Learning from Learnfare.

• Position: Failed Wisconsin welfare restriction - Editorial

Too bad for Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson: Someone leaked the results of his much-celebrated Learnfare experiment to President-elect Bill Clinton. Clinton reacted, as would anyone who takes an unbiased look at the program, with dismay.

The bright idea behind Learnfare was to link welfare to school attendance - denying benefits to parents whose children miss too many days of school. The program left several Wisconsin families homeless and hungry to teach poor children a dubious lesson in "personal responsibility." Many families have been sanctioned unfairly, because of computer errors and poorly kept attendance records. And the program has done nothing to improve inner-city schools, where some Learnfare parents had stopped sending their children because of gang violence. According to a University of Wisconsin study, Learnfare had no positive effect on drop-out rates, nor did it accomplish its stated goal of reducing the welfare rolls. [See "Cutting the Lifeline: The Real Welfare Fraud," by Ruth Conniff, February 1992.] Despite these obvious failures - not to mention a class-action suit that resulted in a temporary Federal injunction against the program - the Bush Administration loved it.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan touted Learnfare as a model program, and George Bush praised his fellow Republican and pal Tommy Thompson as a "groundbreaker" in welfare reform. With the Federal Government's blessing, several other states set up programs that copied the Learnfare example.

Now Clinton is...