Comment by Christopher T. Cross
[The Federal Role in Education]
Paul T. Hill's paper sparks many thoughts, ideas, and recollections about the last thirty-five years of intensive federal activity in education. However, many questions arise from the paper and many issues need further examination. Hill's use of ice nine as a metaphor for federal involvement is colorful and effective, but it presents a picture that may be unnecessarily negative and one that fails to acknowledge the positive [End Page 40] aspects of what does take place with federal aid. Ice nine has no benevolent uses. Once touched, disaster occurs. While some might argue that point, I suspect that even they would acknowledge that federal aid has made positive contributions in elementary and secondary education and in higher education. Hill's paper, while having a title related to federal aid, is essentially about the U.S. Department of Education and does not touch upon programs run in such disparate agencies as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. All of this is to say that the frame of reference must be clearly defined.
Now that nearly two generations have passed since enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a review would be useful of some of the reasons that gave birth to the programs that, for the most part, still exist today. A child born in 1960 who might have entered school when the program first took effect in 1965 is on the verge of turning forty and likely has children of his own in school. In Washington during that same time, a half-dozen or more changes in congressional leadership have occurred and, with the exception of Representative Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), probably not a soul is around who was present at the creation and is still active in the policy arena. With turnover at the state and local level, more cycles have been completed than most can remember.
The situation that existed in the mid-1960s compelled the enactment of federal education programs. School integration was a central focus as was the recognition that many schools that had served African American children were destitute and often received an inferior allocation of funds. When Title I was created, it was aimed at righting some of those wrongs by providing financial aid. Enactment of ESEA came only seven years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, and when other open acts of civil and criminal disobedience had taken place to prevent school desegregation. Defiance of court decisions led to court orders and federal action. While many of those cases were about federal education programs, most were (and are) about either constitutional issues or civil rights laws that often get played out in the schools. Keeping all of this in mind is important when examining the current situation.
In the past thirty-five years, states have become much more professional and less openly political in the Tammany Hall sense of graft and corruption. They have also built professional staffs, embraced inclusive [End Page 41] social issues, and become rivals of the federal government for power and even moral authority. The problem is that the structure in place for the delivery of federal education programs was created in response to the problems of the 1950s and 1960s. Similar issues face society in other fields, such as health, welfare, transportation, and housing, where the issues have emerged and present different challenges but the structure has not evolved to meet them. What seemed to work no longer does.
Other Issues
One issue not addressed by Hill relates to the ways in which the federal government has chosen to organize education programs and the impact of that at the state and local level. For example, the old Office of Education and the existing U.S. Department of Education treat schools as silos--a silo for special education, for vocational education, for the education of disadvantaged children, and for children with a primary language other than English. Unfortunately, that has led to mimicry. States almost immediately organized their education agencies around these areas, as did most school districts of a reasonable size.
This simple act led to much of the program isolation evident today. In what has become a virtual chain-of-command structure, state and local officials usually have only minor influence over these programs and functions. Even in 1999, five years after enactment of major policy changes in Title I meant to eliminate this isolation, it still exists.
Unfortunately, Congress has exacerbated this problem by enacting laws calling for additional bureaucracies and protecting those already operating in the belief that doing so will help children. But that is not the case, and structural rigidity often works against good service. This approach is not limited to the political left or right, and the ultimate irony would be the legislatively mandated creation of offices to serve charter school or voucher programs. In discussing colonization of state agencies, Hill gives recognition to the problem, but without explaining the entire context at the federal level. A provocative question is what would change if the federal programs were reorganized into a single organization that served all schools and states? Would that change things or has the silo structure become so institutionalized that it is beyond change?
I agree with Hill's assertion that federal programs did not directly lead to the current unrest about public schools. I do believe, however, that he [End Page 42] gives scant attention to the role of the federal judiciary in undermining the authority of the schools. It has become a cliché to say that the United States is a litigious society, but consideration must be given to how, as a result, the possibility of establishing a coherent school culture has been severely eroded. While separate programs contribute to the problem, the courts have had the greatest impact in rulings that limit authority over dress, publications, speech, discipline, and more. Teachers also erode the culture of a school by dressing and acting more inappropriately than many students. The function of adults as role models is too rare.
A More Positive Federal Role
In his paper, Hill posits what he terms a new, more positive, federal role. Much of it I can easily agree with, for it represents the wisdom of careful reviews of the past. However, some major questions arise, some of which point out both the ironies of any change and the difficulties of not doing some things.
