Q: Should Congress close down the Department of Education

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

As a result of our overall management efforts, administrative costs account for just 2 percent of the agency's budget. We deliver 98 cents on the dollar in education assistance to states, school districts, colleges and individuals. I believe we are on the right track.

Another reason often cited for shutting down the department is the assertion that public education has declined as federal involvement has grown. This criticism is false and really amounts to nothing more than an attack on the institution of public education.

A decade ago, the American people read a now-famous report, A Nation at Risk, issued by Terrel Bell, secretary of education under President Reagan. This report did not say that a state was at risk but that the nation was at risk, and that the nation needed to act with one purpose to improve schools. A decade of steady effort has moved us forward. Nearly half of all high-school graduates now take the tougher core curriculum recommended by the report. The number of students participating in the Advanced Placement program has tripled since 1982, while math and science scores have increased for all age groups during the same period.

The dropout rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has fallen from 14 percent in 1982 to 11 percent in 1993. And the percentage of high-school graduates who have enrolled in college has increased from 49 percent in 1980 to 62 percent in 1992. The department provides 70 percent of all aid for students entering postsecondary education. This is an extraordinary record.

Public education surely should be more demanding; it still is not where it needs to be when it comes to educating all of our young people for the future. But it is not flunking by a long shot, even though public education is at ground zero of almost every social, economic and cultural tension of our time. In some communities I have visited, the local public school remains the best and only anchor for young people who are trying to pull themselves up.

We live in difficult and insecure times and a good many Americans are rightly concerned about their children's education and the values they are learning outside the family. Despite what the vocal minority would have us believe, a vast majority of the American people recognize the value of education and the role that this department can play in making it better.

Every poll that I have seen this year shows that large majorities of citizens, ranging from two-thirds to more than 80 percent, believe that continued support for the Department of Education is important -- and that balancing the budget should not come at the expense of education.

Since the day I took office, my primary goal has been to make the Department of Education an agency that will serve the nation's education needs for the 21 st century. However, both the proposal to merge the Education Department with the Labor Department and the Back to Basics Education Reform Act now being considered by Congress simply take us backward. Both would silence the voice of education in the president's Cabinet. Both would bury federal education programs deep within much larger agencies. Both project large administrative savings with little justification. But most importantly, both would set back the bipartisan progress we have made in education reform.