Q: Should Congress close down the Department of Education

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 7, 1995 | by Steve Chabot, | Richard W. Riley

I believe education is part of our national purpose -- and it must remain a national priority -- but it is first and last a state responsibility and a local function. This is precisely why Goals 2000, our major piece of education legislation, was designed as a responsible block grant and why Goals 2000 and our new School-to-Work initiative have no federal regulations at all. We have gone to enormous effort during the last two years to establish a new regulatory environment in the department that can be properly described as "less is better." Goals 2000 moves the federal government away from a top-down regulatory approach to an entirely new relationship based upon support, partnership and flexibility. Forty-eight states have joined this effort, but they are free to join or not join as they see fit.

I know that this is a new way of doing business for the federal government and I imagine many people think it can't be done. But it is working and we ought to give it a chance.

Other critics charge that the department is a large, lumbering bureaucracy with an archaic management structure. Let us not forget that for 12 of the 15 years since the department was created, it was led by Republican appointees whose stated purpose was, if not shutting the agency down, then at the very least diminishing its mission. The way I see it, a department is not going to be succesful in anything if the top managers are less than fully committed to advancing its cause - in this case, education in America. The department used to be plagued with a long history of rapid turnover among senior political appointees. For example, the Office of Student Financial Aid, which administers the student-loan program, was managed by no fewer than 13 different assistant secretaries during the course of 15 years.

Things are different now. The department that our sharpest critics once led and now are trying to close no longer exists. I urge our detractors to take an honest look at what we have done during the last two and a half years. It is powerful proof of what can be accomplished with stable leadership. We have slashed red tape, reduced paperwork and cut existing regulations by 30 percent. By reducing the student-default rate from 22 percent to 15 percent and increasing collections on bad loans, the department has cut the costs of defaulted loans by more than 50 percent. These management savings alone have conserved $500 million a year -- which has offset the administrative costs of running the entire department during the last three years.

Our new direct-lending program has received high marks from all concerned. Also, we have eliminated 4 million paper forms by using technology and probably have saved a good-sized forest in the process.

I our budgets for fiscal years 1995 and 1996, we proposed the elimination or consolidation of 86 education programs to save $4.6 billion by the year 2000. And our current staff of 5,000 is one-third smaller than the 7,700 employees who administered federal education programs prior to the department's creation in 1979. This reduction was accomplished even though our services to students in schools and colleges doubled during the same period.