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Federal spending on education will obviously keep growing, and the influence of Keppel's office, which is already being expanded, will be considerable. But to a surprising degree, the old fear of federal control has faded. Schoolmen have been working with federal money for years, and though they may object to some of the paper work, they have discovered that so far Washington has never tried to tell them what or how to teach. "I believe in local control," says New York's Commissioner Allen. "But local control also means that you allow a community to be as poor as it wants to be—and we can't afford that any longer." California's Braden contends that "this concern over federal control is a bugaboo. We already have federal aid amounting to 4% of our school budget in California, and there's been no such attempt at control."
The bill avoided any racial flare-up because the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had already decreed that no federal funds can aid any project operated on a discriminatory basis. But the law will put heavy pressure on the nation's public-school districts to file assurances that they do comply with the Civil Rights Act. Commissioner Keppel has firmly insisted that Southern school districts must either present specific plans to drop their dual school systems within four years or openly agree to permit Negro students to enter any school of their choice, except where a school is seriously overcrowded. So far, he has accepted the plans of only twelve (out of some 2,000) Southern districts, has actually withheld the distribution of some $200 million in federal aid under previous programs. He is also turning a critical eye on many Northern school districts that seem gerrymandered to create virtually all-Negro or all-white schools.
There has been a general decline in the agitation by civil rights groups to bus large numbers of pupils out of their neighborhoods.
In all, however, some 12,000 districts still have not filed desegregation statements that have satisfied Keppel's office.
Governor Carl Sanders of Georgia recently telephoned Keppel to protest: "My boys went extra lengths to change their systems. If any Negro wants to go to a white school, they are pledged to let him in. My God, what more do you want? Do you want us to advertise to drum up business?"
Keppel's one-word answer: "Yes."
Ignorance or Taxes