Education President

BEFORE Americans throw up their hands in despair over the nation's education system and how poorly it compares to overseas competitors, it's important to remember that what each state public education system is trying to do is unprecedented in human history: to educate massive numbers of children from all economic backgrounds, from every ethnic, racial and religious group, those native born and those who arrived just last month.It is a mammoth, and, yes, noble undertaking that no other nation has even attempted.

WASHINGTON - Twenty years after she toiled on an education reform agenda as a legislative staff member in the Texas Capitol, Margaret Spellings was nominated by President Bush yesterday to become the nation's top education official. A longtime Bush aide now serving as his domestic policy adviser, Spellings was overcome by emotion as she talked about the task at hand as the president's choice for education secretary. "I am a product of our public schools," she said, choking back tears.

I am willing to overlook President Bush's transparent photo opportunities where he shows a black schoolboy his American Express card, or reading to schoolgirls. I am willing to ignore the blatant politics of many other things and concede that George Bush really does want to be ''the education president'' and does want to lead a ''revolution'' in American education.God knows we need a larger, more generous federal approach.What I am not willing to accept is the George Bush-John Sununu argument that the president can provoke a ''revolution'' while providing no money with which to feed, clothe, arm or otherwise support the soldiers of such a revolution.

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush was, perhaps appropriately, in a Florida classroom when he learned that America was under attack. In that instant, Bush was transformed. From education president to counter-terrorist president. From head of a sharply divided government to leader of a country at once horrified and unified - and forever changed - by the bloodiest assault in its history. Bush, who convened a war council at Camp David, Md., this weekend, found new purpose for his presidency in the debris of Tuesday's disaster: to wage a war against terrorism that would spare future generations from similar attacks.

The good news is we are evacuating southern Iraq. The bad news is we are invading northern Iraq.The port might be better off with no administrator. Anyway, that's Don's policy.George's education policy is perfectly clear: He is the education president. It is a state responsibility. Local initiative should govern. And the federal role is to shake everything up.

THE RESIGNATION of Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos comes as no great surprise. Virtually invisible during his two-year tenure, he has offered few initiatives and showed little flair for the arena. But his ineffectiveness says less about him than about his boss. How serious has President Bush really been about education?Public education is in deep trouble. American students are leaving schools without adequate skills, threatening economic security and the social fabric.Bush pledged to be the "education president."

A report by the National Education Association showing that the federal government's share of state education costs has been steadily falling over the last decade draws into significant question President Bush's claim to be "the education president."In the school year 1990-1991, the NEA found, the federal government's share of school funding stood at just 6.2 percent -- the lowest since 1965.As a result, states have been forced to pick up an increasing share of education costs. Paradoxically, the trend tends to penalize precisely those states that devote a large proportion of local revenues to education.

President Bush deserves the highest marks for his appointment yesterday of former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander as secretary of education. The swiftness of the appointment will help to end the bumbling state of disarray in the department which was making a mockery of the president's vaunted promise to become "an education president." That erosion of confidence will be further stemmed by the expected announcement from the White House today that President Bush rejects the Education Department's clumsy and gratuitous announcement last week that minority scholarships at the nation's colleges might be scrapped.

ONE THEME that is less audible this year than in some previous national campaigns is the need for presidential leadership in education. There's a good reason: Americans are not in agreement about the proper role of a president in setting education policy.George Bush got important mileage by promising to be the "education president." But then he actually did something about it -- convening the nation's governors and setting national goals for schools to reach by the year 2000. The result? Widespread suspicion, especially among conservatives, that the federal government was trying to muscle into an area traditionally reserved for local control.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush plans to stake his claim to be the "education president" by proposing national student testing, a federal program of research and development contracts to invent new kinds of public schools, and a plan for schools to provide children with a range of social services, administration officials said yesterday.The wide-ranging proposal, to be announced Thursday, is a bid not only to change U.S. education but also to seize the Democrats' best political issue. For two years Democrats have scoffed at Mr. Bush's speeches on education while they steadily proposed bigger expenditures for existing federal programs.

