Carter Plans Department of Education

The Carter administration yesterday revealed a plan to create a new Department of Education with a special cabinet level post to ensure greater coordination between federal programs and direct access for educators to the President.

Carter's blueprint for the Department of Education pulls together a host of programs, including financial aid to college students and plans for inner-city public schools.

"The president has opted to create a strong department of education," Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.), chairman of the Committee on Education that sponsored the bill for the new department, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

The Carter administration's plan for the Department of Education includes virtually everything that Ribicoff and the other 56 senators on the Committee for Education wanted in the agency except the National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities.

High Grades from Harvard?

"The new department will allow education to get the ear of the president and the command of the media," Stephen K. Bailey, professor of Education and Social Policy at the School of Education, said yesterday. "What's good for national education is good for Harvard," he added.

However, Bailey said, not all professors here share his enthusiasm for the proposed department, because they fear that post-secondary school education would be slighted in favor of secondary and primary schooling.

"I respect my colleagues who fear a new Department of Education, but they are barking up the wrong tree," Bailey said, citing the fact that most of the current administrators in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) come from the university community.

Samuel Halperine, director of the Institute of Educational Leadership in Washington, told the Associated Press yesterday the percentage of money going to education within the HEW has decreased in recent years.

But Bailey said, "Education has paid the price for not having cabinet-level backing." He added, "In the HEW the 'H' and the 'W' have it all over the 'E'."

The United States has traditionall regarded education as a state and local affair, but in recent years a multi-billion dollar federal education budget and a widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of education in America have created intense pressure in Washington to give education cabinet-level importance, Bailey said.