Is education really Gore's top priority?

One of the ironies of the current presidential race is that the more liberal candidate, Al Gore, seems to have the more conservative plan for education reform. Whereas his opponent has hopes for an ambitious voucher system, Gore is simply calling for increases in public school funding, college tuition subsidies and a limited program of mandatory teacher testing — none of which is very original or even very popular.

Gore, who often refers to education as his "number one priority," would naturally like voters to think that he is protecting the interests of the majority by preventing major changes to the school system. In reality, though, his stance on education is not consistent with popular opinion and does not seem to have much to do with his ideological beliefs. Rather, Gore opposes voucher programs and similar reforms because he wants the financial backing of certain special interest groups and because he figures the public will not consider education issues on Election Day.

As a wide range of opinion polls have suggested, most Americans do support the types of sweeping education reforms that Gore opposes. Ever since the early 1980s, when studies began to show that American students were falling behind their foreign counterparts, the public has had a clear interest in voucher systems, charter schools and other programs designed to promote competition among public schools. Most notably, a recent study by the Public Agenda Organization showed that the number of Americans with "great confidence in public schools" fell from 58 percent to 36 percent between 1973 and 1999. During roughly the same time period, support for voucher programs rose steadily from 40 percent to 57 percent.

The biggest reason why Gore would ignore these public opinion trends is that he wants to maintain a strong relationship with organizations like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. These groups — which tend to see any dramatic education reform as a threat to the job security of educators — have millions of members nationwide and donate millions of dollars to the Democratic Party annually. Their members tend to be motivated as well as educated, and through mailing campaigns and advertising can exert considerable influence over the voting public. By working to uphold the status quo in American education, Al Gore gains the approval of these teachers' unions and secures the benefits of their significant political power.

Since the views of educators clearly don't match the views of the general public, one might expect Gore to alienate a lot of voters in the process of appealing to the teachers' unions. But ironically, Gore has surprisingly little need to please members of the American public.

While it is true that the majority of poll participants would prefer to see increased competition among public schools, there is no evidence to suggest that Americans care very passionately about this issue. According to a 1999 Public Agenda survey, 63 percent of Americans admit to having "little or no understanding" of how voucher systems work, while even more admit to having "little or no understanding" of how charter schools work. Not surprisingly, almost no non-teachers care enough about education reform to organize special interest groups focused on the issue. With average citizens as unmotivated and uninformed as they are, Al Gore does not have to worry about losing very many votes by taking an unpopular stance.

Of course teachers' unions have some legitimate reasons to fear education reforms. A voucher system, for example, would take money away from public schools and use it to pay the private school tuition bills of needy students. However, when the educational opportunities of American children are at stake, the wishes of the electorate really should outweigh the wishes of the teachers. If improving education is his number one priority, then Al Gore should pay more attention to the public's interest in reinventing the American school system. Rob Schmidt is from Boston. He can be reached at rschmidt@princeton.edu.