Repackaging Federal Aid

In the past decade, Congress has viewed federal aid to education in three different ways: first as a suspect notion, then as a sacred cow and now as a bog of bureaucratic hobbling. Last week the general confusion left U.S. public schools facing considerable uncertainty.

At issue in the House was an effort by liberal Democrats to fatten President Nixon's school-aid requests for the 1971-72 academic year by $728.6 million. Such moves have worked twice since 1969; last year Congress overrode a presidential veto, thus giving Nixon a Scrooge image. But last week's attempt lost by five votes. The defeat underscored rising public skepticism toward the idea that more money guarantees better schools. Last week Nixon himself reflected that mood in his message to Congress on 1972-73 federal aid to elementary and secondary schools.

Nixon proposed a modest $200 million in new federal spending, although he did not specify where the money would be found. To promote desegregation and concentrate existing funds on special teaching for disadvantaged children, he urged cutbacks in administrative staffs and library construction. Nixon hopes to sweeten the pot with some of the $5 billion in no-strings "general" revenue sharing that he wants Congress to give states. If the states followed their current budget pattern, 41% of the federal money would go to education. But would it? Skeptics fear that some states would use no-strings money for other purposes.

National Priorities. The issue is clearest in Nixon's proposals for turning programs now aimed at specific goals into broader "special" revenue-sharing grants. In last week's message, Nixon urged such a shift for 97 "narrow purpose" programs that now disburse $2,800,000 for everything from Braille records to experimental curriculum materials. They include virtually every section of the Johnson Administration's Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

The red tape swaddling those programs has slowed down local school administrators, who must draw up detailed spending proposals to get their funds. The proposals must then be shuffled in Washington by as many as 24 different officials. In some programs, administrative costs eat up 500 of every dollar spent. The upshot is that comprehensive planning vanishes as states get mired in the federal maze.

Under Nixon's plan, no state would receive less federal aid than it gets now, but the miscellaneous grants would be merged in "national priority areas," notably the teaching of disadvantaged children. Others include vocational education, books and counseling. Within each category, state education departments, currently of widely varying quality, would make the major decisions about which school districts would receive the money. The plan's logic is hard to fault, although some observers worry that it might only shift red tape from Washington to the state level.

The proclivity of some states for shortchanging the poor and using federal money to promote segregation encouraged the strict federal guidelines in the first place. To curb this tendency, Nixon would make state education departments retain some guidelines for special revenue sharing in poverty areas.

Church and State. Nixon also said that no money should go to schools that discriminate racially. His regulations, though, would be enforced by state education departments, not Washington. Thus, Albert Shanker, president of New York City's United Federation of Teachers, voiced a common concern: Nixon's plan might effectively turn civil rights enforcement over to "the very states guilty of discrimination." Another problem: Nixon intends to "considerably broaden" aid to private and parochial schoolchildren. Critics fear that the South's all-white "segregation academies" might qualify for such aid. In addition, states that gave more federal funds to parochial schools might face deepening legal disputes over whether they were violating clauses in their own constitutions that separate church and state.

Nixon has not yet submitted specific legislation to carry out most of his education recommendations. Amid the swirl of opposition to his revenue-sharing proposals in other areas, Congress is almost certain to extend current school-aid programs and take up revenue sharing next year.

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