ENGLISH FOR SENATE POSITION PAPER ON:
Federal Role
in Education
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 the $45 Billion to date in 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 interevene 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.
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 exacberated 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 for students studying to be teachers and nurses in
underprivileged and underserved areas would be an appropriate Federal
effort to meet the critical educational and healthcare deficiences 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, afterschool 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 comprehesive 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.
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Designed by Imad-ad-Dean,
Inc.