a more accurate picture of the nation’s educational standing. But concerns were quickly raised that this new federal Department, led by education reformer Henry Barnard, had too ambitious an agenda and might exert too much control over local schools. Within a year the Department was downgraded in status and Barnard was notified of a hefty pay cut. He resigned, and the chastened Office of Education languished as a minor force over several decades as it was reassigned to and overseen by different Cabinet-level Departments.
Education for children of color continued to be limited in many areas, and when Reconstruction ended and the Jim Crow era went into effect, the segregation of services and facilities and schools was reimposed on a purported “separate but equal” basis across the South – but of course fell far short on the “equal” part of the equation for Black students.
Challenges to the “separate but equal” policies at institutions of higher learning began to take place in the first half of the 20th century. A young Thurgood Marshall, who decades later went on to become the first Black man appointed to the United States Supreme Court, worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to argue cases in Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas that broadened the opportunities for Black students in academia.
Marshall also argued the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1952. Brown v. Board of Education actually consolidated five separate cases that dealt with the constitutionality of segregation in public schools. Given the number and the complexity of the cases, and the potential these cases had to impact a momentous shift in policy, and a personnel change in the make-up of the Supreme Court, it took three years for the Supreme Court to issue the landmark ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
Desegregation did not come about peacefully. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enable the desegregation of public schools there. His successor to the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy, also called in the military to enforce the desegregation of schools in Mississippi and Alabama in the early 1960s.
That wasn’t the only consequential demographic shift that was taking place during that time. By the mid-1950s, nearly 8 million World War II vets had gotten education or training through the GI Bill, adding to a new, more highly-educated middle class. Their progeny represented a new baby boomer generation, which added to the need for school construction and staffing. And in 1957, with the Soviet Union’s successful launch into outer space of a beach-ball sized satellite dubbed Sputnik-1, the Space Race was on. The United States scrambled to play catch-up – not just in terms of growing weapons and technology programs, but also in bolstering the science and math curricula in America’s schools to support those industries.
In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs ushered in the Head Start program for at-risk preschoolers, and saw passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which guaranteed federal funding for school districts that served primarily students from low-income families.
And yet, despite these burgeoning programs, and an increased recognition of the importance of education to the civic and economic well-being of the country, the Department of Education was not reestablished for another 15 years.
In 1976, candidate Jimmy Carter received an important endorsement from the National Education Association on his way to winning the presidential election. Since the 1950s, education had been joined at the hip with other social concerns as part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The powerful NEA backed Carter’s candidacy based on a campaign promise that his vice presidential running mate, Walter Mondale, had made to educators – that a Carter-Mondale administration would elevate education to Cabinet-level status.
But this really wasn’t a priority for Carter, and he didn’t actually get around to following through on that promise until 1979 – just a few months before he launched his bid for reelection.
In 1980, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. One of the planks in Reagan’s platform had been to dismantle the brand new Department of Education and revert to more local control, “letting the fifty states – all those separate laboratories of democracy – chart their own courses on education.”
It was true that the Department of Education, which was still in its infancy, didn’t yet have much of a track record to go on. Nevertheless, Congress – which had just gone through the rigamarole of establishing the Department in the first place – was not inclined to allow its immediate demise, particularly since the educational legacy that Reagan left behind after working in his own “laboratory of democracy” as Governor of California, was one of drastic budget cutbacks, overcrowded classrooms, demoralized teachers and deteriorating test scores.