter schools by 2000.

Two of the founders of South-Central’s Accelerated Charter School, as well as a parent of one of the Los Angeles school’s students, told Clinton that their school is bringing hope to an area that was devastated by the 1992 riots.

“We expect more of our students and of ourselves,” said Jonathan Williams, a teacher and co-founder. Williams told the president that test scores are skyrocketing and that, thanks to community support, the school has moved out of a church basement and into a 150,000-square-foot facility.

At Accelerated, parents play a much larger role in selecting teachers, planning the curriculum and envisioning the school’s future. “At Accelerated School you actually feel your opinion matters,” said Kevin Jones, whose daughter attends the school.

Clinton said Accelerated’s success “puts a lie to the notion” that some children inherently perform at a lower level than other children.

Clinton seemed particularly tickled by the students’ testimonials.

Jose Maya, 15, said he used to be in a gang before deciding to attend the brand-new Leadership High School in San Francisco. “I used to do all those negative things,” he said. “Now I want to have a future.”

Hillary Clinton, who also attended the session, said charter schools can help “liberate” public school officials to make the changes they know are needed to better serve their students. She has worked with her husband on education reform both in the White House and when he was governor of Arkansas.