A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Changing Federal Strategies for Supporting Educational Research, Development, and Statistics - September 1998

II. Expanding Federal Educational Research in the 1950s

While experiences during World War II helped the development and expansion of the sciences, they had less impact on the behavioral and social sciences. Faced with an unprecedented global war against Germany and Japan, the federal government recognized the need to develop new weapons as well as to improve the existing military technology. Federal research and development expenditures rose from $100 million in 1940 to approximately $1.5 billion in 1945, with much of those funds going for work on the atomic bomb and the improvement of radar.⁽¹³⁾

Behavioral and social scientists also helped the war effort and made significant contributions in areas such as economic planning, survey research, applied psychology, international affairs, and anthropology. Unlike the scientists, who were guided by several coordinating groups, these scholars were scattered throughout many different federal agencies and lacked any central organization or coordination. Compared with their scientific counterparts, these behavioral and social scientists did not receive much recognition or appreciation from policymakers or the public.⁽¹⁴⁾

Educational research and development fared even worse than the other behavioral and social sciences during World War II. The U.S. Office of Education contributed to the war effort by providing training to more adults and publishing war-related pamphlets. Educational research was not viewed as vital to the war effort and was reduced. The Statistical Division, for example, was forced to operate with only two-thirds of its regular staff.⁽¹⁵⁾ Thus, while research in many fields increased dramatically during the Second World War, educational research and development actually decreased and was relegated to a secondary status within the Office of Education.

Faced with the Soviet threat during the Cold War, Congress continued to provide especially generous funding for scientific research and development. There was however a shift in the type of recipients of those funds. Prior to World War II federal employees had done much of the research in their own agencies; but now the work was increasingly done by researchers at elite universities, special laboratories, facilities of private industry, or newly created institutions such as the Rand Corporation.⁽¹⁶⁾

The behavioral and social sciences did not fare as well as the sciences in the postwar period. The creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950, however, did pave the way for modest increases in federal expenditures in these areas. Moreover, private foundations expanded their support for behavioral and social science research during the 1950s. The newly created Ford Foundation, for example, played a particularly important role in funding both theoretical and applied research which addressed pressing social problems.⁽¹⁷⁾

Immediately after the Second World War the Office of Education did little to improve its research and statistical operations. The agency continued to collect state data and to investigate educational problems; but most of its research activities were limited to gathering cross-sectional data and publishing the results?often without any rigorous analysis.⁽¹⁸⁾ Earl McGrath, the Commissioner of Education, admitted in 1951 that the Office of Education had not been very successful in fulfilling its statistical and research responsibilities.⁽¹⁹⁾

An important change occurred when Congress passed the Cooperative Research Act of 1954 (P.L. 83?531) to allow the Office of Education to engage in cooperative research activities with colleges, universities, and state departments of education. Until then most of the research sponsored by the Office of Education had been done by its own staff.⁽²⁰⁾ Now the Office could solicit and fund research applications from outside groups. While the funding for the cooperative research program was initially very limited and targeted mainly for work on mental retardation, the program provided the precedent and mechanism for future funding of scholars in colleges and universities.⁽²¹⁾

Interest in education, especially scientific and mathematical, increased dramatically following the successful launching of Sputnik in October 1957.⁽²²⁾ The Office of Education expanded its research and statistics staff from 26 to 68 people?thereby almost tripling its in-house data-gathering and research capabilities. While no funds had been made available for cooperative research earlier, $1 million was appropriated for this purpose in FY 1957.⁽²³⁾ The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) (P.L. 85-864) was enacted in September 1958 and much of the administration of its programs was assigned to the Office of Education. NDEA was authorized for $4 billion over a 4-year period and received an initial appropriation of $115.3 million.⁽²⁴⁾ The bulk of the NDEA funds went for the student loan program; federal matching funds for purchasing equipment to help teach science, math and foreign languages; and graduate fellowships in areas related to national defense.⁽²⁵⁾ Appropriations for the cooperative research program reached $2.7 million for FY 1959.⁽²⁶⁾

[I. Federal Educational Research and Statistics. . .]

[III. Educational Research and the Great Society]