Published: January 15, 1997

Electioneering on Education: What Comes Next?

There are two stories to tell about last year's education electioneering. One is about how the Republican-controlled Congress took a U-turn on education issues. The upshot is that mostly Great Society, big-government programs that have long outlived their usefulness now not only have new life; they have more money than the Clinton administration originally requested.

After two years of a Republican-controlled Congress and the "Contract with America," not one major federal education program has been block-granted or devolved, let alone scrapped. The most the Republicans were able to achieve (with administration acquiescence) involved repealing some obnoxious elements of Goals 2000.

The second story concerns the presidential election. There we saw Republican and Democratic platforms and presidential candidates presenting sharply differing perspectives on how to solve the problem of what the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calls the "mediocre performance" of U.S. elementary...