Schools in need of renovation and minority youths in need of jobs may be winners in the continuing “discussion” between the Congress and President Reagan over the best way to target the federal dollars to reduce the nation’s high unemployment rate.
Earlier this month, the President unveiled the $4.3-billion jobs program that looked a lot like a measure the Democrats attempted to authorize during the waning days of the 97th Congress.
According to press reports and sources in the Congress, the Democrats would like to add about $1 billion to the President’s proposal for, among other things, a new summer work program for youths and a program to allow school districts to hire unemployed workers to repair and spruce up school buildings.
Republicans, however, were seeking to limit the bill’s provisions to those requested by the President.
Is the Heritage Foundation moving to the left?
The public-policy research organization, known for taking conservative positions, has been represented in education issues by Onalee McGraw--a political scientist and activist for New Right causes--whose quarterly newsletter, Education Update, linked a network of parents-rights groups around the country.
Upon leaving the foundation last month, Mrs. McGraw was replaced by an “educationist"--her own word for possessors of degrees from schools of education, which she has criticized for emphasizing “psycho-social” studies at the expense of the liberal arts.
Heritage’s new education policy analyst is Eileen Gardner, an Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Control over the agenda of the National Institute of Education, the federal research agency with a history of bureaucratic and political problems, is the object of a months-long, behind-the-scenes power struggle between the agency’s deputy director and its new director.
The battle began several months ago, when the institute’s former acting director, Robert W. Sweet Jr., was unsuccessful in his bid for the director’s post and had to settle for a return to his post as deputy director.
The new director, Manuel Justiz, took office, and Mr. Sweet--according to a story in The Washington Times--quickly found a position that increases his power and gives him access to the policy-making body of the institute.
The newspaper reports that Mr. Sweet is to become the executive director of the National Council on Educational Research, which is charged with setting policy and deciding on the budget of the institute.
Although that position, since 1974, had been held by an institute staff member, Mr. Sweet--with political-appointee status--will maintain an office separate from the institute and hire his own professional and support staff, institute sources said.
Tom Mirga and Eileen White
