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Changing Federal Strategies for Supporting Educational Research, Development, and Statistics - September 1998
The landslide election of Ronald Reagan and the unexpected Republican capture of the Senate in 1980 dramatically changed the Washington scene. The new administration eagerly sought to curtail federal domestic spending, to replace categorical federal programs with block grants to the states, and to deregulate federal rules governing state and local behavior. While the Republicans were unable to achieve many of their specific objectives, they did succeed in slowing increases in federal expenditures and forcing a reconsideration of existing government priorities.
The Reagan Administration challenged the federal government's involvement in educational research and development?and included a bitter attack by the new director of NIE. The early 1980s also saw increasing politicization of educational research?with both conservatives and liberals denouncing each other for introducing politics into federal educational research. While NIE survived, in a modified form, the agency was severely weakened as funding was reduced dramatically and much of the existing professional staff was dismissed. But in the area of educational statistics major improvements were made with the reorganization of NCES.
The Reagan Administration had little sympathy for the newly created U.S. Department of Education, which they regarded as Carter's political reward to the National Education Association (NEA). The Administration sought to consolidate most federal educational programs into a few block grants and tried to halt increases in federal expenditures for schooling. Although they were ultimately thwarted in enacting much of their education agenda, the Administration did manage to contain education appropriations during the first term. Overall, congressional appropriations for the Department rose from $13.9 billion in FY 1980 to $15.3 billion in FY 1984 - a 10.1 percent increase. But in real dollars federal expenditures during that period dropped 14.4 percent.(75)
As the scramble over scarce dollars intensified during the early Reagan years, NIE did not fare well compared with almost all of the other programs in the Department. Even those members of Congress who supported NIE were not willing to fight for research and development funds at the expense of service programs. As a result, while overall the Department in real dollars lost 11 percent of its funding between FY 1981 and FY 1988, NIE lost 70 percent during that same period (Special Programs was the only unit in the Department which lost more than NIE).(76)
Whereas some programs in the Department experienced only modest budget reductions overall, the NIE research budget was cut severely immediately and continued to lose funding. NIE funds were slashed by 14.9 percent from FY 1980-FY 1981 and another 18.6 percent the following year. After a modest improvement of 4.1 percent in FY 1983, funding for the agency was reduced another 13.3 percent in FY 1984. Overall, NIE lost 37.5 percent of its funding from FY 1980 - 1984 (or 50.6 percent in real dollars)-a devastating reduction for an agency which had just begun to recover from its precipitous declines in funding in the early 1970s.
The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1981, which mandated all of the budget cuts, recognized the need for giving federal agencies flexibility in carrying out their reductions. NIE was instructed that it could reduce its budgets proportionately. Faced with the huge reduction in funding, NIE proposed to reduce the budgets for the labs and centers proportionately.(77) But CEDaR managed to thwart the agency and lobbied successfully to have the Continuing Resolution Appropriation mandate that lab and center funding could not be cut by more than 10 percent. The net result was that other NIE programs had to be cut even more severely; in essence, NIE funding for most activities other than the labs and centers in the early 1980s came to an almost complete halt.
One bright spot in this otherwise discouraging picture is that in 1985 NIE managed to establish a competitive funding procedure for the labs and centers. Despite numerous difficulties and setbacks, the competition was conducted fairly and expeditiously. NIE maintained the general characteristics of the labs and centers. The regional nature of the labs, for example, was preserved as well as their orientation toward technical assistance. Under the continued and explicit pressure from Congress, however, NIE established three new regional labs in the Midwest, Southeast, and Northwest. Given the political turmoil surrounding NIE and the labs and centers in particular, most observers were surprised and pleased by the overall handling of this competition.(78)
When the Government Accounting Office (GAO) examined the extent and nature of the budget cuts for NIE, they documented the devastation brought about by the combination of overall budget cuts and the congressional protection of the labs and centers. The number of NIE awards declined dramatically from 476 in FY 1980 to 122 in FY 1984; they increased to 168 in 1985. Thus, from FY 1980 to FY 1985 there was a 64.7 percent decrease in awards.(79)
Not all program areas within NIE were equally affected. The labs and centers remained relatively stable during these years while the teaching and learning awards plummeted from 185 in FY 1980 to 85 in FY 1985. Unsolicited proposals (e.g. field-initiated individual grants) collapsed from 58 awards in FY 1980 to none in FY 1984 and FY 1985. Similarly, awards for educational policy and organization dropped from 93 at the beginning of the period to 15 at the end. There was also a move away from funding individual researchers to funding institutions. While 75 percent of NIE awards for FY 1980 were to individual researchers, that figure dropped to 44 percent in FY 1984.(80)
During periods of severe budget cuts, local administrators are often given considerable leeway in how to reallocate their funds as they are in the best position to know the overall priorities and resources in their agencies. But congressional mandates protecting the labs and centers as well as continued support for legislatively mandated programs such as ERIC and NAEP severely eroded NIE's flexibility. While approximately 55 percent of NIE's research obligations in FY 1980 were mandated, by FY 1984 that figure had risen to 79 percent.(81)
At the same time that NIE's budget was cut and more of its activities were congressionally mandated, the agency itself tried to respond to its critics by devoting even more attention to dissemination. The percentage of awards for dissemination rose from 22 percent in FY 1980 to 43 percent in FY 1985 (not including lab or center work). At the labs, dissemination activities rose from 29 percent to 41 percent during these years; the comparable dissemination figures for centers were 12 percent in FY 1980 and 21 percent in FY 1984.(82) As a result of all of these factors, the amount of research and development funded by NIE may have reached an all-time low during the first half of the 1980s.
