A Grade-by-Grade Reform for Federal Education Aid

AUSTIN, TEX. — What has happened to the bright promise of federal aid to education?

What went wrong with the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, supposed to pull our schools out of the nose dive they were in? That bill, called by President Lyndon B. Johnson “the most sweeping educational bill ever to come before Congress,” provided the first federal aid to public education in U.S. history. It was supposed to be the nation’s answer to its overcrowded, overburdened and overwhelmed schools--particularly the poor ones.

But now, 23 years and tens of billions of tax dollars later, our classrooms are still overcrowded, our teachers still overburdened, our schools still overwhelmed. Standardized test scores are down. The dropout rate is still a national scandal. And adult illiteracy is a national disgrace.

To be fair, some of these “failures” are the results of ambitious efforts to educate and graduate more children, across the social and economic spectrum. But that won’t explain the fact that well-funded, white, middle-class schools are graduating college-bound students who can’t write a simple, declarative sentence or solve a basic math problem.

Cynics will say they knew it all the time--that federal aid to education was doomed to failure. They will tell you that the U.S. educational system is a local affair and the federal government has no legitimate role in it.

But that argument misses the point--and confuses the issue. The problem is not the viability of the federal initiatives. The problem is the vitality of the federal commitment.

After all these years of study and research, of trial and error, we know what works in the classroom and what doesn’t. The problem is, every time we get started in one direction, the money is taken away, the emphasis changed, the policy reversed.

We know that many of the individual programs begun under federal legislation have worked.

We know that Head Start works. It has been one of the most successful educational initiatives of our time. It is an established fact that children who participate in Head Start are more likely to be literate when they grow up, to graduate, to go to college and to be employed. Yet today, only 16% of the children eligible for Head Start are enrolled. The funding isn’t there.

We know that special remediation programs in reading and math have turned tens of thousands of potential dropouts into potential college students. And yet, we have witnessed the steady erosion of federal remediation funding.

We know that reducing the student-teacher ratio works. Yet in the poor school districts, we have barely made a dent.

To be sure, the states could put this knowledge to use without the federal government’s help. Many have tried. Certainly we have heard a great deal about local educational reform in the past four or five years. Unfortunately, “reform” is often another name for teacher-baiting. Whenever there is a public outcry over the poor quality of education, the most convenient alternative to appropriating more money and upgrading schools is to find a scapegoat--heap all the blame on the teachers, already overwhelmed by the problems of the classroom.

Even when local reform efforts are genuine, states don’t have a better track record than the federal government when it comes to consistency of commitment. Few states have the financial staying power to see reforms through. In too many cases, they reach a point where the price tag overwhelms them--and that is particularly true for schools most needing reform and financial aid.

That is where the federal government comes in--or should. In addition to conducting research and acting as a national clearinghouse for new ideas, what the federal government does best is serve as a funding equalizer from school district to school district and state to state.

With a new Administration taking office, it is time for a fresh look at federal aid to elementary and secondary education. It is time for a new partnership between the federal government and the states--one that is creative and productive, built on consistency and a long-range commitment at all levels of government; that is financially realistic, so that both the federal government and the states can afford to buy into it without inciting a taxpayers’ revolt, one based on bipartisan support.

There is a way to build such a partnership, although it will take time and require patience. For this to work, we should target one grade at a time across the nation, bringing to bear on that grade all the teaching knowledge and instructional aids we have developed--and all the money we can afford. It will commit this nation to an orderly process of educational reform.

A state would have to match every federal dollar of new money with a new dollar of its own. This would require governors, state legislators and educational leaders to buy into the program at the outset.

During the program’s first year, efforts would focus on first grade. Additional funds could be used to lower class sizes or test children for learning disabilities. They could be used to provide for teaching assistants or special courses.

Appropriations would be relatively modest at first. The taxpayers would not be asked to pay for educational reform all at once.

During Year Two, new money would be appropriated to improve the quality of instruction in the second grade. Special remedial courses in math might begin here. In Year Three, the reform process would reach third grade, and so on until the 12th year, when every grade has been covered.

There would be different emphases at each level, but at every level there would be an emphasis on making certain that basic skills are maintained. The key to success is never to allow students to lose the momentum gained in earlier grades. In 12 years’ time, we ought to have revitalized our educational system and made a dramatic reduction in the dropout rate.

There are, however, two potential objections to the plan.

First, the closer we get to Year 12, the larger the price tag grows. How can we be assured that taxpayers will be willing to stay the course when costs mount? Well, a large percentage of taxpayers will be school parents who have seen what educational reform can do for their children. I suspect we will be producing a generation of education lobbyists the likes of which we have never seen.

The second objection will be that 12 years is too long to wait for quality education throughout our schools. But we have already spent 23 years using the scattershot approach and are now back where we started.