UNITED STATES. Radical Republican Newt Gingrich once compared America’s public schools to subsidised public dating. The Clinton administration speaks of them as the cradle of tomorrow’s high-tech workers. That conflict of outlook promises to sharpen in the coming election year.
Washington’s education lobbyists anticipate a number of battles in 1996. For example, a debate looms over whether disabled children who are violent or disruptive should be educated separately from their peers.
Worse still, at a time when right-wing politicians are increasingly hostile towards immigrants, there may be renewed pressure on schools to report “illegal” immigrant children on their rolls and to teach all immigrants in English rather than bilingually.
More broadly, battle lines are likely to harden in the debate on how to fix a public education system that is generally described as deeply flawed.
President Bill Clinton promises to fight to keep federal programmes for disadvantaged students and the poor, as well as the Goals 2000 programme to improve grade performance.
But Republicans see the answer in structural reforms which mirror the rest of their conservative agenda. They want less bureaucracy, lower public spending, weaker teaching unions and more local control - in the form of privatisation and even schooling at home.
For now, the eyes of the education lobbyists in Washington are on the budget negotiations between President Clinton and Congress, which have already led to one government shutdown.
Republicans are seeking cuts of about $30 billion (Pounds 20 billion) in the federal education budget over seven years. That is small compared to other cuts - for example, in subsidised health care for the poor and elderly.
Yet with an election approaching, fiscal reality comes a poor second to political point-scoring. President Clinton is busy presenting himself as defender of the nation’s schoolchildren, and the budget negotiations will set the terms for debate in 1996.
The US Department of Education provides only about 5 percent of the funding for schools and colleges, most of it in programmes for the disadvantaged and the poor. By far the largest share comes from state and local governments.
But, consistent with Republican demands to scale back federal government in favour of the individual states, at least two Republican presidential candidates have joined party conservatives in calling for abolition of the entire department.
The biggest teachers’ organisation, the National Education Association, has already thrown its weight behind Clinton in the election race. “We have a president who is very pro-education, and the leading candidates opposing him have been attacking a lot of things,” says spokesman Charlie Ericson.
