Federal Aid: Going Up Fast

“Nothing succeeds like a successor,” jokes U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel, 48. What he means is that he succeeded to his job two years ago, just as his agency was evolving from a onetime statistics-keeping bureau to a major arm of government, now bigger in budget than the departments of Commerce, Interior, Justice or Labor.

The Office of Education, which spent only $26 million in 1945 and $230 million in 1955, this year will disburse $1.5 billion. It still controls less than one-third of federal spending on education, which costs $4.9 billion, in forms as various as Department of Agriculture school lunches, National Science Foundation grants and NASA training funds. But if Congress enacts the recommendations of the message on education that President Johnson sends to it this week, the Office of Education next year will get its budget doubled to $3 billion.

Spellman’s Camel. Two-thirds of the added $1.5 billion would go to local school districts on the basis of the number of pupils whose families have annual incomes of $2,000 or less, as a step toward Johnson’s State of the Union pledge that “every child must have the best education our nation can provide.” Even more radically, the proposal skirts the divisive aid-to-parochial-schools issue by allowing what Washington calls “Cardinal Spellman’s camel”—that is Roman Catholic hunger for aid—to poke its head under the tent. School districts receiving federal money would buy textbooks and scientific equipment for underprivileged children in public and parochial schools alike, unless this is specifically banned by state law. As many as 90% of the nation’s school districts might benefit, although Title VI of the Civil Rights Act would exclude any segregated school system.

Another $500 million would go for new programs such as “service centers,” mostly located within existing public or private schools, which might provide testing, guidance, remedial math and reading, language laboratories, classes for gifted or retarded children—all outside the usual concept of classroom education.

On Capitol Hill. If the President’s proposals are enacted, as seems probable given their home-town appeal and their concessions to Catholics (the most numerous single denomination in Congress), the Office of Education will have to draw more than ever on the talents of Frank Keppel. The proud owner of just one earned degree, a Harvard College A.B., Keppel was made dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education at the age of 32, went on to gain a vast unofficial influence in educational circles because he was so often consulted on appointments of top-level school superintendents, such as New York City’s Calvin Gross. In 1962 Keppel himself was tapped for the commissioner’s job by President Kennedy to succeed Sterling McMurrin, who had decided to go back to teaching philosophy in Utah after a frustrated tenure of 17 months.

Since coming to Washington, Keppel has gone to Capitol Hill 17 times to testify before committees of the 88th Congress, which enacted 14 major education bills, providing federal money for student loans, vocational training, construction of university facilities, etc. An urbane, persuasive champion of higher educational standards, Keppel gave 101 speeches to groups as varied as the National Symphony Orchestra Association, the United Jewish Appeal and the Chamber of Commerce. (To keep him from furiously racing through speeches, his assistant, John Naisbitt, writes on each page, “Slow down.”)

Secretary of Education? The mark of his approach has been to seek support beyond the educational fraternity. One result is the agency’s handsome, plentifully illustrated new magazine American Education, to be published ten times a year starting this month and sent free to influential citizens such as judges, businessmen, labor leaders, physicians. Educators and others must subscribe to get the magazine, and 20,000 have already sent in the $3 price of a subscription. Keppel does not particularly mind that federal education programs are parceled out among 42 different departments and agencies: “You’re a lot better off with a lot of allies.”

Keppel and his job have grown so important that last week no fewer than three legislators, including Senator Abraham Ribicoff, Kennedy’s original appointee as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, introduced legislation to create a separate Department of Education with Cabinet status to consolidate under one roof most Federal Government educational activities.

Keppel, who has clearly a free hand in running his office under self-effacing Secretary Anthony Celebrezze, is tactfully noncommittal about such legislation. “I came to Washington to work for Celebrezze and I’m happy as a clam,” he says.