Full citation: U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Education, Legislative Plans for Financing Public Education, pamphlet no. 79, 1938.

Full citation: Ward W. Keesecker, Digest of Legislation Providing Federal Subsidies for Education, United States Department of the Interior, Bulletin No. 8, Government Printing Office, 1930.

This study was commissioned by the Bureau of Education for the sake of informing the Secretary of the Interior and Congress about history of federal support for schooling. It was published shortly after the enactment of various vociational aid bills and agricultural extension policies when Congress was considering general aid to elementary and secondary schools. The Smith-Towner bill failed passage in 1918, and was followed by the Smith-Towner bill, which would have established a grants-in-aid program for schools.

So, Congress was at a decision point: should it edge the federal government further into school funding and policy, or should it hold the line?

Congress chose the latter course, and mostly held that line until 1958 and the enactment of the National Defense Education Act.

Professor Swift, by the way, published a number of studies of education history and finance. He died in 1947.

The U.S. Senate requested a memorandum from Abraham Ribicoff, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. They asked his department to address the propriety of federal funds flowing to religious schools.

Remarkably, early in this document Secretary Ribicoff declares that the debate over the propriety of federal aid to schools was over.

“The power of the Congress to enact S. 121 [an educartion bill] rests on its constitutional authority to appropriate funds to provdie for the general welfare. The scope of that congressional power has been so broadly defined by decision of the Supreme Court… there is no need to review the controversy which for a century and a half surrounded the Federal power of expenditure” (p. 3).

That the U.S. Constitution makes no mention in Article 1 Section 8 of a congressional authority to support schooling is no matter.

The memoradnum goes on to say that federal funds for private schools was permissible, so llong as they benefited the child and provided only “incidental benefits to church schools” (p. 6).

Suffice to say, not everyone in Congress agreed with the propriety of federal grants-in-aid to schooling (public or private), and those battles have continued to this day, albeit with fewer combatants.

Full citation: U.S. Congress, Senate, Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Education, Constitutionality Federal Aid to Education in Its Various Aspects, 87th Congress, 1st session, document no. 29, May 1, 1961, U.S. Government Printing Office.