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Bradley challenges party-line thinking on voucher plan

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley sorely is testing the theory, beloved by policy wonks, that voters like independent-thinking politicians. For he dares to express the notion that school vouchers and tuition tax credits are worthy experiments within the overall effort to improve the nation's schools. What's more, he regularly invokes the New Deal experimentation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in defense of his defense of school experiments.

If Bradley were a Republican, then public expression of such ideas wouldn't even be newsworthy. It is an article of faith among Republicans that voucher-inspired competition is a good thing for schools, because competition always spurs innovation.

But Democratic Party orthodoxy is that the only school reforms worthy of party leaders' support are those "reforms" -- and we use the word quite gingerly in this context -- approved by the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. The NEA for years has opposed accountability based reforms, such as vouchers, merit pay and so on. Such ideas are met with chants of "XYZ will destroy public schools."

Thus Bill Bradley stands guilty of the greatest of sins among post-McGovern Democrats: He's committed heterodoxy. The political risks involved are large, for teachers unions are to Democrats as the National Rifle Association is to Republicans. In Iowa the largest group of Democratic delegates to February's caucuses are retirees. The second largest group are teacher-unionists. And how did the latter greet Bradley's suggestion that a little voucher and tax credit experimentation is okay? "After screaming and yelling and ranting and raving, I finally got a meeting with him," says Jolene Franklin, president of the Iowa State Education Association.

Screaming and yelling and ranting and raving. Now there's a calm, adult way to engage in policy debate. But then the ISEA, like all NEA affiliates, is not in the policy debating business or even, despite its name, in the education business. It is in the business of getting the highest package of pay and benefits possible for its member teachers, and preventing others from competing with its members.

Bradley is no dummy, and he clearly understands the NEA's role in the coming elections. But he also knows the NEA is likely to endorse Al Gore, so it makes a nice bit of politics for Bradley to enunciate his long-held views on vouchers and put Gore in the position of toeing the NEA line. The next move is to challenge Al Gore to explain whether he really thinks it's terrible to let poor kids -- most voucher experiments take place in the wrong part of big cities -- escape non-performing schools, and therefore explain whether he traded his independence for an endorsement.