Gore? On education, Gore is the one with the platitudes and no plan. A hundred thousand new teachers? How do you make sure they make it to the classrooms that need them instead of ending up squirreled in the bureaucratic bowels, filling out the paperwork the federal government demands? Even if the money actually produced 100,000 more teachers before blackboards, how much would that reduce class size? According to the Census Bureau, there are close to 3 million public school teachers. Increasing the number of teachers by 3 percent is going to do what exactly? Especially since the teachers are unlikely to end up where they are most needed, if the 100,000 new cops venture is any guide. A Heritage Foundation study suggests most of those cops flowed into politically well-connected, low-crime areas. Then there is the ludicrous suggestion that Al Gore is going to go charging into failing schools with turnaround teams. Washington, D.C., is going to run your kids' grade school? Get real, Al.
And Gore's attack on what he called "vouchers" is similarly misinformed. Bush does not propose a full-scale voucher plan (I wish he would). Instead, his plan might be better called "emergency vouchers" that reassign federal poverty money from persistently failing schools to parents. Bush's plan would "drain more money" out of the public schools, Gore charged in a well-worn attack that ignores a the iron law of bureaucracy: When educrats are faced with losing money if they fail, suddenly they find new ways to succeed. My guess is that a Bush administration will hand out very few new vouchers: Most schools faced with a cutoff of funds will find ways to bring phonics into the classroom, focus on academic skills, restore order, get rid of the minority of teachers who can't teach. The end result? More poor and minority kids in schools that work.
Remind me what liberals don't like about that again?