United States Office of Education
The Office of Education, at times known as the Department of Education and the Bureau of Education, was a small unit in the
Background
In 1857, Congressman
Following the Civil War, shifts in political thought led to increased federal involvement in education. The pre-war tradition of local funding of and control over education clashed with a push from reformers for increased state and federal educational leadership. Additionally, the creation of social science associations generated interest in data-driven approaches to governance at all levels.[1]
Inception and development
The Office was created on March 2, 1867, as the Department of Education, using the same titles as another unit which it superseded.
Functions
The original non-Cabinet-level Department of Education was created to provide educational information to the state and local education authorities (many of which had already been established and created during the preceding decades on the state, city, town and county levels).[5] The collecting of educational statistics had already begun in parts of Europe. The Office of Education was created to meet the need to gather statistical information on the fast-growing educational institutions of the United States, along with histories and descriptive articles, pamphlets, reports and books, often in coordination with state universities. Reformers (especially Radical Republicans and Progressive and liberal Democrats) hoped that the Office would become a powerful federal agency, but were frustrated at every turn by Congress, which did not or want to trespass on the right of the states and local jurisdictions in the cities, towns and counties to control educational policy - the time of "states' rights" was still in full sway, despite the recent Civil War, and it would take several other domestic and foreign crises in the coming decades to bring a sense of a more centralized and national policy to the forefront to make up for increasingly embarrassing shortfalls in comparison between America and overseas educational programs, especially in Europe.
The Bureau, and later Office, of Education was a unit of the U.S. Department of the Interior, therefore it was under the aegis of the Secretary of the Interior. It had no power to control the actions of educational institutions. At times during its first decades of its existence, attempts were made to change its name. These names (Board, Department, Office, and Bureau) were considered. In 1873, a bill (H. R. 3782) was introduced which would change its name to the Bureau of Education and Statistics.
The
The Office gathered information on diverse educational facilities such as those being built (i.e. the famous
Dissolution and legacy
In 1972, Public Law 92-318 provided the repeal of the law which had created the Office of Education. The repeal took effect on July 1, 1972.
The Office of Education had a unifying influence on the different educational institutions of the United States, caused by supplying the leaders of the institutions with information that enabled them to know of the practices of other institutions. The direct organizational descendant of the Office of Education is the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education.
Successors
- United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, (1953–79)
- United States Department of Education, (1980–present)
separated:
- United States Department of Health and Human Services, (1980–present)
Notes
- ISSN 0018-2680.
- ^ Copy of 1867 Department of Education Act As Enacted
- ^ Bowerman, Sarah G. (1935). "Zalmon Richards". Dictionary of American Biography. 15: 561–62. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
- ^ Wilson, J. Ormond (1900). "Zalmon Richards". Addresses and Proceedings - National Education Association of the United States. 39: 713–15. Retrieved October 29, 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f "The History of the NLE: Office of Education Library – Early Years" at the National Library of Education website. 3 April 2006. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
- ^ "The History of the NLE: Reorganized Office of Education Library" at the National Library of Education website. 3 April 2006. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
- ^ "The History of the NLE: Library Consolidation – The HEW Library" at the National Library of Education website. 3 April 2006. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
References
External links
- Seven pages of information
- John H. Cornyn (1920). Encyclopedia Americana. .
- Bureau of Education Government Documents at Texas Tech University, from 1870 to 2013
Sources
- 38th-43rd Congresses
- New International Encyclopedia