There is, as I write, an expectation that Congress and the White House must soon come to an agreement on the budget. I use "expectation" in the wishful sense of the word, as "I expect my children to behave." Finding surpluses no easier to deal with than deficits, the Republican-led Congress has tried to give back the excess funds in tax cuts while President Clinton now insists that the surplus funds be used to fund his education initiative.

Weeks ago the President told Congress he would veto any tax cut that occurred before Congress came up with a plan to set Social Security on the track of financial viability. In a previous column I suggested the wisdom of giving financial security to Social Security. What I fail to understand is why the President could not send money back to those who earned it because those funds might be needed to fund some Social Security plan, but those same funds must now be used to finance federal funding of local education.

Let me see if I have this straight. It is OK to use those funds earned by taxpayers to fund the President's new education initiative to hire new teachers, but it is not OK to send the money back to taxpayers and let local voters decide whether or not they want their tax refunds to hire new teachers.

If voters really want extra teachers more than they want to spend their own earnings that were mistakenly taxed away from them, voters have every opportunity to spend their tax refunds by voting for local taxes for local schools.

Add to this the fact that it is the same voters who pull the levers fo local school board taxes, for Congress and for President. And voters really have more power in local political matters than in national matters, more chance to sway the results, more ability to get local elected officials to listen to their problems. It starts sounding to me like the President doesn't trust voters to do the right thing in local elections.

In Louisiana, our problems go beyond having too few teachers and classes being held in permanent temporary buildings. Our Secondary schools are plagued by a mismatch of teacher preparation and openings. We have far more P.E. majors graduating that P.E. jops. We have far more science, math and special education openings than graduates certified in those areas.

In other fields, mismatches between graduates and openings are not as severe because employers seeking to hire in shortage areas raise the pay for positions they have trouble filling and decrease the pay in areas where applicants abound. This just does not happen in our public schools. Teachers are paid according to how long they have taught, their degree (bachelors, masters, etc.) and little else.

If pay were higher in the special need areas of math, science and special education, perhaps more people would go into those fields. Higher pay is not going to get a future teacher who dislikes math to take a lot of math courses for a little extra pay. Such a person will not want to teach something they don't like. We don't really want someone teaching something they don't like, just for the money. A teacher's dislike for an area can't help but come across.

There may be other approaches to getting more certified math, science and special education teachers. Pay differentials happen to be especially useful in reducing mismatches in areas because they get people to switch areas. What we don't need to do is to lower standards for certifying teachers in shortage areas.

Problems in education are not the same everywhere. A one-size-fits-all solution for a multitude of problems won't work either. That what federal systems are good at, finding local solutions to local problems and national solutions for national problems. Its time to let our federal system work.