The short-lived Academic Competitiveness Grant program, 2006

On By Kevin R. KosarIn LawsLeave a comment

This April 21, 2006 story in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes how Congress created the Academic Competititveness Grant (ACG) program. The program was part of a February 2006 omnibus law (P.L. 109-171) signed by President George W. Bush. The ACG was interesting for a few reasons:

  1. It is an example of Congress engaged in unorthodox lawmaking. The ACG apparently did not flow through regular order, with a bill introduced, referal to committee for study and amendment, etc. Some legislator added it to a deficit reduction package that runs 182 pages.
  2. The GOP-controlled Congress chose to give the GOP-led executive branch significant discretion to figure out how the program works. That’s not uncommon when the same parties controls the law-making and law-executing branches. But, lack of legislative clarity and failing to follow regular order means stakeholders can be awfully confused about what is happening. Which is what occured with ACG, according to the Chronicle story.
  3. The ACG was an unusual approach to school policy. It amended the Higher Education Act to offer additional Pell grant money to college students who had completed a “rigorous secondary school program of study.” So, on the one hand this is redistributive insofar as funds are only available to low-income individuals. On the other hand, it appears to be a roundabout way of trying to encourage schools to offer “rigorous” academic programs—that is, to raise education standards, which was a central goal of the Bush II administration. And, perhaps, it also aimed to fuel school choice by incentivizing low income students to mvoe to schools offering rigorous acadmeic programs.
  4. Last, the AGS statute created a council headed by the Secretary of Education to examine federal programs to improve math and science schooling—because there were concerns that American students were falling behind students in other nations. This resembles the motives that fueled the enactment of the National Defense Education Act of the Eisenhower era.

A 2006 Congressional Research Service report further describes the program, which ended in 2011. Presumably, President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats (who controlled both chambers, and neither wished to keep the program and simply ended it through executive action.

William Raspberry column on a forgotten federal voucher experiment, April 28, 1976

On By Kevin R. KosarIn Other ItemsLeave a comment

William Raspberry (1935-2012) was a great Washington Post columnist. He was a one of the first Black Americans to write for a major daily paper, and he was terrific at it. He won a Pulitzer and many accolades. His columns exuded commonsense, which all too often is in short supply in national debates. A professed liberal, he was anything but doctrinaire. He had a deep interest in real issues—poverty, crime, and equality of opportunity. And education, which he saw as being deeply intertwined with these matters.

This column was one of many he wrote on school choice. It is of particular interest to the federal Education Policy History site because it discusses a federal voucher experiment that few today know existed. His column describes the various special interests which stymied and killed the program.

Raspberry’s column also is a clarion reminder that school vouchers and choice has a complex history and should not be construed as a recent rightwing plot to defund the schools. For further information on the egalitarian origins of school vouchers, see Joseph P. Viteritti’s Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution, and Civil Society (Brookings, 1999).

For further discussion of the Alum Rock experiment, see David W. Kirkpatrick’s Choice in Schooling: A Case for Tuition Vouchers (Loyola University Press, 1990).

The Federal Agency for Education: History and Background Information

On By Kevin R. KosarIn StudiesLeave a comment

This report was published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan thinktank inside the Library of Congress. I worked at the agency for 11 years, and I can attest that Congress relies on CRS as a source for institutional memory. Why? Because policy history is complex and often long, and elected officials —who comes and go from Congress— rarely know that history.

This report was published shortly after Congress recreated the Department of Education in 1979. (You can see the law here.) I say recreated as Congress first established a department of education in 1867, a topic I essayed upon in Politico and which this CRS report also discusses.

Continue reading “The Federal Agency for Education: History and Background Information” →

Willard Walter Patty, Legal Basis of the Public Secondary Education Program of the United States, 1927

On By Kevin R. KosarIn BooksLeave a comment

This is an interesting book. The author, who wrote at least a few titles on education, sifted through state laws and other primary materials, to catalog the public policy objectives for public secondary schools. Among the interesting findings are: 10 states had schools to “inculcate honesty,” 9 states sought to teach the young to “cherish science,” and 25 sought to train pupils in morality.

Patty’s conducted his research after a flurry of state activity to make secondary schooling a norm for most if not all students. His book, then, is an empirical investigation to grasp what was going on and why.

This book is not easy to find. In the late 1990s, I got a copy from New York University’s Bobst library. To my delight, it still is there! There are other research libraries that have this volume. Seeing as the book is nearly a century old and highly unlikely to be under copyright, I wish someone would digitize it and put it online. (My PDF, alas, has only a handful of the opening pages.)

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Remarks on the 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of the U.S. Department of Education: The Transformation of Federal Education Politics

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Nela McCluskey Chris Cross Ron Kimberling Kevin Kosar 04-2020

Source: Cato.org. Kosar remarks start at 29:50.

Chris Cross and Ron Kimberling have spoken of the creation of the Department of Education and its earliest years in operation.

My own comments will focus on a broader issue of the Department of Education (ED) and the transformation of federal education politics. The establishment of ED was a major moment.

In short, the creation of the Department of Education rang the death knell for the very long national debate over the propriety of federal involvement in K-12 schooling. 

Consider one point: Forty years ago, it was well within the bounds of political discourse to argue that we do not need a Department of Education. Today, anyone who takes that position waved off as a libertarian or troglodytic paleoconservative. Today, you cannot be president by arguing that we really do not need a Department of Education. Continue reading “Remarks on the 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of the U.S. Department of Education: The Transformation of Federal Education Politics” →