Voucher Deal Takes Shape With Proposal by Democrats

WASHINGTON —  Outlines of a potential congressional deal on school vouchers are emerging as Democrats respond to President Bush’s signals that he would consider alternatives to the controversial idea.

In private negotiations, a bipartisan Senate group is focusing on a plan that would both give students in failing public schools much greater freedom to transfer to other public schools and provide their parents with vouchers for supplementary services, such as after-school tutoring, sources close to the talks say.

Until now, Democrats had argued solely for measures that would reform the failing schools themselves. The potential deal would be the first time Democrats had agreed to provide new aid directly to students while those schools try to improve, as Bush has urged.

“We have put the Democrats on the spot about answering that question: ‘What about that kid in the failing school?’ ” said one senior White House official. “And we are successfully trying to reframe the debate that way.”

Participants say the most difficult issue may be whether to include in the plan any test of vouchers for private schools. So far, even centrist Democratic senators led by Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana have uncompromisingly opposed any experiment with private school vouchers--much less Bush’s proposal to require all states to make them available to low-income parents whose children attend failing public schools.

Republicans such as Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Bush’s Senate point person on education, are pushing for at least a pilot project that would allow a limited number of school districts to offer private school vouchers.

Despite the continuing friction on that issue, Gregg said he expects an agreement with centrist Democrats by March 1 on a bill that could become the basis for Senate action. “I hope we can get to the point where 90% of the package is agreed on,” Gregg said. “We are not going to get 100% agreement, but we can take that to the floor as a bipartisan bill.”

With liberals and conservatives uneasy about different aspects of the plan, even an accord among the centrists wouldn’t guarantee smooth sailing for Bush’s education blueprint. Still, Democratic support for after-school vouchers could significantly increase the odds of passage for a major education reform bill.

The discussion of after-school vouchers can be viewed as the Democratic response to an olive branch Bush offered when releasing his education plan just days after taking office.

The president moved toward the Democrats by adding a major component to the plan he ran on during the campaign. As a candidate, Bush proposed providing vouchers to low-income parents whose children attend public schools that fail to show improvement for three years. But Bush did not propose any assistance that would help those schools improve their performance before that deadline.

The plan Bush unveiled as president adopted proposals from former President Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore to provide troubled schools with additional money if they agreed to undertake “corrective actions.” Those could range from reforming the curriculum to closing the school and reopening it with a new principal and teachers.

Like Clinton and Gore, Bush also proposed that students in failing schools should be guaranteed the right to transfer to better-performing public schools.

In both parties, key players see such provisions as critical components of any final education measure. Perhaps the toughest question in the debate is what else, if anything, ought to be done for students while the schools undertake those reforms.

In his Jan. 27 radio address, Bush said he would be willing to consider alternatives to vouchers for schools that persistently fail to improve. But aides say he insists that it is not enough to intervene in a failing school, as Democrats have previously proposed, because any reform effort is unlikely to bear fruit quickly enough to help the students already there.

“The other side has a clear burden of saying, ‘If not a voucher, what?’ ” said a Bush advisor on education. “Just fixing the school isn’t enough. There also should be an agreement that the [children] ought to have their remaining years in that school be effective ones.”

Essentially accepting that premise, the Bayh-Lieberman centrists are proposing a variation on Bush’s voucher plan.

As envisioned by the Democrats, vouchers could be used not for private school tuition but to hire tutors or to participate in remedial programs run by private groups. And, unlike the Bush plan, the Bayh-Lieberman proposal would not withdraw money from the public schools. Bush would fund his voucher by diverting federal aid from the poorly performing schools; Bayh and Lieberman would appropriate new money to fund their assistance.

“Rather than have vouchers as a replacement for public education, we would set up a system supplementary to public education,” said one Democratic senator involved in the talks.

From one angle, this proposal is a concession to Bush’s demand that Washington provide aid directly to students in failing schools--even if they use it to purchase services outside of the public schools. For that reason, it is likely to face skepticism from liberals and teachers’ unions.

Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, questioned whether urban parents could even find outside services with such a voucher. “If you are just going to give the parents the money, where are they going to go?” she asked.

But from another angle, the Bayh-Lieberman plan amounts to increased funding for remedial services to low-income children who would remain in the public schools. For that reason, it faces some skepticism from congressional conservatives and the White House, who worry that it might be a backdoor way of simply increasing federal education spending without demanding sufficient reform.

Nor does the Bayh-Lieberman alternative fulfill another top conservative goal: increasing competitive pressure on public schools by making it easier for parents to move their children to private schools. Bayh argues that goal can be met by provisions both sides are promoting to create more charter schools and to give students more freedom to transfer within the public school system.

“We can harness the power of market forces and competition within the public school system,” Bayh said. “You can get all the benefits of parental choice and market competition without creating the system of winners and losers with vouchers.”

At least initially, that logic is unlikely to persuade congressional conservatives. Gregg, for instance, insists: “My view is, why limit it there? You need to give both the parents and the local school systems more options.” His solution: a pilot voucher plan in a few cities whose school boards agree to participate.

But as the White House is keenly aware, finding enough votes for even such a limited plan won’t be easy in either chamber. In late 1999, the last time the House considered a private school voucher plan for failing schools, the plan was defeated by 91 votes--with 52 moderate Republicans voting against it; a pilot project, of the sort Gregg envisions, failed by an even larger margin.

Unless Bush can build more support for private school vouchers in his own party, Democrats say they feel little pressure to bend on the issue--especially with their own core constituencies so adamantly opposed.