Education: A Gentleman's C, Maybe.

On one subject, President Bush has already kept his promise to "change the tone" in Washington: that of federal education policy. His $48 billion bill has been received warmly, with few echoes of the rancorous debates of the past. Republicans are no longer trying to dismantle the Department of Education, and Democrats are more willing than they once were to consider holding teachers and schools accountable for results. Democrats have expressed concern about the bill's limited voucher proposal, but said they can work with Bush. The president and his aides have repeatedly hinted that they might drop the offending proposal in the interest of bipartisanship. Harmony prevails.

Too bad. The direction of federal education policy is very much in need of debating, not least within the Republican party. For years, a tension has existed within conservatism between centralizers who want to raise academic standards at the state and federal levels, and pluralists who want to increase competition among schools and devolve power to parents. Often, the centralizers have been neoconservatives, and the pluralists libertarians. By and large, conservatives have split the difference. They have favored tests and standards, for instance, as a means of giving parents information rather than of regulating school districts.

Bush's proposal has several good components: its promotion of phonics, its consolidation of various federal programs, its reduction of federal regulations on what states can do with federal grants. But it tilts too far in the direction of standards and does too little to increase competition. Bush would give low-income parents "exit vouchers" to escape failing schools, true, but they would be worth very little money and be given out only after three years of certified failure. The schools would get a "fair chance" to reform even if children were not getting a fair chance to learn. Where similar plans have been tried, very few schools have been designated as failures. And while Bush proposes to expand education savings accounts, the accounts would remain fairly weak: Only the interest on them escapes double taxation.

Republicans who support Bush's approach say that moving faster on school choice is politically unrealistic: Voucher proposals bombed at the polls in California and Michigan in November, didn't they? But a strategy that leans heavily on raising standards, without much competition, is politically unrealistic too. It ignores how easily standards can be, and have been, co-opted, how easy they are to manipulate politically. Bush's plan is supposed to make it easier for parents to see how their schools are doing. But when governors complained about a much weaker tool of comparison during the administration of Bush's father-the "wall chart" that ranked states' performances-the administration got rid of it. George W. Bush's plan expands the federal role in education but still carefully respects limits: States are allowed to come up with their own testing regimes so long as they meet federal requirements. But those limits may not last. If a Democrat were to become president in 2005, he would find it easier to make a left-wing monstrosity out of Bush's regulatory structure than he would to create one from scratch.

Bush is eager to build on the educational success stories of men like Roderick Paige, the Houston superintendent he appointed to run the Education Department. But there's a reason such successes are not replicated throughout the public-school system: There are no incentives within that system to do so. The reason Bush has to create an artificial "accountability system" by bureaucratic means is that there is no free market in which accountability would occur naturally.

It is true that Washington is not about to enact a revolutionary voucher plan, and we're not asking Bush to push for one. Indeed, we will not shed a tear if, as he has signaled, he abandons the exit vouchers in his plan. They set up an unwinnable fight: Democrats are making demagogic arguments against a complicated and stingy plan that Bush seems disinclined to defend. It would be better by far for school-choice advocates to fight for vouchers for the children of Washington, D.C. The D.C. debate is one that concentrates on specific children in lavishly funded, inarguably rotten schools. Democrats are on the defensive when they debate it: When President Clinton vetoed a bill for school choice in D.C., he did it with none of his usual fanfare. Indeed, conservative activists may want to consider a ballot initiative on school choice in D.C., where it might well pass-and give the cause a moral boost.

With respect to school choice in other places, the federal government should get out of the way. All federal aid for low-income schoolchildren should go where state dollars go: If a state provides vouchers, let the federal money become part of the voucher; if not, not.

It is unfashionable to insist that the federal role in education should be kept small, but still correct. Distant bureaucracies are not likely, in the long run, to keep local schools accountable. Bush's education proposal therefore moves in the wrong direction. It will probably pass with strong bipartisan support. We'd vote no.