Education Department’s Death Outlined : Budget: GOP task force wants to kill Cabinet agency in favor of block grants to states. Proposal is part of effort to cut scope of federal government.

A task force of House Republicans outlined plans Wednesday to abolish the Department of Education, proposing to liquidate scores of specific programs affecting the nation’s school system and replace them with lump-sum grants that states could use to finance their own education priorities.

The plan to eliminate Education, one of three Cabinet departments targeted for extinction by House Republicans, is intended to make good on GOP promises to reduce the scope of federal government and allow local officials to operate their schools as they see fit.

“This is a serious effort to give back to teachers, parents and communities the dominant role in education that they have had historically,” said Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), chairman of the task force devising a plan for eliminating the department.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has embraced proposals put forth by the task forces for eliminating four agencies--Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development. But it is not clear whether a majority of GOP lawmakers share the view.

The House approved budget legislation last week that calls for eliminating three Cabinet departments: Education, Commerce and Energy. The Senate budget would dismantle only Commerce.

The proposal drafted by the education task force’s 22 members, most of whom are freshman lawmakers, would replace scores of programs with two large block grants to the states: $9 billion dollars earmarked for elementary and secondary schools and $2 billion for higher education. Other departmental functions, including the issuing of post-secondary student loans and grants, would be farmed out to other federal agencies.

Proponents estimate that once the liquidation is complete, it will save $5 billion of the $33 billion now spent by the department. They acknowledge that the changes would mean substantial reductions in the 5,000-person staff.

Clinton Administration officials, congressional Democrats and even some moderate Republicans have attacked the effort as a political ploy that would hurt education at a time when the country needs to improve its schools if it is to remain competitive in the global economy.

“Abolishing the department and scattering the programs creates chaos,” said Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.), a veteran moderate who favors merging the Education Department with the Labor Department.

He accused his Republican colleagues of proposing to dismantle Education “for the sake of politics.”

“In a high-tech global economy, there is a legitimate national interest in having a high-skilled work force,” Gunderson said.

The Education Department accounts for 2% of the federal budget and employs 2% of federal workers. But the tug-of-war over its fate is symbolic of the battle between the Democratic Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress over the role of government.

To the President and his top education appointees, the department is one of the best tools the federal government has for improving the lives of Americans.

To conservatives in Congress, it exemplifies the intrusive, big-spending federal government they want to scale back.

The battle is not a new one. Almost since the Cabinet department was created 16 years ago by President Jimmy Carter, conservatives have been fighting to kill it.

President Ronald Reagan pledged to eliminate it in his first election campaign but could not accomplish the deed in two terms because of solid resistance by the Democratic House.

With Republicans now in charge of the House and Senate, and with their zeal to pare down the federal bureaucracy at a new high, the political viability of the effort is greater than ever.

“There’s a revolution going on in Washington, and this is part of it,” Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), one of the freshmen spearheading a drive to dismantle the department, said in an interview. “This is about taking power from Washington and giving it to local communities. I’m very pro-education, but the federal government has done a lousy job since it’s injected itself into schools.”

The abolitionists concede, however, that President Clinton could stymie their efforts with a veto. But they’ve chosen to push ahead, hoping either that he will feel pressured by the 1996 elections to go along with the plan or, even more to their liking, be replaced by a Republican President.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, called for elimination of the four agencies targeted by the House task forces, characterizing them as “four of the most ineffective, burdensome and meddlesome” agencies in Washington.

Lamar Alexander, a former education secretary under President George Bush and a Republican presidential candidate, frequently cites the elimination of the Education Department as an example of how Washington would change if he were elected.

“I just don’t think we need a U.S. Department of Education,” Alexander said in an interview from Nashville. “It operates on the assumption that teachers and principals are too stupid to make decisions for themselves.”

The department, he and others charge, saddles schools with far too many time-consuming regulations and too frequently does the bidding of special interest groups.

Alexander and another former education secretary, William J. Bennett--who served under Reagan--are working with Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) on a Senate plan for eliminating the department. Their plan, like that of the House freshmen, would replace scores of specific programs with lump-sum block grants to the states.

Opponents of eliminating the department say sending lump sums to the states would dilute the impact of federal dollars, which are now concentrated in areas with the highest concentrations of poor children who face the greatest obstacles to learning.

“At least for the major cities, a block grant is the same thing as a cut,” said Michael Casserly, director of the Council of Great City Schools, which lobbies for education programs for cities. “People at the state level have so many political forces pulling and tugging that the state’s reaction is to spread the money out as thinly as possible. It does some good everywhere, but it doesn’t get the bang for the buck that it ought to get because it does not reach the places it’s needed the most in great enough magnitude.”