The last week of April was pretty gloomy for defenders of the public education status quo. Business executives Ted Forstmann and John Walton formally unveiled their Children's Scholarship Fund, a philanthropy that will pay for the private education of some 40,000 low-income children. More than 1.2 million poor families have applied to participate in a lottery for these privately funded vouchers. Meanwhile, the GOP-controlled Florida legislature enacted Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's proposal to create state-funded private school vouchers for poor families whose local public schools earn failing grades on state assessments. The other Bush brother, GOP Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, and GOP Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico are pressing hard to win passage of similar legislation in their states. New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani formally sought public funds for private school vouchers in his budget proposal. Finally, in Michigan a citizens' initiative to authorize vouchers secured enough signatures to earn a place on the ballot in 2000.

The public response to the Forstmann/Walton initiative was a thundering vote of no-confidence in the nation's public schools, especially in the inner cities. It and the growing momentum for vouchers in various states show that many Americans have abandoned hope that public education can be reformed.

The developments of late April should be a wake-up call to liberal Democrats who have blocked, watered down, or gummed up reforms such as charter schools and other types of public school choice, higher stan- dards and an end to social promotion for students, and accountability for teachers and administrators. The guardians of the educational status quo have won a few battles but are in danger of losing the war. America's great tradition of universal public education is hanging in the balance.

New Democrats should continue fighting to make all public schools high-performance institutions, especially the citadels of failure and despair masquerading as schools in many inner cities. Here's a specific suggestion: When someone introduces voucher legislation in your state legislature or city council, urge your representatives to offer an amendment that would require participating private schools to (1) open their doors to all children in the community and (2) meet or exceed specified performance benchmarks to continue receiving tax-payer funds. (Indeed, that latter provision should apply to all state-supported schools, public and private.) Such an amendment would effectively turn voucher-supported private schools into public charter schools.

A public school is not defined by who "owns" it, but rather by two features: universal access and accountability to the public for results. We don't care whether public schools are run by a local school board, a group of parents, a teachers union, a Fortune 500 company, or the Little Sisters of the Poor. Indeed, many existing charter schools are run by parents' groups and other private entities that must abide by performance contracts and non-discrimination laws in exchange for public money.

"Access and accountability" amendments to voucher bills would make the following points crystal clear to school operators: If you want taxpayers' money, then you can't pick and choose from among taxpayers' children and you have to guarantee taxpayers a solid return on their investment. This will make perfect sense to most voters and even to some voucher proponents. After all, parents and taxpayers would be livid if they discovered that their local government bought a computer system or hired someone to fix leaky roofs without a contract that spelled out what the recipient of the public money was supposed to do. But that's exactly what most voucher plans are -- no-strings-attached contracts with government vendors for the provision of a vital public service. The simplest way to construct an access-and-accountability amendment would be to use language from a strong charter school law. Minnesota's is a good example.

Many voucher proponents (and private schools) will scream bloody murder over access-and-accountability amendments to their bills. Fine. Let's separate the sheep from the goats on education; let's find out who's really interested in improving student achievement and who's interested in simply gutting public education.

Democrats and others who attack vouchers and defend dysfunctional public schools are getting clobbered. It's time for supporters of high-performance public schools to get into the ring and start counterpunching.