SF Examiner
Tuesday Jun 20, 2000

Bush woos Silicon Valley wallets
He discusses education policy while pulling in $4 million
By Robert Salladay
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF


CUPERTINO - The sign over Gov. George W. Bush's head Tuesday said,
"Education + Technology = A Winning Partnership." It also equals money.
The Texas governor spent the second day of a three-day West Coast tour in
Silicon Valley talking about improving math and science education in public
schools, a critical subject to the high-tech community here. Bush said the
nation is failing and offered federal incentives to boost math and science
classes.

The hour-long policy discussion also allowed Bush another chance to fill his
presidential campaign coffers as he heads toward the Republican National
Convention late next month. He raised $4 million Monday night at two
fund-raisers with the area's technology elite.
Bush aides said his Silicon Valley trip would break a fund-raising record
for the area.

The Texas governor raised $400,000 at a Palo Alto event, followed by $3.6
million at a Republican Party fund-raiser at the home of Cisco Systems CEO
Don Chambers, the highest paid executive in Silicon Valley.
Gore holds state lead

Bush's visit comes as a new Field Poll shows California voters favor
Democratic Vice President Al Gore over Republican Bush for the November
election by 11 percentage points. The poll, conducted among 1,003
Californians June 9-18, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1
percentage points.

Silicon Valley, naturally, is typecast as the place politicians go to talk
about high technology, even though poll after poll shows voters here
actually want to talk about transportation and housing.
But neither Gore nor Bush seems to have the bandwidth yet to talk about the
$700,000 fixer-uppers or clearing the traffic jams that stretch from the
Santa Cruz mountains to Tracy.

Bush nevertheless expanded his Silicon Valley repertoire a little Tuesday by
speaking at a forum at De Anza College in Cupertino. Laura Bush, the
candidate's wife, scheduled a visit to an East Palo Alto job training
center, before their entourage headed to Los Angeles for another
fund-raising dinner Tuesday night.

Dueling initiatives

The Silicon Valley event highlighted a new round of announcements by Bush
and Gore over a host of policy initiatives leading up to the national
nominating conventions this summer.

Monday saw the two candidates fighting over whether Social Security benefits
should be invested in the stock market.

Tuesday, Bush proposed spending $1 billion over five years to boost the Pell
grant program for students who take college level math and science courses
in high school. Bush said the students would get an additional $1,000 to pay
for college tuition.

Bush also said the federal government should provide $345 million over five
years to increase from $5,000 to $17,500 the amount of student loans that
could be forgiven for science, math, technology and engineering majors who
agree to teach in a poorly performing school for at least five years.
California Democratic Gov. Davis and Gore have suggested similar loan
forgiveness programs.

"Our record is not very good in America," Bush said. "We rank in math 19th
out of 21st among industrial nations. In physics we are dead last."
Gore has proposed spending $8billion over 10 years to recruit new teachers
and boost math and science education.

Part of that includes forgiving the student loans of up to 300,000 students
who agree to teach in math and science in high school. The Clinton
administration, Gore has said, also has pushed for voluntary national
standards in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math.
Gore's attack

Gore, in challenging Bush's commitment to education, also points toward
Texas' math and science scores during Bush's tenure as governor.
A Rand Corp. study found a gap between the math scores of poor and
middle-class students, and others have questioned the difficulty of Texas'
achievement test.

Education experts say the Texas high school graduation test is more
appropriate for the sixth grade. A sample question, quoted in the Washington
Post: "Kenyon is 5 feet 6 inches tall. His sister Tenika is 7 inches taller
than he is. How tall is Tenika?"

"Bush has no plan to make sure all teachers are qualified and certified
according to state standards," Gore has said on the campaign trail. "I'm not
surprised - his state gets a 'D' in efforts to improve teacher quality
according to one national survey, and 35 percent of teachers assigned to
teach math in Texas did not major in math."

Bush spent Monday in Washington state touting a new $400million technology
initiative, which Gore quickly tried to shoot down as smaller than even
current federal efforts in Texas.

Gore and Clinton have pushed for schools in poor communities to have access
to computers and the Internet to help them compete with wealthier kids.
While Bush said Internet access can help close the "achievement gap" between
the groups, he says merely providing funding and Internet access runs the
risk of allowing teachers to use cyberspace as an educational crutch.
His proposals include tying $400 million over five years in new funding for
education technology to student performance. In exchange, schools would have
more flexibility in how to use the money.

The federal government now spends about $3 billion in education technology
through a wide range of programs to help schools, such as the Federal
Communications Commission's $2.25 billion Schools and Libraries program.
Called the "E-Rate" program, it helps provide affordable access to advanced
telecommunications services for all eligible schools and libraries in the
United States.