NEW YORK - George W. Bush offered a sweeping plan to redefine the role of the federal government in public education yesterday, criticizing Democrats for their ''surrender to despair'' on the issue, but extending his criticism to fellow Republicans as well.
''Too often, on social issues, my party has painted an image of America slouching toward Gomorrah,'' Bush said. ''Too often my party has focused on the national economy to the exclusion of all else - speaking a sterile language of rates and numbers of CBO and GNP,'' he said, meaning the Congressional Budget Office and the gross national product.
''Of course we want growth and vigor in our economy. But there are human problems that persist in the shadow of affluence,'' Bush added. ''Too often, my party has confused the need of limited government with a disdain for government itself.''
It was the second time in two weeks that Bush took a swing at members of his own party. Last week he blasted congressional Republicans for proposing, as a money-saving measure, a delay in payments to the working poor under the Earned Income Tax Credit program.
''I think what he's doing is laying out a vision of where he wants to take the Republican Party, and it is frankly a very different direction from where it has been the last five years,'' said Ralph Reed, a consultant who advises the Bush campaign.
Democrats, however, said Bush was trying to separate himself from an unpopular Republican Congress in advance of next year's general election campaign. The Texas governor was merely ''offering new rhetorical wrapping paper on the same Republican package of wrong ideas,'' said a Democratic National Committee spokeswoman, Jenny Backus.
The Texas governor and GOP presidential front-runner said the US government should give states greater flexibility in how they spend grant money for elementary and secondary education, but hold them more accountable for student performance on tests.
Bush also vowed to provide up to $3 billion in loan guarantees over two years to help upgrade or build 2,000 charter schools, doubling the current number. ''As president, I want to fan the spark of charter schools into a raging flame,'' Bush said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative New York think tank, in the second of three planned education policy addresses. The first was last month in Los Angeles.
Bush said that contributions allowed under the government's education savings account program should be increased from $500 to $5,000 annually, and that parents should be allowed to withdraw the money for use in public, private, religious, or home schooling programs, beginning with kindergarten. Currently, the $500 can only be used to pay for college and other higher education expenses.
Bush said he would also create a $500 million Achievement and Education Fund to reward states that improve student performance, and penalize states that don't, by withholding about 5 percent of the administrative portion of federal funding. States would be required to design and administer annual tests to children in grades 3-8. Those states that are not improving after five years would lose the administrative portion of their education grants.
Parents with children in schools where student test scores show no improvement over three years would get a scholarship of about $1,500 a year to use for tutoring or tuition at the school of their choice. Democrats and teachers' unions have decried the plan as a backdoor way for Bush to fund a national voucher program.
Singling out Vice President Al Gore, who as a presidential candidate has been adamant against school vouchers, Bush said: ''Some politicians have gone to low-performing schools and claimed my plan would undermine them.
''Think a moment about what this means,'' he said. ''It means visiting a school and saying, in essence, `You are hopeless. Not only can't you achieve, you can't even improve.' This is not a defense of public education, it is a surrender to despair. Those words are not liberalism, it is pessimism. It is accepting and excusing an educational apartheid in our country.''
Bush took a swipe at Gore's effort to ''reinvent government,'' saying he had not done such a good job with the Department of Education. Bush said that the ''best minds of the administration got together and reinvented'' the application process for states applying for education grants, and reduced the number of steps from 487 over 26 weeks to ''a mere 216'' steps that take 20 weeks.
''If this is reinventing government, it makes you wonder how this administration was ever skilled enough and efficient enough to create the Internet,'' Bush said, in a jab at Gore for having overstated his influence in creating the Internet.
Bush, who has won widespread praise for his education reform efforts in Texas, drew a distinction between congressional Republicans and GOP governors in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and Michigan who attempt to reform education and tackle other social ills.
Bush promised to ''free states from regulation'' by overhauling the Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965, which provides $13.8 billion in grants for public schools.
Material from the Associated Press w as used in this report.
