DOLE OUTLINES EDUCATION PLAN

Proposal Calls For More Local Freedom, Locker Searches

MELROSE, Mass., Sept. 22 - Elizabeth Dole, introducing the first installment
of her education agenda at a school where she once taught history, today
called for parent-approved locker and backpack searches and drug-testing of
students: "For drugs and weapons, I say: There will be no place to hide."

She also proposed that state and local school districts should receive more
money from the federal government with fewer strings attached.

"As president, I will allow states and local school districts to choose how
most federal money is spent, as long as they set, measure, and reach goals
for student achievement. At least schools will be responsible for student
performance, not paperwork," she told 150 upper-class students and school
officials at Melrose High School in this middle-class suburb north of Boston.

Dole taught at the school as an 11th-grade student teacher for the 1959-60
academic year while earning a master's degree at Harvard University in
nearby Cambridge. Wearing a red "We Are Melrose" button on her lapel and
trailed by reporters, Dole swung through corridors decorated with Magic
Marker welcome signs, chatted with children in a computer lab, and glided
into her old classroom where a sixth grade English class was in session.
"This was the room," she said. "It's been a few years, but it's wonderful to
be back."

Dole drew on her own teaching experience to condemn federal mandates that
she said strangle school budgets with bureaucracy and consume time that
should be spent teaching. She recalled how she once asked a Buddhist monk in
Harvard Square to speak to her class and tracked down a former police
officer to compile a lesson plan on the Boston police strike of 1919. "I
didn't choose this lesson because it was mandated by the state or by
Washington, but because it brought history to life for my students," Dole said.

More than $118 billion spent on federal education programs over the past 35
years have led to no real gains and plunging educational rankings for
American schools, Dole said. She pointed to a stack of papers containing 600
pages of what she called the Clinton-Gore administration's elementary and
secondary education reauthorization bill.

"By almost every reckoning, many of our schools have become less safe, more
drug-infested, more troubled--while taking on more and more duties, as one
noneducational mandate after another is thrust on them by the federal
government," she said.

Dole went on to propose federal tax credits to encourage support for public
and private schools and increased tax-free contribution limits on education
savings accounts. Citing the growing student population and the need for an
estimated 2 million new teachers over the next decade, she called for merit
pay for teachers and said states should broaden their recruitment to attract
mid-career professionals and others.

Unlike Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Dole did not specify how she would
leverage federal dollars against poorly performing schools, but indicated
school districts could use federal funding for "opportunity
scholarships"--or vouchers--at their discretion and said parents should be
able to access school performance statistics via the Internet. Bush has
promised to strip federal funding from failing schools and give money to
parents to pay for tutors or transfer their children to other public or
private schools.

Students here enthusiastically greeted Dole, who was given a key to the
city, a book, and a "President Dole 1" football jersey. But not everyone
cheered the prospect of backpack and locker searches for weapons and drugs
at Melrose, whose new principal has instituted tough discipline measures
such as community service time for violations including tardiness.

Said A.J. Graham, a 17-year-old senior: "As a student, you should be able to
do what you want to do. It's a violation of our rights."