Samuel Brownell; Former U.S. Education Commissioner

Samuel Brownell, 90, former Nebraska high school teacher who served as U.S. commissioner of education in the Eisenhower Administration. He was a Yale professor and president of New Haven State Teachers College in 1953 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him commissioner of education. At the time, school enrollments were soaring as the postwar “baby boom” generation entered public schools. Brownell urged a rapid expansion of the American education system at all levels, warning that tens of thousands of new schools would be needed. He also began programs to fight illiteracy and rising dropout rates, pushed for higher salaries and better working conditions for teachers, and prodded Congress to provide more money for education. He resigned in 1956 to become superintendent of schools in Detroit, where he introduced new systems of hiring and promotion that opened top administrative jobs to blacks. He also began a $100-million construction program that put up 53 schools. He left Detroit in 1966 to return to Yale and part-time teaching. In New Haven, Conn., on Friday.