United States Commissioner of Education
The Commissioner of Education was the title given to the head of the federal Office of Education, which was historically a unit within and originally assigned to the Department of the Interior in the United States. The position was created on March 2, 1867, when an act to establish the Office of Education took effect under the influence of the more radical Republican Party. They were influential mostly in the Northern states and New England, which were much more progressive in the fields of education and had already established many state departments of education. They also had a large number of public schools and systems in cities, towns and counties, both at the elementary (grammar) school and high school levels, in which the South had lagged behind.[1]
The commissioner was the U.S. government's highest education official from after the Civil War and its reforming period of Reconstruction in 1867, until 1972, when the office of Assistant Secretary for Education was established within the independent Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The H.E.W. department had been earlier created as a cabinet-level department in April 1953, under President Harry Truman, continuing the previous advances created by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and instigated under Dwight D. Eisenhower.[1] Ultimately, the head of the federal government's nationwide educational efforts was reorganized with the separation and division of old H.E.W. into the new United States Department of Education in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, with its own Cabinet-level position of the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Responsibilities
[edit]The commissioner was responsible for:[2]
- Formulating educational policy
- Administering the various functions of the Office of Education
- Coordinating educational activities at the national level
The commissioner also served as an ex officio member of the District of Columbia Commission on Licensure, the Board of Foreign Scholarships and served as the governmental representative on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).[3]
History
[edit]The independent federal Office of Education was created on March 2, 1867.[1] It became part of the U.S. Department of the Interior on July 1, 1889. The office (also known later as the Bureau of Education) was included in the Interior Department's Federal Security Agency when it was established on July 1, 1939.[1] The office was moved into the new U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in April 1953, after Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, accomplished shortly after the inauguration of Dwight D. Eisenhower
In 1972, Public Law 92-318 provided the repeal of a part of the law which had created the office of Commissioner of Education. The repeal took effect on July 1, 1972. The Office of Education ceased to exist. Although the Assistant Secretary of Education then became the highest federal education position, the office of Commissioner of Education continued to exist within the new United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare until 1979, when the post was phased out due to the creation of the divided and reorganized new Department of Education which also was part of the President's Cabinet with its office of the U.S. Secretary of Education.[1][4]
List of commissioners of education
[edit] Denotes acting capacity.
|
| Name | Start | End | President(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Henry Barnard | March 11, 1867 | March 15, 1870 | Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) | |
| Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) | ||||
| John Eaton | March 16, 1870 | August 5, 1886 | ||
| Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881) | ||||
| James A. Garfield (1881) | ||||
| Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885) | ||||
| Grover Cleveland (1885–1889) | ||||
| Nathaniel Dawson | August 6, 1886 | September 3, 1889 | ||
| Benjamin Harrison (1889–1893) | ||||
| William Harris | September 12, 1889 | June 30, 1906 | ||
| Grover Cleveland (1893–1897) | ||||
| William McKinley (1897–1901) | ||||
| Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) | ||||
| Elmer Brown | July 1, 1906 | June 30, 1911 | ||
| William Howard Taft (1909–1913) | ||||
| Philander Claxton | July 1, 1911 | June 2, 1921 | ||
| Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) | ||||
| John Tigert | June 2, 1921 | September 1, 1928 | ||
| Warren G. Harding (1921–1923) | ||||
| William Cooper | February 11, 1929 | July 10, 1933 | ||
| Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929) | ||||
| Herbert Hoover (1929–1933) | ||||
| Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) | ||||
| Fred Zook | July 10, 1933 | July 1, 1934 | ||
| John Studebaker | July 1, 1934 | June 21, 1948 | ||
| Harry S. Truman (1945–1953) | ||||
| Rall Grigsby Acting |
June 21, 1948 | March 18, 1949 | ||
| Earl McGrath | March 18, 1949 | April 1953 | ||
| Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) | ||||
| Lee Thurston | July 1, 1953 | September 4, 1953 | ||
| Samuel Brownell | October 1953 | September 1, 1956 | ||
| Lawrence Derthick | November 28, 1956 | January 20, 1961 | ||
| Sterling McMurrin | February 3, 1961 | September 8, 1962 | John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) | |
| Francis Keppel | December 10, 1962 | December 18, 1965 | ||
| Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969) | ||||
| Harold Howe | December 18, 1965 | January 20, 1969 | ||
| James Allen | May 5, 1969 | June 10, 1970 | Richard Nixon (1969–1974) | |
| Sidney Marland | December 1970 | October 1972 | ||
| John Ottina | July 1973 | June 1974 | ||
| Terrel Bell | June 1974 | August 1, 1976 | ||
| Gerald Ford (1974–1977) | ||||
| Edward Aguirre | October 18, 1976 | January 20, 1977 | ||
| Ernest Boyer | March 31, 1977 | June 30, 1979 | Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) | |
| William Smith | January 4, 1980 | May 4, 1980 | ||
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e "Federal Education Policymakers, 1941-2009" (PDF). States' Impact on Federal Education Policy Project. 2009. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
- ^ Knezevich, Stephen J. (1969), Administration of Public Education (2 ed.), New York: Harper & Row, p. 237, OCLC 12690
- ^ Knezevich, Stephen J. (1969), Administration of Public Education (2 ed.), New York: Harper & Row, p. 238, OCLC 12690
- ^ "Education", The Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 9, Danbury, Connecticut: Grolier, 2000, p. 740, OCLC 43838093
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)