Local education agency

“ If the application requests exceed the funds available, the State educational agency shall prioritize projects that support students in high-need local educational agencies and ensure geographic diversity, including serving rural, suburban, and urban areas. ”

“ Local people's governments at or above the county level shall strengthen regulation, reduce excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students in the stage of nine-year compulsory education, open up channels of communication between schools and families, and promote collaboration between school education and family education. ”

“ In educational matters, the city areas are completely exempt from State control. Their schools and training schools are managed by local authorities, and supplied for the most part by local funds. Hence it follows that City Normal and Training Schools show even greater diversity of methods and arrangement than is found in State Normal Schools, for their lines of work and efficiency are entirely dependent upon the respective City Boards of Education. One effect of local school administration is distinctly undesirable. ”

“ The older education of the district school was defective, and the new education is not enjoyed by many a farmer's boy or girl, because they cannot be spared in the later years of youth for long schooling. An adaptation of the idea of continuation schools for rural young people so that they may apply the new sciences to country life is greatly to be desired. The local school principal or county superintendent or an extension teacher from a State institution may be found available as director, and it belongs to the community to provide the necessary funds. ”

“ We desire to see local management under Government inspection, and assisted by grants in aid, taken advantage of wherever it is possible to do so, and that no Government colleges or schools shall be founded, for the future, in any district where a sufficient number of institutions exist, capable, with assistance from the State, of supplying the local demand for education. ”

“ A few states have already established county-schools of agriculture and domestic science for those boys and girls who have completed the work of the ordinary district-school. This movement to give a high-school education to country pupils is one of the most important reforms of the present time. So important, in fact, is it that a plan to have the national government make special appropriations for the support of these schools has been prepared and considered by Congress. ”

“ Now, to meet the needs of the generations to come, we have established a Department of Education to express our national commitment to education, to promote equal educational opportunity, to assist local authorities in their efforts to improve our schools, and to administer Federal education programs more efficiently. ”

“ The common district school, supported jointly by local taxation and State subvention, gives elementary education to the children of all classes. As the towns grow the tendency to graft manual and technical courses upon the ordinary public school curriculum is unmistakably strong. ”

“ While the Federal Government has an important role to play in improving the quality of American education, it is the efforts of local school boards, families, and communities, working together, that make the crucial difference in preparing our children for the future. Parents who read with their children, monitor homework and out-of-school activities, demand high academic standards and challenging coursework, and encourage greater community support and investment in school activities have an enormous impact on their children's academic success. ”

“ Unlike the governing bodies of cities and counties, school boards have only one responsibility: the education of the youth of our country during their most formative and impressionable years. Apart from health, no subject is closer to the hearts of parents than their children's education during those years. For these reasons, the governance of elementary and secondary education traditionally has been placed in the hands of a local board, responsible locally to the parents and citizens of school districts. ”

“ The benefits derived from the relation with the board of charities may be more than offset by the connection with educational agencies, where the school is recognized as part of the state's educational system. In respect to the providing of maintenance for the pupils, this can be regarded as but an incidence, when any other plan would be impracticable. The main, overshadowing purpose in the work of the institutions is education, and what are supplied beyond are only to render this the more effective. ”

“ The Department of Education will use Federal funds to work with national youth-serving organizations, independent community groups, and local education agencies to develop, expand, and strengthen school-based mentoring programs for disadvantaged middle school students. ”

“ A restoration of American education grounded in the principles of our founding that is accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling must ultimately succeed at the local level. Parents and local school boards must be empowered to achieve greater choice and variety in curriculum at the State and local levels. ”

“ The State Commission on People’s Education is by no means a central power governing the institutions of instruction and education. On the contrary, the entire school work ought to be transferred to the organs of local self-government. The independent work of the workers, soldiers and peasants, establishing on their own initiative cultural educational organisations, must be given full autonomy, both by the State centre and the Municipal centres. ”

“ It helps in every prudent way the influence of the school with the community. By its friendly relation it may present freely the advantages of higher education and thus reach a large number who would otherwise rest at the goal of high-school graduation. In every state, through the agency of the university, the number of high schools is materially increased, and their standards, plan of organization, and methods are improved. Moreover, it gives the promise of something beyond that stimulates the efforts of pupils in every grade of work. ”

“ The public school is the general and permanent agency for the education and uplift of the colored people. Religious and independent schools may do a splendid work in their several localities, but the public school is intended to be state-wide. It alone reaches the masses of colored children, and it should receive its due share of the public funds. The fact that they have not received any thing like a fair share of the public funds, for their equipment and support, has already been stated. ”