Budgetary cuts were not the only challenge faced by NIE and Congress during the early 1980s. The election of President Reagan and a Republican Senate also brought new leaders to the Department and NIE who disagreed with past policies as well as with each other. Many of the implicit assumptions about educational research and NIE's role that had gone unchallenged during the 1970s now were discussed and contested. The resultant political and ideological turmoil created the impression that NIE was becoming further politicized and thereby contributed to the growing hostility to the agency even among many of its former congressional and educational supporters.(83)
Edward Curran became Director of NIE in October 1981 over the objections of Terrel Bell, the new Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. Curran tried to reorient NIE toward a more conservative agenda. He regarded NIE as an ideological, narrow social science bastion that had politicized research by using the agency to further a liberal agenda that emphasized equity over excellence in education. Rather than seeing themselves as also politically oriented, Curran and his allies believed they were only trying to correct past mistakes. Paradoxically, while they provided the leadership for NIE during the early 1980s, they also worked hard to abolish the agency along with the rest of the Department.
Isolating himself from the education community as well as the existing NIE staff, Curran refused to reappoint most excepted service employees whose terms expired and tried to replace them with pro-Reagan loyalists who did not share the so-called social science bias of their predecessors. While NIE had always experienced rapid staff turnovers, the situation became even worse during the early Reagan years. Given the dramatic budget cuts, there was a sizable drop in the total number of NIE professionals. Thus, during a period of severe budgetary reductions the professional staff of NIE was cut by nearly half; of the NIE professional staff in FY 1986, only about one-fourth of them had been with NIE prior to Curran's tenure of office. (84)
Curran, as well as his successor Robert Sweet, repeatedly clashed with the educational establishment, the Congress, and Secretary Bell in particular. They were accused of politicizing NIE by changing research topics to reflect a right-wing agenda, ignoring the peer review system, firing NIE professionals, hiring unqualified employees (some of whom had been active in Republican politics), and ignoring congressional mandates. On the other hand, Curran and Sweet felt that they were being persecuted for their conservative views and for their willingness to challenge the liberal establishment. Eventually Curran was fired by Secretary Bell for insubordination and was replaced by Manuel Justiz (after the unsuccessful attempt of Sweet to be appointed as the director of NIE).(85)
Secretary William Bennett, who replaced Bell in 1985, also reorganized the U.S. Department of Education. As part of this effort, NIE was merged with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Library Programs were moved into the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). Most education policy makers and researchers opposed this merger as unnecessary; some feared that this reorganization might lead to the downgrading of the importance of research.(86)
After notifying the Congress about the proposed reorganization, the Department went ahead with the merger of NIE, NCES, and the Library Programs. The new plan created five programs within OERI (Information Services, Office of Research, Center for Statistics, Programs for Improvement of Practice, and Library Programs) and reduced the role of the National Council on Education Research (NCER) to an advisory policy group. Chester Finn, Professor of Education at Vanderbilt University and active participant in educational policymaking in Washington, was named as the new Assistant Secretary of OERI.(87) When OERI was reauthorized in 1986, most members of Congress as well as most representatives of the major educational groups now accepted the new changes.(88)
The collection, analysis, and dissemination of educational statistics were greatly improved in the late 1980s. Despite some tangible improvements in the 1970s, NCES was not highly regarded by either researchers or policymakers. In late 1984 OERI Assistant Secretary Donald Senese asked the National Academy of Science (NAS) to undertake a thorough analysis of the agency. The NAS Panel met for 2 years and issued a report very critical of NCES:
Fortunately for the future of NCES, two determined and capable individuals stepped forward to revitalize the agency. Assistant Secretary Finn focused on helping to find the staff and financial resources necessary to improve NCES. And Emerson Elliott, the future first Commissioner of Education Statistics, skillfully provided NCES with the leadership necessary to make it an outstanding statistical agency.(90)
[VI. Changes During the Bush Administration]