Weak Non-Reformer: W. caves on education.

It would be something of an understatement to say that the Bush education-reform program is distressing Hill conservatives. When House Republicans met on May 2 to be briefed on the details of the latest compromise, Rep. Jim DeMint from South Carolina ruefully summed up the feelings of a good number of his colleagues: "When the president talked about reform, we didn't realize he intended to 'Leave No Democrats Behind.'"

Later that morning, DeMint attended a meeting of the House Education and the Workforce Committee to consider the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001." The first order of business in the small hearing room packed with lobbyists and administration officials was to consider a Democratic amendment to eliminate a modest private-school-choice provision from Chairman John Boehner's version of the bill. The amendment was adopted-with the support of five Republicans as well as the committee's 22 Democrats. The Democrats had removed the final obstacle to their support for the bill-as H.R. 1 was stripped of the only remaining reform conservatives felt could justify their support of a plan the Heritage Foundation was now dubbing "an expensive version of the status quo."

During the committee debate, Republican congressman Bob Schaffer of Colorado described the school-choice provision-which would permit low- income children in persistently failing schools to use up to $1,500 of federal aid toward private-school tuition-as "the heart of the Bush education proposal."

But when Schaffer implored his Republican colleagues, "Don't abandon our president on the most central provision of his program," he was in fact fighting a battle the administration itself had abandoned. A White House education aide-explaining that conservatives should have done more to lobby lawmakers on school choice, instead of expecting the White House to do it-said that the issue was "never central to the president."

The Bush campaign had pleased conservatives by insisting on an impressive set of education-reform priorities: consolidation of federal programs, relief from federal rules, and consequences for failing schools. But conservatives waited in vain during three months of negotiations on the education bill for a signal that these provisions were actually critical to the administration. Instead, the flexibility and consolidation provisions were dramatically watered down, and Bush's big proposed increase in federal education spending became even bigger.

It was not local control and spending restraint that became the cornerstone of the Bush agenda; pride of place belonged to the administration's plan for a major new federal testing mandate-a measure conservatives oppose, because it increases the likelihood that a uniform national curriculum will be imposed. In March, Sandy Kress, Bush's top education adviser, actually suggested that this was the only non-negotiable policy in the bill, declaring at an education symposium that without annual testing in grades three through eight, "there will be no bill signed." Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, remembers warning Vice President Cheney weeks ago that his fellow House conservatives would have a difficult time backing a system of national testing. "I told the vice president that Clinton proposed national testing and we fought him to the death. Our conservative constituents will see flagrant hypocrisy" if we back it now, Shadegg recalls.

Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra was one of the members who opposed Clinton's testing proposal, but says he would have been willing to support some version of mandated testing this year-absent a uniform federal yardstick-if it had been part of a compromise to secure some conservative reforms. In discussions with the White House, Hoekstra and Schaffer argued that a final bill had to include a consolidation of scores of federal programs, relief from other federal mandates, and private-school choice. The administration balked, insisting that the final reform bill had to be bipartisan.

Hoekstra now sees the weeks he spent in private meetings-in the hope that conservatives' concerns would be addressed-as a mistake. "Conservatives and others have to recognize you can negotiate with the White House and leadership, but if you don't go public, you get nothing," he concludes. Hoekstra is now blasting the legislation, telling the New York Times that it's "no longer a George Bush education bill [but] a Ted Kennedy education bill."

Hoekstra has been joined by a score of conservative organizations that oppose the negotiated version of the president's reform. Gary Bauer's daily fax has declared, "Education Bill Gets Hijacked," and a press release from the Family Research Council proclaims, "House Education Bill Gets Failing Grade." At a yearly meeting between social conservatives and the House leadership in early May, the representatives of grassroots groups found themselves the only ones defending the original version of the president's education bill. In a recent meeting with disappointed conservatives, House Speaker Dennis Hastert didn't dispute any of the policy objections they raised, but pointed out that the administration wanted the compromise bipartisan bill.

The White House has made clear that the compromise bill is now the president's plan, so the bipartisan House bill and Kennedy's companion proposal in the Senate represent what the final legislation will include. Sandy Kress has been closely monitoring the reform compromises, and predicts, "We're going to get a bill which is very, very close to what the president wants."

What the administration really wanted was bipartisanship, at whatever cost; as a frustrated Bob Schaffer explains, "The Republicans want a political win, and the Democrats want a policy win." And polls tell the GOP that its new bipartisan reform vehicle is a political winner: Three polls in April found Republicans outperforming Democrats on the education issue. Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell predicts that the majority of Republicans will ultimately support whatever bill the president endorses because Bush "has taken us [from] a 20-point deficit on education . . . to a point in which we lead on education."

But one conservative strategist wonders why the White House is so eager for bipartisanship, when it now appears that Democrats are in need of remedial help with the public on the education issue. "If the Democrats had a big advantage on defense issues, the last thing they would do is reach out for a compromise with Republicans," the strategist explains.

While they recognize that the liberal compromise will likely pass, congressional conservatives hope to be able to offer the original version of President Bush's reform on the floor when the House takes up the education bill, so they can express their support for the president without backing the Bush-Kennedy reform. But they are resigned to a future Rose Garden ceremony-prominently featuring the president's Democratic partners-in which George W. Bush signs what Congressman Hoekstra calls "the biggest expansion of the Education Department since its creation by Jimmy Carter."