Margaret Spellings Reflects

In an article for Inside Higher Education Margaret Spellings, the Secretary of Education, made an assessment of her tenure. Not surprisingly, it is a relatively favorable one.

Her comments on Congress are decidedly more benign than the ones she made in an op ed in politico in February. There she claimed "While business leaders embrace the future, Congress is vigorously defending old structures and outdated practices in higher education at the behest of entrenched stakeholders who advocate the status quo. In Congress’ latest attempt to renew the Higher Education Act, which sets policy for more than 6,000 institutions that govern 18 million students and through which $85 billion in federal tax dollars flow each year, its response to the fundamental structural problems that plague our higher education system and threaten U.S. competitiveness is anemic at best." At the time she demonstrated a misunderstanding of the role of the federal government. The highlighted portion is but one example. The higher education act does not "set policy" for institutions, it sets federal policy for higher education. That may seem like a small difference but it is a critical one. The strength of the American system of higher education, is that it is not a system controlled from one source. Spellings never bothered to confront that nuance.

In the interview Spellings now comments “I would give Congress an incomplete on the latest reauthorization,” because “they haven’t fully appreciated the big picture of some of these issues. That’s why there needs to be more leadership from the field, from really all of us who care about these issues.” I wonder what she would give for her own performance. In spite of a national commission which seemed unable or unwilling to reflect on the delicate nature of the relationship between higher education and the federal government and in spite of a complete lack of direct involvement in the reauthorization process (the Administration never offered their own proposals for the reauthorization act) I am pretty sure she would give her performance higher marks. For all that lack of leadership, she believes that the federal government should have federal solutions.

It ultimately comes down to the original rationale for the creation of a US Department of Education, which Spellings reflects almost perfectly. When the Department was created it was argued that we needed a federal department to "coordinate" education. The rationale was silly then and as Spellings has demonstrated over the last several years, it is even sillier now. That does not mean that the federal government should have no role in education policy, but Spellings' expansive view is one that is directly contrary to the current strengths of the our educational system.