Amidst all the talk of the Bush transition team's outreach to Democrats and fervent desire to work in a bipartisan manner, it's not at all clear what the subject of its bipartisan efforts will be. In his muted victory speech on Dec. 8, President-elect Bush recited his campaign policy priorities as though he intended to push them all simultaneously: education, Social Security reform, Medicare modernization, military readiness, and tax cuts. More recently, most of the public comments coming from the President-elect's inner circle have been about the one item that Democrats are least interested in helping him with, tax cuts, with Republicans debating whether they should push forward with the $1.3 trillion tax cut targeted to high earners, or chop it up into smaller and tastier chunks like GOP Congressional leaders tried to do earlier this year.

The simple truth is that any decision to move first on tax cuts for high earners, whether it's done in one big bill or in several, will all but seriously hurt any prospects for a genuine atmosphere of bipartisan progress in Washington. Most Democrats agree with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan that the top fiscal priority today is to maintain fiscal discipline and continue to pay down the national debt, rather than provide tax cuts targeted to the Americans who least need them.

Fortunately, there is another way for the President-elect to proceed, and another issue -- indeed, the issue he knows the most about: education. It's the logical choice for the first big agenda item because both the politics and policy of the subject make it a more favorable ground for genuine bipartisanship than any other. Moreover, if he seizes the opportunity and plays it right, he could help make the kind of fundamental changes in public education that are the stuff of legacy, rather than small feel-good accomplishments that break no real new ground.

Congress is already far past due in dealing with big changes in federal K-12 education policy. This year, for the first time since the law's original enactment, Congress failed to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on schedule. It's certainly a red hot topic, with education ranking at or just below the top in every measurement of public concern in November exit polls.

But most important, there's a Democratic vehicle already available that could provide the framework of a bipartisan bill without violating the Bush Administration's basic philosophy on education: the Three R's bill, championed by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, John Breaux, and other members of the Senate New Democrat Coalition (there's a House counterpart that was introduced by Reps. Cal Dooley and Adam Smith).

The Three R's bill is an ideal bipartisan vehicle for two reasons: First, it promotes the administrative flexibility in state and local use of federal education funds long sought by conservatives (and indeed, by most state and local Democrats); and it promotes the greatly increased funding, the improved targeting to truly distressed communities and students, and the accountability for measurable results in education that was the hallmark of Clinton Administration education policy. By combining today's Byzantine system of more than 50 federal education programs into five performance-based grants, it crucially changes the federal role in education to one of measuring and rewarding success, not micromanaging state and local educators.

The second reason Three R's is a great vehicle is that the Bush campaign purloined much of it for its own proposal, after making it more palatable to conservatives by reducing the funding levels, grafting on a voucher provision in cases of persistent failure of public schools, and embracing a big tax subsidy for private school tuition savings across the board.

As Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times perceptively noticed in a column earlier this week, the differences between New Democrats and the Bush policy team over the details of their respective education plans are far from insurmountable. But it will take some movement by both sides, and the real test is whether the President-elect is willing to make concessions on the voucher and private-school subsidy issues, which are, frankly, little more than sideshows to the central issue of public education reform and not at all central to the Bush proposal itself.

As of this writing, word has just come out that the President-elect will hold some sort of "education summit" in Austin later this week, and has invited some key Democrats to attend. That's a good sign that perhaps the Bush team understands education is a more fruitful topic for genuine bipartisan discussion than the exact pace of tax cuts for the very wealthy. But we hope the Republicans come to the table ready not only to talk, but to compromise; to join with New Democrats in the critical task of radically improving public schools, not to invite them to augment a big Republican vote for a bill based on ideological totems rather than substantive reform.

The proof of bipartisanship will be in actions, not words.