Reagan Won’t Abolish Education Dept. for Now

President Reagan, seeking quick confirmation of his candidate for education secretary, assured a Senate panel Tuesday that he will not ask Congress to abolish the Education Department “at this time.”

Reagan, in a letter to Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, said that he still believes that abolishing the agency would be the best approach because “federal educational programs could be administered effectively without a Cabinet-level agency.”

But he acknowledged that “that proposal has received very little support in the Congress. . . . I have no intention of recommending abolition of the department to the Congress at this time.”

Instead, Reagan said, he has asked William J. Bennett, his nominee for the secretary’s post, “to advise me on the best ways possible for the federal government to assist in improving the quality of American education.”

A spokesman for Hatch said that the committee may vote on the nomination of Bennett as early as today and that the full Senate could confirm him a few days later. No senator has announced opposition to Bennett, and he has been warmly endorsed by both conservatives and liberals.

At his confirmation hearing Monday, Bennett, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, was asked about the fate of the 5-year-old, $18-billion department.

Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-Conn.) said at the hearing that he wanted assurances that Reagan would not seek to dismantle the agency. He threatened to tie up action on Bennett’s nomination unless he got such assurances.

Weicker said Tuesday that “I am satisfied that the Administration will not seek to shut down the Department of Education. Dr. Bennett can now concern himself with the management and improvement of the department, not its eradication.”

Reagan’s letter was the latest, and perhaps last, chapter in a series of efforts to dismantle the department, which former President Jimmy Carter and Congress established. Reagan vowed in his 1980 campaign to abolish it.

But Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell could muster virtually no support for his 1982 plan to downgrade the department to a non-regulatory foundation, and the plan was officially postponed last year when the Republican Party dropped an anti-Education Department plank from its platform.