Bill Clinton
Handing over control of federal dollars to local officials has long been a top goal for Republicans in Congress, and with the nation's main K-12 education law under scrutiny this year, debates on exactly where the money should go are beginning to reverberate on Capitol Hill.
The 10th graders who trickle into Faye Dixon's classroom at Eastern High School here look sleepy on this sunny spring morning. Still, they're eager to talk about their field trip to the Howard University law school a day earlier.
With members of Congress from both parties lining up behind various proposals on aid for school construction, the big question this year may not be whether, but how, the federal government will tread into this new territory.
New guidance from the Department of Education on the federal government's $1.2 billion class-size-reduction initiative appears to offer schools flexibility in implementing the program, but still leaves some questions unanswered, several state and local officials say.
Schools have slightly more leeway to discipline disruptive students with disabilities under long-awaited regulations for the nation's main special education law, released by the Department of Education last Friday.
Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley urged states last week to consider adopting a common framework for teacher licensing, raising hopes that his support could lend new urgency to ongoing efforts to improve teacher quality.
In the Centennial school district just north of Minneapolis, money from the federal Title VI block grant is helping administrators develop student assessments and train teachers to meet Minnesota's accountability requirements.
President Clinton's budget proposal for fiscal 2000 accentuates his high-profile school reform initiatives, but Republicans and some education advocates fear that it does so at the expense of existing programs.
The Clinton administration may be falling behind in the crucial task of drafting legislative language to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year.