February 1996 . . .

Hillary Rodham Clinton faces questions about more than $100,000 she received in 1990 and 1991 from a nonprofit education group partially funded by state tax dollars. New York's Republican attorney general Dennis Vacco has requested records by Jan. 19 from the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), a Washington group formerly based in Rochester.

NCEE president Marc Tucker said that the group paid $101,630 to Mrs. Clinton or the Rose law firm in Little Rock, AR where she worked before her husband won the presidency in 1992. Mrs. Clinton was hired to direct the Workforce Skills Program.

Vacco said records show Mrs. Clinton was paid $23,000 in 1990 for unspecified services and was contracted to receive as much as $150,000 from February 1991 to January 1992.

"I'm interested in knowing how much of the $150,000 was paid to her, and what she did for it," he said.

The American Federation of Teachers dedicated its Summer, 1995 American Educator magazine to explaining how Whole Language has "done a terrible disservice to the children whose lives depend on mastery of that skill [decoding]." "Today, without strong direct systematic decoding instruction in regular first grade classrooms, more and more children are being shunted into remedial classes, and even special education," claims Joanna Williams of Teachers College, Columbia University.

A lawsuit filed in the Oregon U.S. District Court aserts that the mandatory student fee paid by Lane Community College students violates First Amendment free speech rights. "Government-supported colleges and universities may not force students to finance campaigns and lobbying that students abhor," says attorney Sharon Browne of Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed the lawsuit. The $2 fee supports the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG), which she says has "a highly politicized and predominantly liberal agenda."