Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

It’s with some amusement that I read the overheated debate about abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. For one thing, there is a vast difference between those who want to eliminate the federal role in education, and those who want to return ED to its former home in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. But since neither of those things is going to happen, I guess it doesn’t matter if they are lumped together.

On the other hand, there are those who think getting rid of ED would “destroy public education as we know it,” and that those abolitionists are “strange bedfellows in Crazy Town.” This attitude only demonstrates the hopelessness of the task. If talk of eliminating or downgrading a Cabinet department is beyond the pale, maybe the Postmaster General should be returned to his spot.

Since the argument is academic, I thought I would engage in some academics. I dug up Public Law 96-88, the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979. This is the federal statute that created the U.S. Department of Education, and it makes for some fascinating reading. I particularly like this section on federal-state relationships:

(a) It is the intention of the Congress in the establishment of the Department to protect the rights of State and local governments and public and private educational institutions in the areas of educational policies and administration of programs and to strengthen and improve the control of such governments and institutions over their own educational programs and policies. The establishment of the Department of Education shall not increase the authority of the Federal Government over education or diminish the responsibility for education which is reserved to the States and the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the States.

(b) No provision of a program administered by the Secretary or by any other officer of the Department shall be construed to authorize the Secretary or any such officer to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, over any accrediting agency or association, or over the selection or content of library resources, textbooks, or other instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, except to the extent authorized by law.

If you are a masochist, you can even delve into the 1,866-page legislative history of the department’s establishment, beginning with a speech by Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT) on February 21, 1977, in which he explained why a separate Department of Education was necessary:

Education is not given the priority attention it needs. We cannot help but become more aware that problems with our education system are worsening. In March of 1976, the Office of Education released a study showing a 10-year decline in reading skills among American students. In November 1975, the college entrance examination board reported that 1975 scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test showed the biggest drop in 20 years. College educators are more and more concerned about the low reading and writing ability of high school graduates. In one of our major universities, nearly half of the freshman class was required to take remedial courses in English. Surely we must make education a long-overdue national priority.

The U.S. Department of Education was needed, Sen. Ribicoff said, because “If there is one point on which most Americans will agree, it is that the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is too large and too bureaucratic to effectively or efficiently manage the numerous programs under its jurisdiction.”

That’s fine, except the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare was created in 1953 in order to correct the shortcomings of its predecessor – the Office of Education under the Federal Security Agency. President Eisenhower said:

Although the effecting of the reorganizations provided for in the reorganization plan will not in itself result in immediate savings, the improvement achieved in administration will in the future allow the performance of necessary services at greater savings than present operations would permit. An itemization of these savings in advance of actual experience is not practicable.

This also was fine, except the Office of Education was placed under the Federal Security Agency because of problems related to its previous association with the Department of the Interior. In establishing the Federal Security Agency in 1939, President Roosevelt said:

Because of the relationship of the educational opportunities of the country to the security of its individual citizens, the Office of Education with all of its functions, including, of course, its administration of Federal-State programs of vocational education, is transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Federal Security Agency. This transfer does not increase or extend the activities of the Federal Government in respect to education, but does move the existing activities into a grouping where the work may be carried on more efficiently and expeditiously, and where coordination and the elimination of overlapping may be better accomplished. The Office of Education has no relationship to the other functions of the Department of the Interior.

Well, there had been a reason to assign the Office of Education to the Department of the Interior. You see, when it was first established, in 1867, its sole purpose was to collect and disseminate education statistics. Oddly enough, there were a few people who questioned whether that limited mission might be expanded at a later date. They included Rep. Andrew Jackson Rogers (D-NJ), who on June 5, 1866, had this to say (page 2969):

Sir, it is hardly necessary for me to stand here and show what are the constitutional objections to this bill. No man can find anywhere in the letter or spirit of the Constitution one word that will authorize the Congress of the United States to establish an Educational Bureau. If Congress has the right to establish an Educational Bureau here in this city for the purpose of collecting statistics and controlling the schools of the country, then,  by the same parity of reason, a fortiori, Congress has the right to establish a bureau to supervise the education of all the children that are to be found in the thirty millions of the population of this country. You will not stop at simply establishing a bureau for the purpose of paying officers to collect and diffuse statistics in reference to education.

Rogers, it should be noted, had been a teacher.

You can work hard today, or you can pretend to work hard by watching smart people talk about public education. Hmmm…

Here is the full 87-minute video of the American Enterprise Institute’s panel “What Do the Midterm Elections Mean for Education?” held yesterday in DC. It’s well worth the time investment, but if you just leave it running, you can gently close your eyes and snooze and your boss will be none the wiser.

MAPlight.org helpfully accumulated all the campaign spending on California’s nine statewide ballot initiatives and concluded that Charles T. Munger, Jr. was the top contributor. Munger and his wife, Charlotte A. Lowell, gave more than $12.6 million to two redistricting measure campaigns.

The California Teachers Association was second, with more than $11.5 million in spending on five initiatives. But the MAPlight researchers counted the $2.2 million from NEA national headquarters separately. It’s certainly their prerogative to do so, but treating them as separate organizations should at least merit an asterisk.

The same holds true for the California Federation of Teachers (8th place – $3.3 million) and its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers (17th place – nearly $2.1 million). And that doesn’t even count the Alliance for a Better California, a coalition of public employee unions, including teachers, that contributed $1.1 million.

