1979–2002

www.pubpol.duke.edu/centers/child 3Education and the Federal Government The responsibility for the education of Ameri-can children has enjoyed at least a small presence at the Federal level since the middle of the 19th century, usually in the form of indepen-dent programs housed in separate Cabinet-level departments. While these early efforts were scattered among offices, various incarnations of a national education office or bureau, beginning with the first established in 1838 for gathering statistics, slowly took root. Despite concerns about an overt federalization of education, locat-ing all of the disparate programs into a single, separate office and giving it department status became the rallying cry of a small but growing minority from as early as the Reconstruction period. The movement gained momentum in the 1950’s and 1960’s as the Federal budget for education eclipsed the budgets of other full-fledged departments, and by the 1970’s, the idea of an independent, Cabinet-level Department of Education was on the verge of realization