l Gore calls it his ''number one priority.'' Bill Bradley says it is ''the very essence of life.'' Both men propose adding more than $100 billion to its budget and they argue intensely about who is more devoted to the subject, even comparing numbers of bills filed and speeches given.
The issue is education, and it is no wonder the candidates are so eager. In poll after poll, voters say it is the most important issue they want addressed.
Thus, while the subject of health care dominated the Democratic presidential race for months, lately Gore and Bradley have been battling to prove their dedication to reading, writing, and 'rithmetic.
When Bradley delivered a major education address on Feb. 9, for instance, Gore belittled it as a panicky reaction to Bradley's primary defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire and stated, incorrectly, that Bradley had waited 14 months to deliver an education speech.
The Bradley campaign, meanwhile, said Gore has both distorted Bradley's proposals and inflated his own, and adds, for good measure, that Gore introduced just four bills dealing with education during his 16 years in Congress.
As the fight rages on, however, it sometimes recalls the old proverb about academia: The stakes are so high because the differences are so small.
''I don't see them as fundamentally different,'' said Art Levine, president of Columbia University's Teachers College.
Levine said that unlike the Republican candidates, who have proposed school voucher programs that would allow students to flee the public school system, Bradley and Gore have stopped short of suggesting any radical changes.
While Bradley has supported voucher programs in the past - a fact that Gore, backed by teachers' unions that oppose vouchers, often notes - neither man calls for their expansion. (Both do support roughly tripling federal support for charter schools.)
''The Democrats are talking about reforming public education, while the Republicans are talking about alternatives to public education,'' Levine said.
And both candidates offer some similar remedies to the troubles of public education in America: huge funding increases, expansions of programs for very young children, and new incentives to attract thousands of qualified teachers.
Skeptics ask how much either Gore or Bradley can accomplish, given that the federal government accounts for just 9 percent of the $600 billion spent on education nationwide, with state and local governments shouldering the rest. Washington's share amounts to just 3 percent of the federal budget.
Each man proposes to increase the federal role. Bradley would add $175 billion to education spending over the next 10 years, while Gore proposes $115 billion.
To the extent the candidates diverge, some observers said, is that Bradley's plan is targeted at high-poverty areas, while Gore's new measures are relatively unrelated to income.
On spending for young children, for instance, Gore would devote nearly half of his new spending - $50 billion - to expand preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds of all incomes. Bradley, meanwhile, would nearly double the Headstart program for low-income children, increasing its budget by $4 billion over four years. Bradley also offers $2 billion per year for day care and education programs for children of all incomes.
Bradley's clearest focus is his proposal to double the $8 billion Washington spends on schools in low-income areas through the Title I program.
Bradley would subject Title I schools to state takeover if they fail to improve student performance dramatically within 10 years and show full teacher competency within four years.
While Gore would reward teachers in low-income areas with unprecedented federal bonuses of up to $10,000, his plan is targeted less at the poor. Instead the vice president offers a long list of tax and funding incentives for schools to shrink class size and improve performance.
To some, Gore's broad agenda has drawbacks. ''Bradley is focused, and Gore is sort of all over the lot,'' said Amy Wilkins, a policy analyst at the nonprofit Education Trust in Washington.
But others question whether Bradley's emphasis on Title I, a 35-year-old program that has yielded no clear results, is wise.
''So far we have no returns from Title I, so doubling the funding when the program has been a screaming failure seems to me not a very useful suggestion,'' said Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative scholar.
But even some critics of Bradley's education policies said they are less important than his overall social goals of eradicating child hunger and poverty. That was the position of Bob Schwartz, president of Achieve Inc., a privately funded education policy group in Cambridge.
''Making a significant dent in the number of kids in poverty would be the single most important thing the federal government could do,'' Schwartz said.
