May 08 2009
Federal Aid to Education
This spring I have been researching about the origins of federal aid to education—the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 in the Eisenhower Presidential Library. If you care about No Child Left Behind, whether you agree or disagree, you should know that all federal aid to education including NCLB can be traced to the original federal education funding of NDEA in 1958.
Because the launch of Sputnik spooked the American public, supporters of federal aid to public schools were able to get the ball rolling by tying school funding to a perceived national crisis; thus the National Defense Education Act was born.
Not everyone bought into the need for federal funding for schools. For instance Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote the following brief opinion about the NDEA:
This bill and the foregoing remarks of the majority remind me of an old Arabian proverb:
If the camel once get his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.
If adopted, the legislation will mark the inception of aid, supervision, and ultimately control of education in this country by Federal authorities.
To continue the precedent of state and local control, and to ensure its passage, the law was very explicit in ensuring that the federal government would have no control over public schools.
Sec. 102. Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution or school system (National Defense Education Act of 1958)
Indeed the law did pass when President Eisenhower signed the bill. Here is the statement he made at the time:
You will notice that Ike was also a strong supporter of decentralized control of schools. He notes that the NDEA was only intended to be a short-term remedy to a national crisis when the nation needed more scientists and technologists, with a planned end for the program after four years.
The NDEA did have the intended effect, spurring great strides in math & science education. America ultimately did land a man on the moon, and survive the threat of the cold war.
Kansas primary school students studying science with hands-on experiments.
Kansas High School students learning “Binary Numbers,” the basis upon which digital computer work.
However, since 1958 federal aid to public schools has remained a steady part of the public school landscape—but the original hands-off, decentralized control aspect has become a distant memory. Under federal direction, our schools have become focused upon narrow standards, primarily in math and reading. When I asked my daughter’s teacher about the science that they do in first grade this year, he told me he that the time available is limited because of the push for testing in math and reading.
Also interesting, my daughter recently mentioned to me that her “painting shirt” was wasted this year because they didn’t get the paints out even once this year! This is not a complaint against her teacher at all. He does an excellent job. I spent a day watching him work, and I may go back again soon if I can work it into my schedule before school lets out. But this is a very strong complaint against a system that I believe is headed down the wrong path.
I’m not worried for my daughter. She lives in a very enriched home environment. We think about and talk about a broad variety of things at our house. I am worried for the kids who don’t live in such a place, who depend on the school to provide an excellent, broad education. All of the focus on the testing and accountability isn’t heading us in the right direction.
I know plenty of people think the same way. But what can be done when all of our schools are dependent upon federal dollars to operate and those federal dollars come with strings attached? I wonder if the congressional leaders who voted in 1958 for that first NDEA law could see where we are today, would they have still passed the bill that ultimately changed the way American schools operate?
