
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994                   TAG: 9410060036
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

EDUCATION BILL BEATS FILIBUSTER

Turning back a Republican-led filibuster over school prayer, the Senate gave final approval Wednesday to an education bill providing billions of dollars to help students in impoverished districts, train teachers and reduce school violence.

The vote was 77-20. Both Virginia senators voted for the bill.

President Clinton said the action represents ``a commitment to world-class standards of academic achievement for all students and to adequate preparation for every teacher.''

The House already has approved the legislation reauthorizing for five years the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which expired Friday. President Clinton has indicated his support for the bill.

``This Congress has seen its away around gridlock, found common ground on some of the most difficult and contentious social issues and that's the way it should be,'' Education Secretary Richard Riley said. ``Children are not learning as Democrats or Republicans. They are learning as Americans who are the future of the country.''

School prayer advocates, led by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., tried to block a final vote on the bill. Helms thought the prayer language included in the bill was too weak.

The legislation protects the right of students to participate in voluntary, constitutionally protected prayer and cuts off federal education funds to school districts found to have ``willfully violated'' a court order that they allow the prayer.

Helms argued that involving the courts in the issue created an impossible hurdle for students and their parents.

The Senate voted 75-24 to break the filibuster.

The act's biggest program aids impoverished districts. Even to the end, senators fought bitterly about the formula for allocating nearly $7 billion in those so-called Title I funds.

More than 90 percent of the nation's school districts receive Title I funds, and the Clinton administration sought to target limited resources to the children who needed them the most. Its proposal was rejected in both the House and Senate. Bicameral negotiators approved a compromise agreement that phases in a redistribution of funds over five years.

by CNB