Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 20, 1991                   TAG: 9104200084
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EDUCATION PLAN GETS MIXED REVIEWS

"It won't happen overnight," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Joseph Spagnolo.

Spagnolo praised the overall thrust of Bush's blueprint unveiled Thursday. The plan calls for voluntary national student testing, parental choice of schools and a $550 million fund to start model schools in every congressional district.

By not calling for massive amounts of additional funding, Bush is taking the proper approach, said Spagnolo, who added that more money clearly is needed.

In Virginia, for example, many school divisions are struggling under the burden of budget cuts that have denied pay raises to most teachers.

But "if we start with the premise that we need more money, we are really sealing the fate before we start," Spagnolo said. "We need to go to the people with a process that works, and then the money will follow."

State Secretary of Education James Dyke agreed, saying "money is not the only issue here. It's not necessarily how much you spend, but how you spend it."

But Madeline Wade, president of the Virginia Education Association, the state's largest teachers' group, said the lack of funding in Bush's plan is a "major disappointment."

"For him to send the message that you can have education without paying for it sends the wrong message," she said.

Wade said Bush has largely adopted as his own the work of the nation's governors, who met almost two years ago in Charlottesville in a Bush-initiated education summit.

"What bothers me is that he has taken what the governors did, and then attached his own Republican rhetoric, which is that you can improve schools without funding them," she said. "You can't. These initiatives will cost money."

The plan calls for students to meet basic competency requirements in core subjects, for ranking first in the world in mathematics and science achievement, for drug-free schools and for the nation to have a high school graduation rate of 90 percent.

The Bush plan would add little to federal spending but asks state and local governments and the business community to join in an effort to "reinvent American education."

"Our challenge amounts to nothing less than a revolution in American education - a battle for our future," Bush said Thursday.

The administration proposes to spend $690 million on the program, out of a fiscal 1992 education budget of $29.6 billion.