Word: leveler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...notion of a separate Department of Education for more than 10 years. "HEW suffers from elephantitis," says Bailey. "Enormous budgets and resources end up going to the 'H' and the 'W' but not to the 'E."' The Commissioner of Education, as Bailey puts it, is on the fourth bureaucratic level. To make matters worse, he argues, "there have been 15 commissioners in the last 18 years--it's just a revolving door. Nobody knows who's responsible or accountable for anything. "We must give somebody the power to make a mesh of things...
...think of many names for the present system that scatters our educational functions into a series of jealously-guarded special interest domains, but efficiency is not one of them," Heftel told his colleagues. "We have created at the federal level an education structure so vast and so unwieldy and so fragmented that it is inherently incapable of bringing to our educational system the coherence it so desperately requires...
Opponents of the legislation, who come from a wide variety of backgrounds armed with a variety of different axes to grind, argue that a new Cabinet level department would simply add more fatty tissue to the federal blob. Some, like Rep. Benjamin S. Rosenthal (D-N.Y.). believe that funding lies at the heart of the system's problem and that "increased appropriations are not dependent upon the creation of a new department." Individuals like Rosenthal and organizations like the United States Catholic Conference--a major lobby for private school interests--argue that the legislation's proponents must prove...
Proponents of the bill insist education is an issue vital enough to the national interest to merit the status and visibility that a Cabinet-level position implies. Because there is no one person who speaks for education--and consequently no one person to blame for national educational failures--supporters argue that a national spokesman for education is needed. Packer argues that elevating education to Cabinet status will help improve its status and visibility. "President Carter has said education has only been brought up twice in Cabinet meetings," he notes, adding that a new department would insure that educational programs...
...meanwhile, says that most important matters he can get the "understanding and sympathy" of the secretary of HEW. Rosenthal comments, "'Visibility' and 'status' are undefined catch phrases which hardly justify creation of a cabinet level department of education...