After 25 Years, ED is Here to Stay

Abstract

Based on interviews with some of the major players of the past quarter century and on research going back to the days shortly after the Civil War, Mr. Mollison tells the story of the department that would not die. ON THE silver anniversary of the U.S. Department of Education, participants on all sides of the perpetual debate over the proper role of the federal government in education are taking its survival for granted. Cato Institute this year issued its customary biennial call for Congress to demolish the department. But an education analyst at the libertarian think tank murmured, I don't know. Maybe next time we'll refashion our message. The department's here to stay, says Dale Listina. He and Gail Bramblett were the chief lobbyists on Capitol Hill for the National Education Association during a legislative war that stretched from 1977 to 1979. NEA's coalition won the war, and in 1980, the new department was born. It's not going away, concedes Chester Finn, Jr., who was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan during the New York Democrat's unsuccessful attempt to block the decision. Moynihan worked with a coalition of opponents led by Al Shanker, president of the NEA's organizing rival, the American Federation of Teachers. senator and the AFT leader argued that programs that helped families would receive a more consistent supply of money if their funding all flowed through one wide spigot into a single Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. secretary of HEW could make sure that the programs didn't overlap or leave gaps in service, they said. AFT's losing coalition included other AFL-CIO unions, defenders of local control of schools, and fiscal conservatives who predicted that the new department would inevitably seek more money and jobs. It also swept in Head Start employees and Catholic bishops, who feared that public school teachers from the NEA would dominate a separate education department. Business and university leaders were split or neutral on the issue. many who did take sides weren't very passionate about the pros and cons of rearranging bureaucratic boxes on the U.S. government's organizational charts. NEA's victorious alliance included most national associations of elementary and secondary educators, many state officials, some child advocacy and civil rights groups, and vocational rehabilitation specialists. independent union's permanent teams of volunteers -- thoroughly briefed and willing to take the time to visit their representatives in Congress -- were well organized in every state and almost every congressional district. Most important, the NEA had the help of President Jimmy Carter, an engineer by training, who genuinely enjoyed reorganizing government. Carter had pledged to seek a separate, Cabinet-level department of education during his 1976 campaign. That promise won him the first endorsement ever given by the NEA to a Presidential candidate. he wanted that endorsement again to help fend off a looming Democratic challenge by Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was anticipating strong support from AFL-CIO unions in the 1980 caucuses and primaries. At that time, the Office of Education was tucked deep within the bowels of HEW, four layers below the secretary. HEW also housed the Office for Civil Rights, whose enforcement of antidiscrimination laws in schools and colleges was limited by its need to devote some of its resources to noneducational duties. extraction of those two offices from the humongous department was the primary aim of the coalition formed by the NEA. When you talked to someone [in HEW's Office of Education], it was like punching a pillow. You could never get a decision, Dale Listina said in a recent interview. And at the top, there was always some horrible national crisis in health or welfare that took their minds off education. …