A new look at the federal aid issue

Abstract

As MEMBERS of a national community, we are called upon from time to time to re-examine the relationship of our federal government to our public schools. Our Federal Constitution contains no reference to education; this important responsibility is reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment. However, shortly after the Federal Constitution was adopted, the United States Congress approved liberal Federal Land-Grants to states to stimulate and assist in the development of public schools. It is remarkable that the constitutional decision to reserve to the states the responsibility for public education and the congressional decision to aid and stimulate state action in the development of public schools should be made by essentially the same national leaders within such a short period of time. This early action foreshadowed a type of national ambivalence pertaining to education which has cropped up from time to time in our history-on the one hand, a genuine national concern about the adequacy of our public schools and, on the other, a determination not to us6 the federal government machinery as the vehicle for attacking the problem. Our national concern about public education reached a high point in 1857, when we created the United States Office of Education, directing it to collect and diffuse information regarding schools and methods of teaching that would aid the people in the establishment and maintenance of an efficient school system and to otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country. Again, in 1917, largely as a result of the need for skilled workers revealed and accentuated by World War I, we enacted the Smith-Hughes Act, designed to stimulate public schools to place greater emphasis upon vocational education. This national action, like the earlier Morrell Act providing Federal aid for colleges of agriculture, was directed toward increasing our economic productivity-not toward increasing the support underlying the total public school system. More recently we have embarked upon a national program of Federal