CALL IT SCHOOL reform redux. President George W. Bush's plan to expand federal involvement in education looks a lot like the efforts already going on in Maryland and Texas, where Mr. Bush was governor. We're already holding schools accountable for their performance, already testing young children in most grades. And there are now consequences in this state for incessant failure - just ask the out-of-work principals whose Baltimore schools were reconstituted last year. On its face, Mr. Bush's plan simply raises the stakes in this exercise by including the threatened loss of federal money if schools don't get better.

OLNEY -- President Clinton talked over the heads of his young audience yesterday to hammer home a message aimed at the adults who control the nation's purse strings."

JOHNSON CITY, Texas -- The county is Blanco, and it's about the only thing hereabout that's not named for Lyndon Baines Johnson or his family.The local public school, naturally, is LBJ Elementary. It's where the 36th president went to grade school, though he learned to read at age 4 in a one-room school 14 miles and a million flowering bluebonnets west of here.It was in that school, now restored, that Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The "original education president," the National Park Service guide tells a group of us on tour, signed 50 major pieces of school legislation and believed "the only valid passport from poverty is an education."

ONE THEME that is less audible this year than in some previous national campaigns is the need for presidential leadership in education. There's a good reason: Americans are not in agreement about the proper role of a president in setting education policy.George Bush got important mileage by promising to be the "education president." But then he actually did something about it -- convening the nation's governors and setting national goals for schools to reach by the year 2000. The result? Widespread suspicion, especially among conservatives, that the federal government was trying to muscle into an area traditionally reserved for local control.

WASHINGTON -- The National Education Association wound up its annual convention in Washington last week. It endorsed Bill Clinton for re-election (surprise!) and said he was the best education president we've had in years.The NEA also passed its usual list of resolutions having nothing ++ to do with education. One sought a month of recognition in the government schools for gays, lesbians and bisexuals. But the convention settled for an appreciation of ''diversity'' and teaching about the ''contributions'' such individuals have made to the country.

IN HIS 1995 book, ''What Comes Next,'' James P. Pinkerton describes a White House meeting in early 1989, in which he and other policy wonks were trying to flesh out George Bush's promise to be ''the education president.''The meeting dragged into the night. ''As my mind started to lTC wander,'' he recalls, ''I imagined that the bureaucratic buzzwords, sports metaphors and flakes of stale imagery being tossed about the room were solid objects -- and that I could see them bounce off the white-plaster walls and plop down on the wall-to-wall carpeting.

IN HIS 1995 book, ''What Comes Next,'' James P. Pinkerton describes a White House meeting in early 1989, in which he and other policy wonks were trying to flesh out George Bush's promise to be ''the education president.''The meeting dragged into the night. ''As my mind started to lTC wander,'' he recalls, ''I imagined that the bureaucratic buzzwords, sports metaphors and flakes of stale imagery being tossed about the room were solid objects -- and that I could see them bounce off the white-plaster walls and plop down on the wall-to-wall carpeting.

Sister Phyllis Heuisler, R.S.C.J., an educator and former college president, died Tuesday of heart failure at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Albany, N.Y. The former Baltimorean was 95.After retiring from Newton (Mass.) College of the Sacred Heart in 1974, where she had been president since 1970, Sister Phyllis worked for several more years in Portsmouth, R.I., doing pastoral work and teaching in a Montessori school there.In 1978, she went to live at the Albany convent.Born and reared in Catonsville, she was the daughter of the late Hilda Gardiner and Philip I. Heuisler, a chemist who assisted Capt.

Metric HasslesHaving read George Will's complaints about the metric system ("Going Bananas Going Too Far Going Metric," Aug.31), I wish to add a few of my own. Because of my trade, I have been equally familiar with the both the English and metric systems for most of my life.But the inch is divided in binary fashion for good reason. Mark an inch on paper and divide it in half by eye and then in quarters, eighths and sixteenths. Now try dividing a centimeter into tenths by eye. If we had it all to do over, we might well use a base eight number system.