Federal versus State Control of Education

What will be the impact of closing the Department of Education?

This week the Trump administration shut down the department of education. This will have an enormous impact on the education of American students. Historically the argument about state versus federal control of schooling has caused tension and until The Civil Rights Act of 1964 schooling was largely left to states. This meant there was enormous inequality as schools in minority and low income districts had fewer resources and in many states children were segregated by race. The Civil Rights Act provided much needed federal intervention to ensure that public schools banned segregation based on race, color, religion or national origin. This applied to all schools receiving federal funding and gave the Federal Government greater power and oversight over education by withholding funding from schools that engaged in discrimination. The passage of the Civil Rights Act shifted education from state control to a Federal concern, making education a civil rights issue requiring federal oversight in order to ensure equal educational access to all students. This set the stage for later educational reforms.

Inspired by the passage of the Civil Rights Act Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965, which included title 1 funding, providing federal funding to schools with high percentages of low income students.  It also expanded involvement in special education, bilingual education and support for minority students. Today Title 1 is the largest federal education program (over 16 billion annually) and supports over 25 million low income students. It is not hard to imagine the results of withdrawing that financial support.

The US Department of Education was officially established, by an act of Congress, as an independent federal agency on October 17, 1979, under President Jimmy Carter. It was established to oversee federal funding for schools and higher education and to enforce the civil rights laws as well as to improve efficiency and centralize national education efforts. The only way to legally shut it down would require passing a new law in Congress to repeal the Department of Education Organization Act. Therefore the move by Trump to shut down the department is unconstitutional.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not address gender discrimination. The rise of the Women’s Rights Movement of the 60s and 70s shone a light on the huge inequalities women faced in access to higher education (colleges had quotas limiting the admission rate of women and some colleges banned women), equal pay in the work force, access to promotions, little to no funding for women’s athletic programs and fewer opportunities all around. The relentless leadership of the feminist movement by women such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem led to the passage of Title 1X of the Education Amendments of 1972. It is significant to note that only one woman served in the Senate at the time and 15 women in Congress and that the passage of this amendment was a result of the commitment by these women (they were not without the support of some men) to see an end to gender discrimination. The core provision of Title 1X is "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." This law has increased women’s participation in sports with over 200,000 women participating in college sports today, higher female enrollment in colleges and universities with women earning over half of college degrees today in the US, and it provided some protection from sexual assault and harassment by requiring schools to investigate and address all complaints of sexual misconduct. It was a huge step forward in social evolution.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was passed in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) and later renamed IDEA in 1990. It guaranteed that children with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education (FAPE). It guaranteed equal access to educational opportunities for all students alongside their peers. It required Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to meet students’ unique needs and parental input and support. To meet these needs increased federal funding was authorized for special education. As of the 2022–2023 school year, approximately 7.5 million students aged 3 to 21 received special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), accounting for about 15% of all public school students in the United States.

All these laws were a great step forward in protecting civil and human rights for all Americans. The Department of Education was entrusted to ensure that these laws were practiced in all states. It is a sad and shameful fact that, without the oversight of the federal government, in some parts of the country we will regress socially and those most impacted will be our most vulnerable citizens. Among MAGA followers and some of the bible belt it is firmly believed that white men have authority over all others. This, of course, is an irrational fear response, but must be seen as a serious threat to the safety and wellbeing of women and minorities in those states. While it is unlikely that the courts will allow Trump to shut down the Department of Education, he can greatly impact its effectiveness and work.

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If the Department of Education had stayed within the boundary of protecting human and civil rights in education we would have done well but The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. This was where federal oversight exceeded its mandate by significantly expanding its imprint in education requiring mandatory standardized testing in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. It was the dawning of an era of dramatically narrowing down and standardizing the content of learning. If schools failed to reach national benchmarks they were punished by either being taken over, closed or having their funding reduced. This led to a swing away from teaching to learn to teaching to pass a test using a prescribed curriculum. There were also repercussions for teachers, often leading to firing, whose students didn’t meet the standards which led to competition among teachers leading to stress, depression and isolation. The culture in schools shifted away from collaborating on engaging and exciting projects to pencil and paper practice of basic skills. This has resulted in an exodus of many of our most talented teachers from the profession.

Because of these issues, NCLB was replaced in 2015 by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which gave states more flexibility while keeping accountability measures. It still required testing for the same grades but gave states more control over how the results are used and states can use their own performance goals and accountability systems. The new law removed the provision that punished low performing schools allowing states to determine how to intervene in struggling schools. It also removed the federal mandate to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. This was an improvement but in spite of this, the excessive focus on testing and standardization severely limits the time spent on critical thinking and project based learning and in many schools this kind of learning is absent.

Having taught through all of these changes I have to say that the most exciting period to be a teacher was in the 80s. This was the era of alternative schools, pilot schools and experimentation in schooling. The engagement and participation of students was dramatically different from the passivity we see in today’s students. Today’s students are more concerned about their grade than their learning and will want to know what a teacher is looking for rather than pursuing and sharing their own learning. Admittedly there were failing schools and districts in the 80s which is what precipitated NCLB. But those schools were in less well funded districts and often served minority and low income students. If states had offered support to these schools instead of ignoring them we would not have needed federal intervention. But historically we have always undervalued the worth of low income people and districts and left them behind while propping up more affluent areas. This had to change. And teachers had to change too, away from teaching in the way they felt was best, to following a prescribed curriculum. We teachers, who were trained and qualified to do the job, were no longer making the decisions. Our profession was taken over by business leaders, politicians and the publishing industry. It was indeed a bleak and uninspiring time for teaching.

In conclusion, do we need a Department of Education? In my opinion we do. Because the funding of schools comes primarily from local property taxes we have systemic conditions that lead to huge inequalities in access to education. This guarantees the continuation of a society that is classist and fails to address the needs of our most vulnerable citizens, while providing the greatest opportunities to those with wealth. In reality if all school districts were allotted the same budget by the federal government we could improve the conditions that lead to inequality but then who has oversight over the content of a school curriculum. This tension between state and federal control is something to be grappled with as we try to navigate our way to a society that provides equal opportunities to all its citizens.  The priorities of the Trump administration are not concerned with equal opportunity and promoting human and civil rights. We can see by their actions that, as a society, we continue to have a huge problem with systemic racism and sexism.  Without federal oversight of these basic rights the people most impacted by closing the Department of Education will be our African American and Latino citizens, our women and children with disabilities. It is my hope that Congress will not allow it to close and that states will be able to step up and fill the gap. Only time will tell.