DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9709050031

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS

                                            LENGTH:   78 lines

WELFARE AND EDUCATION A BRACING FALL BREEZE TO REFORM

Fall, more than spring, has always struck me as the season of new beginnings.

Spring is languid, dreamy, floating toward summer. Fall is brisk, purposeful, heady with possibilities.

Much of the feeling is born of the back-to-school thing, I know. It's the image of pristine notebooks, momentarily unmarred by smudgy erasures and boredom-inspired doodles. It's those festive crayons lined up like Buckingham Palace guards with their points and wrappers still intact. It's the, as yet, unbroken promise that any teacher could turn out to be Mr. Chips, any team could win the gold, any child could pass every course.

Deep-frozen reality won't grip the landscape for months.

This fall is a starting point for two public policy initiatives - one in Wisconsin, the other in Virginia - that also seem are magical in their possibilities. Welfare reformers in the north and education reformers in our home state hope, by dramatically altering course, to shake free of cobwebs that have deterred progress for decades.

In Wisconsin, cash welfare is ending - truly - for almost everyone. Those deemed "job ready" are being thrust into independence, whether or not they have a job, whether or not they have rent money for next week.

Meanwhile in Virginia, the State Board of Education last week adopted new standards that, over time, will deny high school diplomas to students who fail to pass uniform, end-of-course exams. Schools where 30 percent or more of students fail standardized tests may lose accreditation.

Both are risky, performance-driven initiatives tailored to an era keen on personal responsibility. Both also are certain to smudge and even tatter as they season, if only because things do.

What gives hope that these reforms may withstand reality's chill is the fact that officials appear, however tepidly, to recognize the peril. While both reforms are strong on individual accountability, both also are being bolstered by a dose of collective investment - i.e., tax dollars - to help things turn out right.

The most realistic promoters of welfare reform, it has always seemed to me, were those who didn't try to sell it as a savings bonanza. "If Wisconsin's ambitious gamble succeeds," journalist Jason DeParle wrote recently in The New York Times Magazine, "no one should forget the price tag."

In an article entitled, "It Takes A Village To Reform Welfare," DeParle noted that Wisconsin spent about $9,700 for every family on welfare last year. When the costs of adding extra child care and health care and creating last-resort, public service jobs are added to the mix, the state will spend about $15,700 per family under the reform.

That 62 percent increase is hardly dominating the headlines coming out of Wisconsin. But the safety net it establishes almost certainly will be critical to the success of the plan.

On the eve of Thursday's vote on school accreditation standards, Gov. George F. Allen also acknowledged that truly improving education is more than a matter of setting high standards.

The weakest part of his reform plan had been the absence of specifics about what happens to students and schools that fail. Allen filled some of the void by announcing that he will seek $32 million for remedial help for children who do not measure up.

That does not alleviate concerns about the prospects for schools in which large numbers of children turn out substandard scores. But it is an important signal that the state is not washing its hands of responsibility.

Even some normally reasonable lawmakers and school officials have theorized that the underlying motivation of Allen and his allies is to set standards so high that the public schools will inevitably fail.

When such paranoia reigns, it impedes rational debate and stymies progress. There is nothing inherently subversive in setting higher standards of accountability, particularly at a time when almost everyone agrees educational standards need toughening.

The key is to acknowledge that the state and nation have a collective stake not only in identifying substandard performers, but in bettering them.

Teachers and schoolchildren and reformers may welcome the onset of fall as a time of clean slates, of hope and promise. Enjoy. But remember, too, that those who will ultimately be most successful are already planning for the long haul, steadying themselves for all the seasons to come. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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