1 The man who would be education president says he'll push certain public school reforms and provide whatever aid he can in 'tough budgetary times' to districts trying to improve their schools.
2 'I do want to help,' President-elect Bush told educators Tuesday at a White House workshop on experiments that give parents wide freedom to select their children's public schools.
3 'I do intend to provide every feasible assistance to states, to districts interested in further experimentation with choice plans and other valuable reforms,' Bush said.
4 'I will ask the Department of Education to monitor and focus continued attention on the need for future progress, and I'll be a spokesman and advocate for further public school improvements.'
5 Bush said he is particularly enthusiastic about having parents and students being able to choose their public schools, calling the prevailing system of assigned schools a trap and their students 'captive clients.'
6 'It's a system that can perpetuate mediocrity,' he said.
7 'Poor schools have no incentives to improve.'
8 Supporters of choosing schools say it makes schools more competitive and responsive, improves morale and attendance, reduces disciplinary problems and dropouts, and improves learning among students.
9 President Reagan, addressing the workshop earlier in the day, cited the examples of 'a Harlem school district in which scores have risen dramatically because parents are now permitted to choose which school to send their children to' and a Minnesota program 'that is fostering unprecedented competition among public schools to make them more attractive to parents and students.'
10 Referring to the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that integrated public schools, Bush said it is now time to focus on what goes on inside those doors.
11 'Quality education has become a central civil rights question of our time,' he said.
12 'And too often today it is our disadvantaged children who are most likely to be burdened by inadequate public education.'
13 Bush said that for choice to work, teachers and principals need greater autonomy and authority, while parents need better publicized, more reliable performance evaluations of schools.
14 The heads of the nation's two teacher unions both attended the workshop and said they were encouraged by the emphasis on strengthening public schools, as opposed to giving needy parents public money to send their kids to private schools -- a recurring Reagan administration theme.
15 'I didn't hear anything about vouchers or tuition tax credits and those would be the red flags for us,' said Mary Futrell, president of the National Education Association.
16 'To the extent you increase public school choice, you decrease pressure for vouchers and tuition tax credits,' added Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

" I will ask the Department of Education to monitor and focus continued attention on the need for future progress , and I ' ll be a spokesman and advocate for further public school improvements . "
future progress ,
FUTURE PROGRESS HOW?