Federal Aid: One Big Gulp

With the heady homily that “education is the keystone in the arch of freedom and progress,” President Kennedy last week sent to Congress a 24-part federal aid bill that would cost $1.25 billion for the first year and touch every level of education, from kindergartens to public libraries to graduate schools. The President calls it “a prudent and balanced program.” and he wants it passed at one gulp, taking his text from Thomas Jefferson: “Let us keep our eye steadily on the whole system.”

The President’s plan is apparently to try to get federal aid through Congress by wrapping it all up in a big package containing something for everyone. His omnibus bill has in it the kind of general aid to public schools that runs into constant trouble, but it also has more than ever of the selective aid in specific fields that Congress has been approving since the birth of the republic. The one-package idea also seeks to unite rival organizations —notably, the American Council on Education, which lobbies for colleges, and the National Education Association, which last year helped to bring about the defeat of the college-aid bill.

Congress inevitably will try to untie the big package and pass the selective-help items it likes. An example is more school aid for “federally impacted” areas, such as those around army camps and defense factories. Southern Congressmen love it; this year it will cost about $350 million, and extension should pass without trouble. Due for expansion is the 1958 National Defense Education Act, which spurred the teaching of math, science and foreign languages and set higher academic standards in these subjects. Congress likes aid to education when expressed this way, and may well approve:

» A sharp boost in graduate fellowships under the act, from 1,500 a year to 10,000, plus another 2,000 summer fellowships. » Extending to prospective college and private-school teachers the 50% forgiveness feature of N.D.E.A. loans which is now limited to those who are training to teach in public schools.

Conspicuously absent in the Kennedy bill is any proposal for federal college scholarships, which irk conservative Congressmen. To meet the need for semiprofessional technicians, states would get $50 million a year in grants for building more public junior colleges. All colleges would get $1 billion in federal construction loans over three years.

As for direct federal aid to public schools—an idea torpedoed last year in a debate over religion, segregation and “federal control”—the Administration proposes to offer much less: $1.5 billion over four years to help states build classrooms, raise teachers’ salaries and tackle key problems, such as school dropouts. But the bill excludes aid to parochial schools, and will again run into Roman Catholic opposition.