Hill proposes that children, not jurisdictions, should be subsidized. On its face that is a compelling idea. However, saying that all schools should get the same amount of state and local aid, the question immediately arises of how that would be enforced. Would there be regulations? How would they be enforced? By whom? And a law of this nature would bring with it enormous potential for lawsuits, some of which might be brought by teacher unions to challenge the potential abrogation of contracts that often permit senior teachers to move to schools of their choosing, few of which are schools that need the most help. New policy invites legal challenges. Children attending school in areas with high concentrations of poverty represent the most difficult challenge. Any proposal that has money following the child needs to take that factor into account. I do not know how that can be done in a way that does not invite greater federal involvement or that does not do something extra for those schools where concentrations of poor children are highest.
Under the constitutional system of separation of powers, judicial review cannot be prevented. The best hope is that the courts will come to understand their role in undermining certain aspects of society and restore to schools some ability to make and enforce reasonable regulations.
Hill does not want to reduce federal funding for students who perform at high levels. While I believe that his motivation is to ensure that [End Page 43] students who have come from behind are not allowed to slip back, are there any limits to this policy? To take a case that may appear extreme, what about a poor child who starts out needing help in the early grades and then by middle school is doing just fine? How can continuing extra help to that child be justified when his younger sister may need it, and he is doing well?
The notion of short-term, special-purpose grants is another major issue. One need look only at the all-too-frequent use by Congress of hold-harmless provisions in annual appropriations bills or the inability to close obsolete military bases to understand how difficult this concept would be to sustain. Once federal aid begins to flow, the natural political forces keep it coming. It becomes very hard to cut off. How long did it take to make even the smallest changes in impact aid?
Hill calls for the creation of a board to consult with the secretary of education on spending these special-purpose grants. Having congressional appointees on such a board would raise separation of powers issues, as that is an inherently administrative function.
Hill wants to make the U.S. Department of Education a resource and not a ministry. While the imagery of that is great, I have a hard time envisioning a cabinet position called the secretary of national educational resources.
While I believe his major proposal is an excellent idea, I cannot imagine Congress, and particularly the Senate, consolidating all legislation affecting elementary and secondary education into one bill. While I have long advocated this approach, it will never happen. The pressures of interest groups in keeping their own programs separate, combined with congressional work schedules, serve to make this impossible. If that does not occur, it is hard to see how much of the rest of what Hill calls for would, or could, emerge. In the absence of this one bill, it might be worth thinking about what could be done within the context of legislation that is pending in the 106th Congress to bring about some reforms.
One immediate action would be to streamline the technical assistance and dissemination activities that are contained within the ESEA and Office of Educational Research and Improvement laws. Currently, there are a host of organizations, ranging from regional labs to comprehensive centers. Their roles and the connection among them are unclear. Few have any relationship to the national research centers, and fewer still are informed about or informed by the work being done in agencies such [End Page 44] as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and NSF.
The Department of Education has not given much thought to getting information directly into the hands of consumers (teachers) via the use of new forms of technology such as the Internet and CD-ROMs. Nor has any action been taken to teach teachers how to be informed consumers of research and evaluation information. The recent publication on comprehensive school reform by the American Institutes for Research, sponsored by several national education organizations, that takes a consumers' report approach is a good first step. These actions represent an extension of Hill's views on the creation of an Investments Division that would sponsor research, development, and statistics. Hill calls for dissemination, but a system that will serve the consumer must be carefully planned and implemented if it is to affect teaching and learning and result in improved student achievement.
While Hill recommends this Investments Division as a part of the Department of Education to handle these areas, I believe that the research function should be removed from the department and placed in an independent agency that I call the Agency for Learning. This agency would also serve to link together the research being done in all federal agencies that is relevant to education. By removing it from the department, and creating a policy board comprised of public officials and educators, it would be removed from the politics of the Department of Education.
While I agree with Hill that results should be defined in terms of student and school performance, the practical problems of doing that on a basis that is equitable across states are significant. Given the National Research Council report on the equating of state tests, the use of a national test seems to be the only reasonable approach. Without that or some similar mechanism, proxy measures, such as census poverty data, that are unfair, outdated, and irrelevant will have to be used.
Any attempt to look at a new and better way to structure federal aid and support for education must pay careful attention to special interest groups. While federal assistance and support programs can take on many different configurations, any proposal to advance in the legislative arena must factor in consultation with powerful lobby groups, such as the Council for Exceptional Children, the American Vocational Association, the Title I parents' organizations, and bilingual education organizations. I believe that each of these groups is ready to consider new approaches [End Page 45] to federal aid, but none will accept a plan without consultation and the willingness of the architect to accept modifications. Clearly, doing consultation is a dangerous game because one can easily lose control of both the issue and the idea. The alternative is yet another dead-on-arrival idea that will sink below the waves after a few days of fame.
