Column: The federal role in schools
Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost.
A reasonable reform proposal and a question for the next column
– The Constitution does not mention the word “Education,” hence the federal role in schools has historically been authorized under the General Welfare clause and later under the 14th Amendment. Opponents of federal involvement, in contrast, have pointed to the 10th and final Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which expressly reserved any functions not in the Constitution to the purview of each individual state.
The first major federal involvement in Education came with the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, followed in 1862 by the Morrill Act, both of which set aside a portion of the land in the nation’s new territories as we expanded westward to be dedicated to the support of Education. This came primarily in the form of the now 106 “Land Grant” colleges and universities, including the University of California, Penn State, Purdue, Texas A and M, Oklahoma State, Clemson and many more of our most prestigious colleges and universities.
The Judicial Branch also took a role with the Supreme Court’s unanimous rejection of the concept of “separate but equal” (Plessy vs Ferguson, 1892) with Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. This forced the integration of schools. These developments were at least in part motivated by the service in WW2 of many black servicemen to defeat fascism only to return home to a country for them in some unfortunate ways still not unlike the ones they had just defeated.
Our founders did recognize the need for an educated electorate in our democracy, but you will recall it was only white men over 21 who owned property who were originally allowed to vote. Black men were added with the 15th Amendment in 1870, and women with the 19th Amendment in 1920. (An interesting aside is that when our nation’s first black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm, ran for President in 1968, she later wrote she felt there was more opposition to her candidacy due to her gender than her race).
The next big expansion of the federal role in education came in 1958 with the passage under President Eisenhower of the National Defense Education Act. Those of you in your seventies may remember as I do the Cold War. My uncle Maurice Dubost served in Korea as a Master Sergeant on the prisoner of war island of Kojhe-Do, and told us first hand of the absolute savagery of the North Korean and especially Red Chinese POWs. I also remember vividly standing outside our ranch house in Adelaida watching the communist Soviet Union’s first satellite, Sputnik, pass over us nightly. Later, I remember drills in our classrooms where we hid under our desks in preparation for Russian nuclear attacks during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember the Berlin Wall and the atrocities of Russia and the dreaded KGB behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary and elsewhere. (You may recall that Putin was a KGB operative).
McCarthyism and the John Birch Society were much in the news. Our country was rightfully scared that the communists were taking over, and one reason for that fear was the perceived failure of our public schools, particularly in technology. The NDEA in 1958 provided federal support for improved math and science education, and the GI Bill allowed veterans to go to college, where many became teachers.
President Johnson next in 1965, included the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the “War on Poverty.” Among other programs, it included federal monies for early childhood education (Head Start). Title IX in 1972 dictated that girls be afforded opportunities to play sports in school and has until recently been a huge success (more on that in my next column).
As I mentioned previously, President Ford added the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975. Through all of these successive expansions of the federal role, however, Education was not represented in the president’s Cabinet until President Carter kept a campaign promise made to the teachers’ unions and established the Department of Education in 1979, making its Secretary a member of the Cabinet.
Since its inception, the Department of Education has been re-authorized and refocused by various studies and programs, including “ A Nation at Risk”, “No Child Left Behind”, “Every Child Succeeds,” and many other well-intentioned initiatives. The Department’s first budget in 1980 was about $14 billion, and by 2024 now totals $268 billion dollars or about four percent of federal spending. Included in that total is about $160 billion for various student loan programs, while about $15 billion is transferred to states for assistance to low-income students through Title 1. About $15 billion is sent to local districts to offset what amounts to less than ten percent of the promised forty percent of the mandated costs for special education students under the IDEA. (More on this in a bit). A total of over $80 billion ostensibly goes to states to support elementary and secondary education, including a smorgasbord of other programs related to Career and technical education, research and innovation, English language acquisition, equality, mandatory state testing, accountability, enforcement et al.
Obviously I present this brief history of the federal role to put into some perspective the current debate over the President’s intention to eliminate the Department of Education. So, just what would happen if it went away? I really wish I could point to its many accomplishments, providing evidence of improved student achievement since its inception.
I wish I had a good answer when asked what will the negative impact on students in Paso Robles would be if it is eliminated.
I don’t.
That doesn’t mean I think it should be eliminated tomorrow. I do believe the following would be a prudent approach to reform to actually improve student achievement.
Give the Department of Education staff ninety days to develop, as a first step, a plan to cut its budget by a minimum of fifty percent. If they can’t or won’t comply, assure them it will be done for them. Include within that plan the elimination of all non-mandated programs. Identify to what other department all remaining mandated programs, if truly a mandate and not an interpretation of a mandate, could be transferred. Order a report from each of those receiving entities of the impact on them of assuming those new responsibilities.
Use the savings from those cuts to finally keep the promise made fifty years ago to federally fund forty percent of the costs of the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ). I outlined in a previous column the current problems with Special Ed. The encroachment on the General Fund in Paso of having to cover those currently unfunded mandated costs is multiple millions per year. In this small county, a couple of years ago, the encroachment from Special Ed on county districts, as I recall, l totaled well over seventy million dollars a year. Can you imagine what it is in a big county?
Understand this doesn’t mean cutting services to disabled students. Not one penny. It means shifting forty percent of the burden from the local district to the federal government, which, except during COVID, traditionally has never covered even ten percent. Will special ed kids lose protections? No. There is still the law, with many SpEd attorneys ready, willing, and able to represent any families, and remember, if they prevail on even one of the many issues, the district pays all attorneys’ fees.
There is also oversight from the State Department of Education and the local SELPA (Special Education Local Plan Area), which protects the rights of special education students. Each district first and foremost has its duly elected school board, which needs to closely keep abreast of all significant developments and weigh carefully the input they receive and from whom. The mandates won’t change, only who pays for their implementation.
If the federal government did indeed finally keep its promise to pay 40% of the costs of the IDEA mandates, it would be an immediate, hugely significant windfall to all local school districts. I would then mandate that those savings must be allocated to fund in each local district a full ten percent reserve fund for economic uncertainties, which could only be touched if approved by a supermajority of the local board. With any savings above ten percent, I would prioritize hiring of classroom teachers for core academic programs, with a priority for added training for elementary teachers in explicit phonics instruction within reduced class sizes.
Let’s have a plan, though, and a scalpel, not a chainsaw. In my next column, I’ll address “the more serious question on national education we face.”
– Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost
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