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FEDERAL EDUCATION INTERVENTION: HARMFUL OR HELPFUL?

The Federal Role

Both before and after his election, Ronald Reagan never made a secret of his desire to reduce or even eliminate the role of the federal government in education. He consistently asserted that "the greatest public school system the world has ever seen" began to deteriorate when federal intervention started, primarily in the 1960s. His oft-stated agenda on education included the following: 1) Do away with the Department of Education; 2) Encourage prayer in the schools; 3) Enact tuition tax credits and family educational allowances or vouchers to help parents finance private-school education or choice of public schools; 4) Weaken federal regulations, including those aimed at civil rights for disadvantaged and handicapped children; and 5) Enact massive cuts in the education budget.

Rhetoric versus Reality

Reagan argued that the federal influence had grown so massive that it had usurped the role of state and local governments. However, in 1983, of the $230 billion expended on all education from all sources, the federal share was only 9 percent. The rest of the funding came from state sources (39 percent), local sources (24 percent), and tuition, fees, endowments, and gifts. A second argument was that federal assistance was simply not needed. Evidence from the reports of all the task forces and commissions, including President Reagan's own Commission on Excellence in Education, contradicted this contention. The next argument was that any federal money brought with it onerous and expensive rules and regulations that distort the proper balance of responsibilities of state and local entities. A 1983 study by the independent Educational Testing Service of eight states' federal/state policies, however, concluded that federal involvement had not "imposed harsh burdens; on the contrary, it had strengthened state educational agencies." Finally, and to many voters most importantly, Reagan asserted that federal involvement had simply wasted money, that federal programs had failed. Many families whose children had been granted access by virtue of such programs as Head Start, the Higher Education Act, and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, disagreed. Numerous studies supported the claim that these programs had raised the level of achievement for many Americans, who for reasons of poverty, disability, or discrimination had in the past been denied educational opportunity.

Head Start

As early as 1979, Yale University professor Edward Ziglar, previously director of President Richard Nixon's Office of Child Development, summarized the studies to date that assessed effectiveness of the Head Start program. The Head Start children, he reported, repeatedly scored better on preschool achievement tests than their peers without Head Start experience. They also scored higher on a "social competence" scale, which included variables such as a healthy self-image, motivation, curiosity, and independence. But do these improvements last? skeptics asked. A landmark longitudinal study, begun in 1964 and published in 1984, suggested the answer was an unequivocal yes. These results, reported in Changed Lives: The Effects of the Perry Preschool Program on Youths Through Age Nineteen, concluded that black children who sixteen years earlier had entered Head Start at age three had grown up more successfully, academically and socially, than had a comparable group without such training. The employment rate and/or the college or vocational school enrollment of the Head Start youth was more than double that of the other group at age nineteen. Teenage pregnancies were slightly more than half of the non-Head Start group, and 20 percent fewer of the experimental group had been arrested or dropped out of school.

Fate of Reagan Education Goals

Although Reagan had clearly delineated goals for revamping public education, many of his attempted reforms failed. Terrel H. Bell, the first-term secretary of education, wrote after leaving office that his battles with "the lunatic fringe of ideological political thought" and "zealots pressing radical and off-the-wall ideas" had distracted his attention from his appointed purpose of closing down the Department of Education. Bell also admitted that Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (renamed Chapter One in 1981 and the recipient of 34 percent of all federal spending for elementary and secondary education at the federal level) had been effective and that its funding should continue. Other developments thwarted the Reagan agenda as well. In 1984 the Omnibus Education bill was actually increased by $250 million from the previous year, and a House amendment on silent prayer was dropped. Spending continued for bilingual, adult, immigrant, Indian, women's, disadvantaged, and handicapped education. New policy on bilingual education was set—allowing all English "immersion" instruction as well as the former practice of teaching academic courses in native languages. And Reagan himself set into motion a new federal intervention program, created in November 1984. This new spending initiative was the drug-education package, headed by FBI director William Webster. The plan, using professional and amateur athletes, coaches, and schools banding together, had the goal of reducing drug use among youth by 50 percent to 75 percent during the next five years. Although forty drug-prevention organizations were involved, the coordination was the responsibility of the federal government. With much federal intervention still in place when a more moderate President Bush took over from Reagan in 1989, many advocates of ending federal involvement in education saw their best opportunities for change ended.