CLINTON URGES AID TO SCHOOLS STATE COULD GET UP TO $31 MILLION.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

WASHINGTON - Offering a lesson plan for failing schools, President Clinton urged Congress on Saturday to vote $250 million to help states radically improve troubled public schools or shut them down and start over. Critical Republicans quickly countered with their own formulas for improving education.

California would receive an allocation of $16,556,812 from a $134 million fund to help school districts turn around low-performing schools, Clinton announced Saturday.

Officials could not say how much of the California allocation might come to Los Angeles, but they anticipated it would be about half, based on the number of disadvantaged students in under-achieving schools.

Low-performing schools are defined as those that for two consecutive years have not made annual progress toward meeting state goals for student performance and have received federal Title I funding because they have a high percentage of disadvantaged children.

School districts must spend the funds on school improvement activities, such as developing and implementing school improvement plans, conducting professional development, strengthening curriculum, or enhancing parental involvement.

Clinton also offered the option of permitting a student at a ``chronically failing'' public school to transfer to a public school with a better record of achievement. But he emphasized efforts to transform the schools now doing a poor job.

``Too few of these failing schools ever get enough help to turn around,'' the president said in his weekly radio address. ``With today's action we are declaring as a nation that we will not fail our children by tolerating failing schools. . . . Students can't aim high in schools that perform low.''

GOP counterproposal 

Republicans, meanwhile, pushed the GOP plan for education savings accounts to pay the costs of transferring to private, parochial or public schools - an idea Clinton has twice vetoed, in part as a threat to the nation's system of public school education.

Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., chairman of the Republican Conference, faulted Clinton for offering ``only baby steps of reform.''

Gov. Ed Schafer of North Dakota, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, called Clinton's comments on permitting students to transfer out of failing public schools ``tricky.'' He said the option to transfer from a failing school to a public or a charter school already exists in law and he believes the president is trying to narrow it.

``It sounds like he's coming out with rules that make it harder for kids to transfer out of a failing school,'' Schafer said in an interview.

Proposal is 'a start'

In a letter, Schafer and two other GOP governors, Jim Gilmore of Virginia and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, asked Clinton to make clear that the option of transferring out of a poorly performing school is ``available to every student who attends one of the 7,000 identified failing schools in our nation.''

Rep. Bill Goodling, R-Pa., chairman of the House education committee, said Clinton's action is, at least, ``a start toward providing the stepping stone for thousands of children to be able eventually to join mainstream America.''

Clinton announced state-by-state allocations from an existing $134 million fund that states and cities can tap for struggling schools, and released guidelines on how the money can be used most effectively.

The president also asked Congress to approve the $250 million he requested for the accountability fund in his fiscal 2001 budget proposal, so that states can make targeted, concentrated efforts to fix schools that no longer perform for their students.

``Fixing a failing school isn't easy, but communities are proving every day that it can be done,'' Clinton said. ``We must continue to invest more and demand more.''

Of the $250 million, California would get $31,984,516 under Clinton's request for next year.

Guidelines proposed

The Clinton guidelines suggest ways to strengthen curricula, improve teacher training or close schools entirely and then reopen them with stronger leadership and teaching staffs or reestablish them as charter schools with community support.

The Senate is expected to begin voting next week on a bill that would allow parents to place as much as $2,000 per year, per child, in educational savings accounts. The tax-free interest could be used for expenses, including transportation and tutors, associated with any school - public, private or parochial - from kindergarten through the 12th grade.