(Johnston, IA) Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer on Wednesday criticized competitor George W. Bush’s education plan.
Bush would deny federal funds to schools that are failing with students. The money would be sent to the states and made available to parents in the form of “vouchers’ for private education or tutoring.
“He put a halfway proposal on the table,” Bauer said of the plan, which gives schools three years to clean up their act before the voucher system would kick in. “He suggested that when it comes to educational choice, that what we need to do is allow government to decide whether a school is working or not and if the government decides the school’s not working, then he would be willing to give a voucher to the parent.”
Bauer supports vouchers, immediately. Bauer said vouchers will let parents band together to press for improvements in their local public school.
“Either get your act together, get these reading scores up or the 40 or us are going to take our vouchers and we’re going to go someplace else and so I think it’s likely all the students will find improving schools when we create more of a marketplace and more of a leverage situation for these families,” Bauer said.
Bauer, an undersecretary of education in the Reagan Administration, will unveil his own detailed education plan within the next eight weeks.