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Vocational Education and the Origins of Federal Funding for Local Public Schools

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Vocational Education and the Origins of Federal Funding for Local Public Schools RETOOLING THE SCHOOL: VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND THE ORIGINS OF FEDERAL FUNDING FOR LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS ______________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Curry School of Education University of Virginia _______________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________________ by George J. Kroupa III, B.A., M.Div., M.A. December 2014 iv © Copyright by George J. Kroupa III All Rights Reserved December 2014 v ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that the beginnings of federal funding for local public schooling are rooted in the popular vocational education reform movement, which broke across the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as an initiative that expressed discontent with the academic status quo of the American high school. To solve perceived educational, social, industrial, agricultural, and economic problems, vocational promoters from education, business, manufacturing, labor, and politics obtained federal dollars to introduce and maintain pragmatic courses in the curriculum. This work explores how, beginning with the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, the federal role expanded in the first half of the 20th century, overcoming generations of opposition to federal involvement in K-12 public classrooms. It demonstrates that the vocational education initiative changed the core purpose of schooling for young people by pinning teaching and learning to the goal of creating human capital to benefit the American economy and national security. It argues that the elements of the successful vocational education movement—broad criticism of public education’s shortcomings, the perception that the United States is vulnerable to the threat of foreign economic and political competition, and proposals for repairing the nation’s school system through curricular reform attached to high-stakes testing—were echoed in subsequent school reform initiatives, including the 1958 National Defense Education Act (NDEA). This dissertation concludes by contending that the major traits characteristic of the early vocational education reform movement are found in modern school reform initiatives. vi To Tenten, who believed, and to our parents, who sacrificed for our education. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for the support of my major advisor, Carol Anne Spreen, and to Derrick Alridge, Brian Balogh, and Diane Hoffman for their generous encouragement and feedback throughout this project. They provided support above and beyond expectation. To the librarians at the University of Virginia and Ursinus College, I express my thanks for patient assistance with research and obtaining books, journals, and articles of even the most obscure type. I extend a special thank you to Jane Ney and Robert Ramsey for their extraordinary help in preparing my manuscript. For my colleagues on the faculty of Virginia Theological Seminary, I am grateful for the confidence they placed in my academic goals and the grants and scholarships that enabled me to continue my work. I express my deep appreciation especially to Locke E. Bowman, Jr., Amy Dyer, Dorothy Linthicum, Lisa Kimball, Martha Horne, and Ian Markham. I am grateful for the years of support and encouragement given to me by Ian Wolk, Jan Stillpass, and our group of extraordinary friends. To my colleagues at Reading Area Community College, I am indebted for patiently allowing me the time to complete my project. Many members of my family have helped me complete this project. I am thankful and grateful to all of them for their unbounded encouragement and support. I wish to express my thanks to teachers who encouraged my learning and shaped my development: Mme. Josette Coulet du Gard, Helen Wieneke, J. Edward Matthews, Mildred Hopwood, Nancy Bothwell, and Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr. Finally, I thank my wife, Tenten, who sacrificed many hours while I researched and wrote. I could not have completed this dissertation without her help and support. viii Page DEDICATION……………………………………………………… vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………… viii INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY…………………….1 CHAPTER 1………………………………………………………….30 CHAPTER 2………………………………………………………….91 CHAPTER 3………………………………………………………….145 CHAPTER 4………………………………………………………….194 CHAPTER 5………………………………………………………….269 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………336 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………….. 351 ix Introduction In the early 21st century, federal funding for elementary and secondary public education is a given fact. Local schools are accustomed to receiving federal money coupled with regulations to support various types of general and specialized education. Without money from Washington, some districts would have to make uncomfortable cuts in programs and services. In 2011 the federal government spent nearly $79 billion on K-12 public education, covering about 12% of the total cost of operating the nation’s far-flung community-based school system. In some states, the federal government paid for over 80% of the cost of maintaining public schools. A large Washington bureaucracy, the U.S. Department of Education, oversees federal outlays and ensures that taxpayers’ money is being spent effectively and as intended. In some cases, federal funding measures are attached to standardized test results, as in the case of the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs. Money from the central government for public education has become so critical for elementary and secondary schools that policymakers lobby Congress and the Department of Education for such aid and protest when federal dollars are reduced or denied. Politicians frequently make federal funding a plank in their election platforms, often viewing the central purpose of education as the preparation of youth to participate in the nation’s economy in order to secure American leadership in the world marketplace and to maintain national security.1 1 Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts: School Year 2010–11 (Fiscal Year 2011), Figure 1: “Public school system revenues for elementary and secondary education, by funding source and year: Fiscal year 2010–2011,” (Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics, Department of Education, 2013), 5; Digest of Statistics, Table 203: “Revenues for public elementary and secondary schools, by source and state or jurisdiction: 2009-10”, National Center for Educational Statistics, accessed at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_203.asp. On public education and the economy, President Barack Obama has regularly reiterated his view that education and participation in the economy are unavoidably connected: “In today’s global economy, a high-quality education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity—it is a prerequisite to success. Because economic progress and educational achievement are inextricably linked, educating every American student to graduate from high school prepared for college and for a career is a national imperative.” 1 This dissertation will explore the beginnings of federal funding in public schooling as rooted in vocational education and examine how this federal role expanded through the first half of the 20th century. Four questions guide the scope of this work. 1. What was the role of lawmakers, government, and public officials in driving the vocational education debate that would eventually provide federal funding of public elementary and secondary education? 2. How did individuals, groups, and organizations outside the government influence the vocational education debate and the federal role in public K-12 education? 3. What were the tensions around the purposes and structures of public education and the federal vs. state role? 4. From the beginning of the Smith-Hughes Act in 1917, which provided federal funding to public secondary schools, what is the legacy of vocational education in contemporary public school policy? The following chapters examine how and why the first federal funding efforts for public schools began in the early 20th century with the Smith-Hughes Act (1917) and how inextricably linking schooling both to the nation’s economic progress and its national defense enabled its persistence into modern times. In the early 21st century, many parents, teachers, policymakers, and students expect federal aid for their local schools. Yet a century ago no one had this expectation because the federal government did not pay for K-12 public schooling. There were no federal grants below the university level— no money for general or special education, for school construction, feeding programs, teachers’ salaries, or after-school activities. Funding was left entirely to state and local entities, most of whose policymakers did not want Washington poking its fingers into EDUCATION: Knowledge and Skills for the Jobs of the Future, (Washington, DC: The White House, 2014), accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12. 2 community school affairs. Interestingly, however, there was interest in public funding for roads and infrastructure. 2 This work argues that the federal appropriations that are so ubiquitous in modern times began with a reform movement whose history has been overshadowed by scholarly exploration of general education: the vocational education reform initiative, a popular Progressive schooling idea that spread across the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like many school reform enterprises, vocational education’s advocates presented it
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