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FEDERAL AID

Property and Funding Given to Schools

Traditionally, American schools were locally funded, but that began to change during the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency. Following World War II the U.S. government sold approximately 106,000 acres of land and 2,500 buildings at an average cost of less than 3 1/2 percent of the fair value of the property to establish 5,500 schools and universities. Surplus military equipment, including such windfalls as 27,000 surplus typewriters, was also given to schools.

The School Lunch Program

In 1940 the federal government provided more than $12 million in meals for elementary and secondary school students; this grew to some $92 million in 1949. There were abuses in this program, such as price gouging and kickbacks, but the program was defended by former president Herbert Hoover, who coordinated the European Food Program after World War II and recognized the correlation between nutrition and education.

Educational Facilities for Defense

Education was needed for military personnel in order to promote war research and technical training. Federal funds for these areas of study at the university level in 1939 amounted to more than $160 million. However, by the mid 1940s the government realized that too much money was being diverted into defense research and that there was not enough money going to nonmilitary educational facilities, so a policy was designed to promote military research at colleges and universities. During this time there was a significant cooperative effort among university research facilities, defense contractors, and the military, such as at the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Similarly, foreign-language institutes and cultural-analysis schools, such as Harvard University's Institute of East European Studies, poured money into the American educational system before and after World War II

Mainstreaming the Vets

Additionally, the government opened military schools that stressed nonmilitary education to help veterans be mainstreamed back into civilian culture after the war. One such school was the United States Armed Forces Institute; by the middle of 1944 more than 275 courses were offered through the institute. By 1 February 1946 approximately 800,000 vets had enrolled in correspondence courses.

Continuing Controversy

The success of government assistance to education during the war stimulated postwar proposals to make such assistance permanent. Every year after the war Congress considered continuing federal aid to education; every year after the war funding bills were defeated in Congress. Several controversial issues prevented the passage of the bills. Conservatives concerned with progressive education and local control of the schools opposed the bill. But liberals also objected to federal control of local schools, and the National Teachers' Association opposed funding bills that failed to have provisions against federal interference. Many southerners opposed the proposals, afraid of the effects of federal intervention on segregated classrooms. Catholic educators, concerned that federal funding would short-change their fund-raising activities, opposed the proposals unless federal funds went to parochial schools as well; liberals opposed any funding for parochial schools, so as not to violate the separation of church and state. By far the most strident controversy arose around the funding of the Barden Bill, a 1949 proposal for $300 million in federal assistance to state education. Sponsored by North Carolina congressman Graham Barden, the bill extended federal assistance to public schools but excluded parochial assistance. Cardinal Francis Spellman expressed his opposition to the bill by characterizing its sponsors as "bigots" and "unhooded Klansmen"—an unwarranted and hyperbolic statement. Liberals responded by attacking Catholic education, leading to a rift between Eleanor Roosevelt and Spellman, formerly political allies. But other educators and political figures, such as Herbert Hoover, Columbia University president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and President Harold W. Dodds of Princeton University, opposed the bill because they feared it would lead to federal control of education. Despite the support of President Truman, the bill was defeated, and the decade ended without any federal assistance to state education.