All told, public employee unions spent $25.5 million on ballot initiatives alone.

Click here to read:

1) What Comes Next in Public Education? Exams

2) AFT, SEIU Vie for Louisiana Support Employees

3) Last Week’s Intercepts

4) Quote of the Week

It doesn’t matter much in the large scheme of things, but one small bright spot for the teachers’ unions out of last week’s election was the successful defense of incumbent Democrat Rep. Tim Bishop in New York’s 1st district. It was one of NEA’s priority campaigns. The union specifically targeted Bishop’s Republican opponent, Randy Altschuler, with a radio ad.

The initial results showed Bishop with a 3,400 vote win, but a recanvassing erased Bishop’s lead and put Altschuler up by some 400 votes. A large number of absentee ballots remain, and it’s likely that the loser will want a recount, so this race, along with several others, might swing the other way.

NEA sent out its first post-mortem to its members, staff and activists. It is pretty straightforward.

Education policy/ESEA Reauthorization:

The new Speaker of the House is expected to be Representative John Boehner (R-OH) and Representative John Kline (R-MN) is expected to serve as the Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee.  Under their leadership, Republicans are likely to be more focused on local control of school systems and local decision making.  This week, Representative Kline outlined broad-based priorities for education and employment policy, including “pursuing education reform that restores local control, empowers parents, lets teachers teach, and protects taxpayers.”  Representative Kline has also been a supporter of full funding for special education.  Areas that NEA will be watching closely will include proposals for private school vouchers and increased support for charter schools. 

Education Funding:

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), a rising star in GOP who has burnished his credentials as a fiscal hawk is likely to serve as Chair of the House Budget Committee, while either Representative Hal Rogers (R-KY) or Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA), past chairman of the Appropriations Committee, could serve as Appropriations Chair.  Republicans are expected to push hard on spending and are likely to propose dramatic cuts to education and other domestic priorities.  Already, would-be Speaker of the House John Boehner has proposed cutting all non-defense federal spending to FY2008 levels.

Social Security:

Some Republican candidates for House and Senate promoted privatization of Social Security, cuts to benefits, and raising the retirement age for eligibility.  The National Fiscal Commission on Reform and Responsibility is expected to make recommendations to Congress and the President by December 1 that could include some of these proposals. 

Health Care Reform:

While full-on repeal of the Health Care bill is unlikely to be enacted, Republicans have been vocal about defunding portions of the law or stopping full implementation.  It seems likely that Republicans will seek some changes to the historical Health Care reform act, particularly any requirements on small businesses and individual mandates.

Some of it makes you go “Hmmmm…” and much of it makes you go “Whaaa?” Here are a few post-election items I really enjoyed.

* Politico headline – “AFL-CIO says it helped Dems”

A lot of layers here. Of course the AFL-CIO helped Dems. That’s what it does. But if your big triumph was “We saved the Senate Majority Leader from defeat by a flawed GOP former state assemblywoman,” you didn’t have a good year. Left unexamined: how being seen as the water-carriers for public employee unions hurt Democrats – at least outside of California. Which leads to…

* ”GOP ‘run over by a truck’ in down-ticket races”

Whatever your political persuasion, no one likes to read unrelentingly bad news for days at a time. So as a service to my Democratic and liberal readers, I provide a link to this Los Angeles Times story about how the Republican Party in California was not only “run over by a truck,” but scraped off the road, thrown into a bin, and taken to the city dump, where it was run over again by a bulldozer.

The South brought us the term “yellow dog Democrats,” but in California we have roadkill Republicans.

Union money helped elect Tom Torlakson as state superintendent of public instruction, where his ballot designation was “teacher/legislator.” Torlakson taught from 1972-78 before entering politics full-time.

My favorite anecdote in this story was: “Among the down-ticket winners was San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, elected lieutenant governor less than a year after saying he had no idea what the state’s second-highest-ranking official does.”

So if you’re a depressed Democrat because your state went dark red, take a couple of weeks off and visit California. Besides, we could really use the cash.

* Quotes of note:

+ “It is the most efficient and data-driven program we have ever done.” – Karen White, NEA’s national political director, on the union’s 2010 campaign operation.

+ “We support anyone who supports public education. We are bipartisan.” – White again.

+ “The old days of defending the status quo have kind of evaporated over the last two years.” – Rep. George Miller (D-CA), outgoing House education committee chairman.

+ “If it amounts to getting rid of some of the onerous federal intrusion and micromanagement of schools, we’re for that. If it means [Republicans] adopt a position of no federal role in education, … we’d oppose that. We just don’t know.” - Kim Anderson, NEA’s director of government relations.

* Finally, there is this from Andrew Kelly, guest-blogging for Rick Hess, who contrasts the statements after the 1994 mid-terms with what actually happened. Read it and weep:

What actually happened? Most of these predictions never came to pass. Indeed, efforts to abolish the Department of Education failed, and federal education spending actually grew–and grew a lot–under the new Republican majority. All totaled, between the 1994 capture of the House and the Republican loss in 2006, total appropriations for the Department of Education almost tripled (in 2009 dollars), and spending on elementary and secondary education grew by 2.5 times. Total discretionary spending shrank briefly after the ’94 election, but it started to grow again after 1996 and ultimately more than doubled between ’94 and ’06.

What’s more, the ’94 elections actually sowed the seeds that eventually produced NCLB, one the most massive expansions of the federal role in education since the Great Society.