Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
March 28, 2000, Tuesday 3 STAR EDITION
SECTION: A; Pg. 23
LENGTH:
709 words
HEADLINE: Government can save promises and
pay its IOUs
BYLINE: DIANE RAVITCH, TOM LOVELESS;
Ravitch and Loveless are senior fellows at the Brookings Institution.
BODY:
EDUCATORS are gratified that schools have
become the focus of so much political attention, but there is also a danger. In
the heat of the campaign, candidates might bid for votes by promising an
abundance of new federal education programs. We have a plan, and we think it
will save American education - from the politicians.
The federal
government's role in elementary and secondary education was
quite limited until recently. This was no accident: The Constitution does not
mention either education or schools. In 1965, however, Congress passed the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allocates aid to
schools that enroll poor children. Even now, federal support for the nation's
schools is minimal. State and local governments supply 93 percent of the funding
for schools, and Washington's share is only 7 percent.
Over the past 35
years, the federal government has targeted most of its dollars for needy
students: the poor (whose schools get extra dollars through a program called
Title I); the handicapped (special education); and bilingual students. During
the past several years, however, both major political parties have supported new
programs to expand drastically the federal role in the schools, including
subsidies and regulations for the purchase of new technology, reducing class
size, disciplinary codes, teaching methods for reading and mathematics,
recruiting new teachers and deciding what their qualifications should be and
selecting exemplary math textbooks.
This unprecedented expansion of the
federal role in education is taking place in the absence of compelling evidence
that existing federal programs have met their goals. Actually, most evaluations
indicate that the major federal programs have been relatively ineffective.
Here is our plan: First, the federal government should fix existing
federal education programs before taking on the job of running the nation's
schools. We see no reason to believe that Congress or any new administration is
better suited to directing local schools than the people who work in them, send
their children to learn in them and pay their taxes to support them.
For
example, the federal government has poured more than $ 100 billion into Title I
for poor kids, with little to show for it. Poor kids in Title I schools do not
perform better in school than poor kids who are not in Title I schools. Part of
the problem is that Title I is a funding stream, not a specific educational
strategy. We suggest that Title I money should go to kids, not school districts,
just the way higher education funding follows students.
The second part
of our plan is that the federal government should pay for its biggest unfunded
mandate on schools: special education. This program serves 5.2 million students
at a cost of about $ 43 billion, but the federal government puts up only about $
5.3 billion. These costs are sure to escalate in the future because of court
rulings that have blurred the line between medical care (which schools do not
have to provide) and "related services" (which schools are obliged to pay for).
In many school districts, special education consumes 20 percent of the
local budget. When the federal government passed the Individuals with
Disabilities Act in 1975, it pledged to pay 40 percent of its cost, but has
never put up more than 12 percent. If the federal government paid what it
pledged, this would release $ 12 billion a year to the nation's school
districts. With this windfall, schools could decide locally and without a slew
of federal regulations how they want to spend their money, whether to pay their
teachers more, reduce class size, buy new technology or do something else.
If Congress decided to pick up the cost of the entire federal mandate
for special education, the nation's schools would get $ 37 billion annually to
reallocate to their local educational needs.
Our plan would free schools
to use their money as they see fit, minimize the burden of regulations and
paperwork, remove the federal government from decisions about curriculum and
textbooks, and reduce the capacity of federal officials to impose their
political agendas, all while guaranteeing the basic principle that Washington
should pay for what it mandates.
GRAPHIC:
Drawing
TYPE: Editorial Opinion
LOAD-DATE: March 29, 2000 
