he public schools have opened for another year, with the sunshine of September optimism already blotted out by the thunderclouds of politics. No one knows whether the clouds will deliver life-giving rains or hail and devastation.
Nationally, George W. Bush, governor of Texas and the virtual Republican nominee for president, said that if he is elected, he will take federal funds from failing public schools and give up to $1,500 per child to parents who want to transfer their children to private schools. In an early warning to Democratic strategists who take Latino and African-American voters for granted, Bush unveiled his plan before the Latino Business Association in Los Angeles. He received a warm round of applause when he said:
''Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less - the soft bigotry of low expectations.''
In Massachusetts, Governor Cellucci issued his own gale warning, saying that every public school in the state will be ranked on the basis of student scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests. In 2003, high school students must pass the MCAS tests to graduate.
''Parents will know what schools are achieving and what schools aren't,'' Cellucci said.
What Cellucci and Bush would do with the schools that are not achieving is an answer that lies hidden in the thundercloud. In Massachusetts, failing schools might be taken over by the state Board of Education, which is headed by James Peyser. Peyser is known more for school choice than school resurrection. Bush's brother Jeb, governor of Florida, already has a voucher plan that offers parents the chance to opt out of bad public schools.
Democrats have also taken their turn at huffing, puffing, and rhetorically blowing down ''failing schools.'' President Clinton has threatened to close schools. New York City's school chancellor, Rudy Crew, has announced the closing of 13 troubled schools.
But they, too, have not come up with a serious plan to replace ''failing schools'' with something else.
All students in New York State must pass the Regents English examination to graduate. Of the 50 states, 48 now have ''high stakes'' standardized tests. There is nothing wrong with base-line standards of literacy and math proficiency. I have seen too many young clerks who cannot make change when the cash register crashes, too many students in college classes who cannot spell, and too many young people who confuse Michigan and Minnesota to think otherwise. Nor, ideally, should we be afraid of ranking the schools either, to find out which ones need resources or maybe a round of firings.
But that is precisely where politicians have failed. Rushing children into high-stakes tests is asking them to go to the stake when a Pentagon-paradigm Congress is providing a fraction of the $112 billion the General Accounting Office says is needed to repair the nation's crumbling school buildings.
Unless the widening gaps in wealth and resources are addressed, high-stakes tests are just a class-based and race-based screening device that fuels smugness among wealthier white students who believe they ''earned'' their elite status. The tests will assuredly pluck up some exceptional working class and low-income students for governors to pat on the head. Cellucci did that last winter by singling out the high scores of the Morse School in Cambridge, where more than 40 percent of the students are from low-income families.
But without dealing with resources, the tests in the main will also provide an excuse to abandon vast numbers of urban students. Besides, we need more ''failures'' to populate our ever expanding and ever profitable state and federal prisons.
Obviously, many parents have to elevate education as a priority. Obviously, principals and teachers have to do a much better job of believing in their students. But politicians must remember that they, too, shoulder a huge responsibility.
We will know Cellucci is serious when he stops condemning schools and starts dealing with the resource gaps that allow for Wellesley, Westwood, Winchester, and Weston to have no more than 7 percent of 10th-graders failing in English and no more than 17 percent of 10th-graders failing in math while Springfield, Boston, Lawrence, and New Bedford have between 37 percent and 49 percent of 10th-graders failing in English and between 63 percent and 78 percent of 10th-graders failing in math.
We will know Bush is sincere when he comes up with something more than a public relations ploy. Perhaps that $1,500 might go a long way somewhere in rural Texas, but it buys you only a few weeks at some private prep schools in New England.
In rhetoric, Bush is right. Disadvantaged children suffer discrimination from low expectations. Many micro-efforts around the nation show that low-income students can learn. No one, certainly no one in the approaching thunderstorm, has woven those small triumphs into an optimistic national vision. That leaves us with a forecast in these early rounds of high stakes tests of high winds, damaging hail, and washed-out students.
Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.
