ENGLISH
FOR
CONGRESS POSITION PAPER (Revised April 2014)
The
Federal role in education has become very controversial, with
limited success to date in the two areas where the Federal
government has intervened, Special Education and No Child Left
Behind. Both have not received the promised share of
Federal funding when these programs were established, a 50-50
split of Special Education costs with the states and continuing
underfunding of No Child Left Behind. Federal educational
mandates on the states remain, however, and have become the
subject of much controversy. If the Federal government is
going to continue to intervene in elementary and secondary
education, it should fully fund the amounts promised lest it
lose credibility with the states and suffer the consequences of
underfunded and failed educational programs.
With the exception made for public schools in poverty areas, I
believe that the Federal role in education per se should be
limited to support of higher education at the college and
university level. The National Defense Education Act that
was passed in reaction to the Soviet Union's launch of the
Sputnik satellite was very successful in producing science and
engineering graduates during the space race. America's
graduate schools are now filled with foreign students that are
supported by their home governments while our own students
received little support other than college loans for their
graduate studies. It is not unusual for our college
graduates to begin their careers with $50,000 or more in student
loans that must be repaid at the time they are just beginning
their careers and settling down to family life. The rapid rise
in higher education costs has been exacerbated by diminished
funding from the states of their university systems because
runaway state expenditures for Medicaid and prisons have crowded
out increases in state funding for colleges and universities..
Specific Federal higher education support programs such as
generous scholarships and other financial aid for students
studying to be teachers and nurses in underprivileged and under
served areas would be an appropriate Federal effort to meet the
critical educational and healthcare deficiencies in these
locales.
The Federal role in elementary and secondary education should
concentrate upon the remedying the dysfunctional economic and
social environments that impede the educational development and
progress of at risk students in school districts with high
poverty and high crime environments. Schools are
educational institutions: they are not well-suited to be
individual therapy or community renewal institutions.
Schools can assist their communities with Federally-funded
student breakfast, lunch, before and after school programs, and
community health clinics, but they are not social welfare
institutions. Blaming public schools for not solving the
social and economic problems of their students is a thinly
disguised despicable attempt to divert attention from the
failure of the Federal government to address the continuing
poverty and the consequent social mayhem present in poorer
school districts. Targeted comprehensive Federal
assistance to address underlying social and economic problems in
these school districts should be the focus of Federal
educational support, not meddling with the curriculum, student
achievement, and qualifications of teachers, which are state
government responsibility.
One
of the ways Federal support could make a major beneficial impact
would be the funding of public boarding schools for highly
at-risk children living in harmful or dysfunction environments. A former Governor of
Minnesota, Rudy Perpich, proposed that boarding schools be
funded in his state to give children living in the worst at-risk
home situations the opportunity to succeed in a supportive
learning environment. He
benefited from a scholarship to a boarding school given to him
that enabled him to escape an at-risk childhood. However,
there can be no excuse for the Federal government's continued
refusal to accept its responsibility for the mismanagement of
the economy that has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs
that employed lower income citizens. It must fund massive urban
redevelopment jobs programs to rebuild and restore restore our
devastated communities. Hopefully, the improved neighborhoods
and job opportunities will strengthen family structures to
create stable and conducive learning environments for students
in residing those underprivileged communities.
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Designed by Imad-ad-Dean,
Inc.