​President Biden’s wife calls him “the education president.” Critics say that Biden has failed America’s students. Behind the praise or blame of a president’s performance in education is an ever-present debate: whether the president or federal government has a constitutional role to play in education at all. 

And yet, America continues to produce federal education policy and feels the effects of an entire department dedicated to education. Grassroots movements like education choice and parent-driven education have grown tremendously over time, oftentimes precisely because families want to opt out of an increasingly politicized and oftentimes bureaucratic system of public education.  

While the recent movement in education policy seems to be back toward state, local and family institutions, federal policy is an ongoing fixture of the policy landscape we live with today.  

Early efforts to create a department of education 

There were efforts to create a federal education entity almost as far back as the Civil War. However, the story of its creation has always been one of tension: federal encroachment versus federalism, politicization of education versus student learning, and questions surrounding the constitutional legitimacy of federal efforts in education. 

In 1867, an early Department of Education was created. It was intended to be an entity that needed only a handful of staff to gather data on the best ways to improve education. Due to concerns of it gaining too much control, eventually it was downgraded from a department to bureau within the Department of Interior, called the United States Office of Education, which got hosted by other federal departments over time. For instance, in 1939 it was moved to the Federal Security Agency. By 1953 the Office of Education was housed within the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW).  

The National Education Association (NEA – a teacher’s union) supported a clearer federal institution dedicated for education. However, the NEA and other groups also objected some early proposals like moving it from HEW to the Department of Defense out of fear that it would become too political and that it would loosen important ties to aspects of health and welfare.  

When Jimmy Carter was running for president, the teachers’ union agreed to back his candidacy if he would commit to creating a Department of Education, which he followed through on in 1979. The Department of Education that we know today became operational in 1980. Ever since, abolishing or diminishing the Department of Education has been a talking point of conservative presidential candidates, since many see the agency as ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst.  

Federal policy and funding 

Of course, federal education policy does not necessarily rely on the existence of a department. Federal education policy was created for years regardless of the official entity, often through Congress. 

The early 1900s saw the federal government directly funding education in a number of ways. In 1917, vocational education became a push of the federal government with the Smith-Hughes Act, which gave federal aid to precollegiate public schools. After World War II, the federal government expanded its support of education by passing legislation like: (1) the Lanham Act of 1941, which aided the construction of schools; (2) the “GI” bill of 1944, which helped veterans pay for college or training; and (3) the Impact Aid laws of 1950, which aided local districts with school operating costs affected by federal activities. 

Another well-known example of the expansion of federal education policy occurred after Russia launched Sputnik. America’s leaders felt the nation was behind technologically and that we had lost our competitive edge. In response, in 1958 Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which allowed the federal government to grant funds to American high schools to support science, mathematics and foreign language, which was an early forerunner of STEM efforts that we see today. 

Then the nation dove into the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The United States Supreme Court ruled against segregation (the separate but equal standard) in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Furthermore, federal enforcement by the Justice Department was required to implement desegregation policies at the school level when people resisted the court’s holding. 

The 1960s also brought President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program. This included “war on poverty” legislation passed by Congress like the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). During this time, Congress also passed the Higher Education Act. Both of these federal laws still govern federal public funding of education in significant ways today. They have also brought about noteworthy federal education initiatives – some successful, many unsuccessful and nearly all controversial. For instance, the regular re-authorization of ESEA became the vehicle for federal education policies like the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 (NCLB) under President George W. Bush, and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 under President Barack Obama.  

ESEA also created and still authorizes Title I funding for schools serving a high number or high percentage of students living in poverty. This program remains a very prominent feature of education policy discussions today. 

In 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children (the name was changed to Individuals with Disabilities Act, or IDEA, in 1990). This federal law requires schools to serve the educational needs of students with special needs. It created a right to a “free and appropriate education which emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs.” Today, families of students with special needs in public schools interact with this law daily. 

During President Ronald Reagan’s administration, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published a report called “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” in 1983, which condemned a host of performance measures in American education. Again, part of its purpose was to ensure the nation was doing enough to compete during the Cold War. While the Reagan administration was highly critical of the existence of the U.S. Department of Education, this report was a spearhead for education policy discussions which ultimately led to other efforts.  

Some efforts started to coalesce around improving education through standards, starting with President Bill Clinton’s administration, and culminating in his immediate successor’s No Child Left Behind push for state standards and assessments to reach proficiency.  

Federal policies since then have at times tried to restore power back to the states (with ESSA) or at other times issued guidance on topics that have been controversial (like bathroom policies relating to gender identity). In the end, where federal education policy began in the 19th century as an intermittent effort whose impact was marginal, it grew during the 20th century into the permanent and substantial fixture of the education landscape, where it remains in the 21st century. 

The impacts of federal involvement in education 

Aside from the question of constitutionality, critics often say that federal involvement has been ineffective at best and controversial at worst. 

To show its ineffectiveness, some point to longitudinal data we have of American education performance, which is the of the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), sometimes called the Nation’s Reports Card.  

For example, data show that while fourth-grade math and reading scores increased from years 1978 to 2004, the gains diminished by eighth grade and disappeared by twelfth grade.  

From 1996 to 2017, NAEP math scores improved substantially, but the growth was not a linear pattern. In fact, 2017 scores were identical to scores in 2009 and some years even saw decreases. For this same time period, reading score gains were more modest.  

Furthermore, looking at the black-white performance gaps from 1996 to 2017 reveals that the gap narrowed but remained significant in math. Worse, the black-white gap in reading scores remained unchanged for those two decades. This is especially disconcerting when considering that NCLB aimed at improving scores for disadvantaged students. This period – 1996 to 2017 – should have reflected NCLB’s effects if any were to be found. 

Controversies have also sprung from federal involvement. Although federal sources account for only about 8 percent of all elementary and secondary public-school revenues, the Department of Education has the third largest budget of any federal cabinet department. While participation in programs is always voluntary, there is intense political pressure for states and districts to seek and accept whatever funds they can get. This means in effect that the federal government creates education policy that impacts public schools across the board on a regular and ongoing basis. 

Importantly, funds come with requirements with which states must comply to receive funding, some of which further the political agenda of a particular administration, political party or interest group. The highly controversial Common Core standards are a prime example of federal policy being incentivized by an administration and detested by states at large. Federal guidance regarding discipline policies like restorative justice practices have also been controversial. In short, federal policy is often politically charged and, increasingly, polarizing – causing headaches for states, local districts, parents and students alike. 

In recent years, the politization of education has become difficult to ignore, both at the state and federal level. Whether liked or not, federal levers are a significant part of that equation, and presidential hopefuls reveal the degree to which that is true by the ways in which they champion their education platforms – often using them as a basis to attack their political opponents as much as simply to promote their own ideas. Parent-driven education options are springing up, which may, in a significant way, diminish the traditional influences on our children’s education. 

Conclusion 

The federal role in education is as hotly debated today as ever before. It is not likely to go away spontaneously, but its influence may wane as parents continue to take advantage of opportunities to drive the education of their children.