The centerpiece of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's effort to project himself as a "compassionate conservative" has been his handling of the education issue. Bush has distanced himself from Congressional Republicans who want to either abolish federal involvement in education, or dump money on states and school boards without direction or accountability. Most strikingly, Bush adopted big chunks of a Progressive Policy Institute federal education overhaul plan that would consolidate small formula-based programs into large, performance-based grants combining flexibility with accountability.

Meanwhile, during the primary season, Vice President Al Gore emphasized his determination to increase federal spending for hiring teachers, building or rebuilding schools, and creating pre-kindergarten programs. Gore was on record favoring strong national standards, more results-oriented charter schools, and accountability for states, school districts, teachers and students, but did not talk about it much. Some journalists began to wonder out loud which candidate was the real New Democrat on education.

Last week, Gore answered that question. He is. He leapfrogged Bush on education in a speech that represented the campaign's first comprehensive effort to link more investment in schools with greater accountability for results, including public school choice. In a speech to the National Conference of Black Mayors, Gore got the message exactly right:

Investment without accountability is a waste of money. Accountability without investment is doomed to fail. And public school choice and competition are essential if we want to push schools to the highest possible levels of excellence in education.

Gore did far more than pay lip service to accountability. He reiterated his support for tough national standards and testing (including exit testing for high school seniors). He endorsed mandatory shutdowns for consistently underperforming schools. He called for removal of low-performing teachers and principals. And he pledged to make narrowing the "achievement gap" between high- and low-performing schools and school districts a tangible national goal and the linchpin for federal education funding. Furthermore, Gore recognized the importance of choice and competition in making public schools accountable to parents and taxpayers by calling for a tripling of the number of charter schools to more than 5,000 and for universal public school choice in the 100 lowest-performing school districts.

Most interesting, the Vice President's full support for educational accountability put him on much stronger ground in criticizing Gov. Bush's agenda. Some Democrats have attacked Bush for demanding too much accountability for schools, teachers, and students. But Gore's main line of attack was that Bush is undermining his own accountability effort by supporting the use of public funds (through vouchers and tax-free savings accounts) for private schools that are not accountable to any public authority. As Gore noted:

[Bush's] answer for failing schools is to take away a major portion of their funding, and allow it to be used for private schools through vouchers--giving parents a fraction of what private tuition really costs, and giving taxpayer dollars to schools that are accountable to no one.

Gov. Bush's campaign claimed that Gore's speech stole Bush's ideas on accountability. Since Bush purloined a New Democrat accountability proposal and then grafted vouchers and other private school subsidies onto it, this is a bit like the burglar shouting "Stop, thief!" But this is one campaign fight that can produce winning ideas for the country.