“ The Public Schools.—Public education is another department of municipal activity. [4] City governments spend great amounts of public money for this purpose. The work of our educational institutions is constantly being enlarged; courses in commerce, manual training, and domestic science are intended to strengthen the practical side of education. In some cities special schools are maintained for the defective classes and for truants. ”

“ Subject as above the local education authority has to maintain and keep efficient all public elementary schools within their area which are necessary (whether 'voluntary schools' or rate-provided schools) and has the control of all expenditure required for that purpose. The provision of new schools, a different system of government grants—paid, not to the managers, but to the local education authority—and the constitution of education committees of councils having powers under the act are various further salient characteristics of this measure to which it is necessary to draw attention. ”

“ There is no other public institution in the country so varied in its organization, its strength, its methods and ways as the elementary public-school system. It ranges from a shanty-like to a palace-like building, from a teacher almost illiterate herself to a teacher with an education and training which fit her for a college chair, from a few hundred dollars of yearly appropriation to tens of thousands of dollars for upkeep of a single school, from one teacher to a staff of teachers in one school, from an almost voluntary attendance to a rigid compulsory attendance. ”

“ In seeking to attain the cultural objectives set forth in the Directive, the United States occupational authorities have caused funds to be set aside for training courses in industry and agriculture, have encouraged the establishment of teacher training schools and of summer and winter institutes for the reeducation of teachers and have in general devoted their efforts to the restoration of schools, the enforcement of new system of education and expansion of school facilities. ”

“ In order to ensure an acceptable quality of education, the responsible government shall provide funds to departmental, community-managed or state-aided primary or secondary schools on an equitable basis. ”

“ But, in order fully to carry out the views we have expressed with regard to the adequate provision of schools throughout the country, it will probably be necessary, for some years, to supply the wants of particular parts of India by the establishment, temporary support, and management of places of education of every class in districts where there is little or no prospect of adequate local efforts being made for this purpose, but where, nevertheless, they are urgently required. ”

“ In the Southern States its work for colleges is similar to that done in the North, and, in addition, it seeks to promote public high schools through the State universities and the State Department of Education, to promote elementary education (or common schools) by increasing the productive efficiency of rural life, and to aid in developing schools for the training of leaders among the colored people. ”

“ Again we note that if the county were the administration unit the location of high schools could be put upon a more rational and economical basis. Nineteen states encourage the establishment of the support of rural high schools by direct subsidy, by free tuition, by reimbursement for free transportation, or by a combination of these methods. It is exceedingly gratifying that the country is beginning to feel that it is quite as much the right of every child to have the benefit of a high school education as to possess that of the elementary school. ”

“ A system was adopted, of establishing and endowing academies in the different counties, at the county-seat, where young men who intended to complete a collegiate education might be taught, and the establishment and endowment of a college, where this education might be finished, leaving the rudimental education of the children of the State to be provided for by their parents, as best they could. Primary schools were gotten up in the different neighborhoods by the concentrated action of its members, and a teacher employed, and paid by each parent at so much per capita for his children. ”

“ Yet the schools may feel that they are in reality but agencies of the state in carrying out one of its great functions, and as such should have no need to call upon or depend upon means other than the state's. Whether or not in the course of time there may be an increased incentive for private gifts, it would seem that the schools should be entitled to look with full confidence to the attention and care of the state, since it is but contributing to the education of its citizens. ”

“ It is not a question whether they are entitled to an education as much as normal children. So far as there is any real issue, it is one of classification for purposes of administration. The question seems to be whether the institutions that care for the above mentioned classes can best be administered under the department of charities that has charge of public institutions, or the department of education that usually has to do with institutions that furnish education only in the limited technical sense, where pupils attend school a few hours a day, but are not boarded at the institutions. ”

“ THE NORMALS AND THE LEGISLATURE 1893-1909
There seemed to be no doubt in the minds of the politicians that the policy of granting assistance to the schools engaged in training teachers should not be discontinued. In 1895, Governor Lord in his inaugural address said:
"To obtain expert teachers it is necessary to have schools for their education. Upon this basis of need and strictest economy in management, I recommend whatever appropriation may be necessary for their support." ”

“ A machinery of government inspectors of schools was organized, and a permanent educational secretary attached to the committee. Not to mention other valuable results, we may add that the establishment of workhouse and factory schools, and the institution of the normal school for training teachers at Kneller Hall, are among the most prominent benefits for which we are indebted to this growing recognition of a care for the extension of general education as one of the duties of government. ”