41.   The education budget would contain modest increases for poor children and for upgrading reading skills.

42.   The federal education budget, sharply slashed during the Reagan administration, remained stagnant and Bush Senior was largely irrelevant to educational progress.

43.   The national recession has already caused the states to cut billions of dollars from state education budgets.

44.   The plan would then go to the legislature for discussion as part of the state education budget.

45.   The states in which students scored best were those which spent a bigger share of the education budget on teachers, Meyers said.

46.   Those dollars went to education, but they often simply replaced money diverted from the general education budget.

47.   With education budgets under fire and course-work growing, schools are turning in desperation to computerized learning.

48.   Yet the federal education budget highlights only direct outlays, perhaps because tax expenditures would be politically indefensible if widely publicized.

49.   Also included in the education budget are increases in Pell Grant college scholarships for needy students, and tutoring and counseling to help prepare low-income students for college.

50.   But Clinton said Congress needs to pass an education budget that provides the means to continue to cut class size and increase teacher quality.