Gore Rips Bush Over Texas Education Report

Oct. 26 -- Vice President Al Gore has launched an eleventh-hour education offensive, ripping George W. Bush’s record on the very issue the Texas governor is pledging to make his top priority if elected president.

“It takes a lot more than nice-sounding rhetoric and a few half measures,” Gore told students and supporters assembled in an auditorium at Tennessee State University in Nashville Wednesday morning. “Governor Bush has talked a lot about education in this campaign … but talk is no substitute for real change for students.”

Gore argued that despite Republicans’ claims to the contrary, students in the Lone Star State have not seen a “real change” under Bush’s tenure as governor, citing a new report by the Rand Corporation that disputes claims of rising performance by minority students in the state.

“My opponent says we can trust him to raise standards and results because he’s done it in Texas,” Gore said. “But … the [Rand] study reported that contrary to all that we’ve been told, the achievement gap for Texas students has not narrowed, it has widened.”

The Republican candidate has made education his pet issue, railing against what he calls an “education recession,” blaming the Clinton administration for presiding over a stagnating school system and holding up his home state as a model of excellence.

An hour after Gore hammered Bush’s education record, the Texas governor took to the stump to renew his call for higher student achievement and defend the Texas record.

“We can have leadership that sets high standards and high hopes for every child,” he told voters at a town-hall style meeting at Seminole Community College in Sanford, Fla. “Leadership that challenges what I call the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Bush’s aides, meanwhile, questioned both the validity and timing of the study, which was released by the California-based think tank on Tuesday.