Old issues never die. On Capitol Hill, they don't even seem to fade away.

In March 1867, James A. Garfield, then a Congressman from Ohio, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to create a United States Department of Education--an organ without Cabinet-level status. For the next 110 years and more, proposals to establish such a department have burst upon Congress sporadically. From 1908 to 1951, more than 50 pieces of legislation seeking to establish an education department floated through the Russell, Longworth and Rayburn Congressional office buildings; however, none survived beyond the committee stage. Legislation introduced in the 95th Congress met a similar fate. Meanwhile, education has become an orphan child in the constantly expanding bureaucracy-on-the-Potomac, drifting from the Interior Department to the Federal Security Agency and finally coming to rest in 1953 in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW).

In the days ahead, when legislation to create a Cabinet-level Department of Education--H. R. 13778--is debated on the floor of the House, the long and uncertain history of the educational establishment may reach a watershed. Similar legislation--S. 991--moved quickly through the Senate earlier this year, eventually passing by an overwhelming 72-21 margin. In the House, the legislation leaped over its biggest obstacle last month, when it squeaked by the House Government Operations Committee on a 21-20 vote. Parker Cottington, spokesman for Harvard's Office of Government and Community Relations, which has gone on record against the bill, says the vote in the committee "may have been the ballgame. The general mood in Congress seems to be more positive this year," he adds.

Just this week, the House Rules committee granted H.R. 13778 passage to the House floor, where many predict easy passage. "If it comes up on the floor tomorrow, it would pass," Joel Packer, legislative director of the United States Student Association, said last week. With the approval of both houses--some predict the conference committee's work may take less than a day--the government will have adopted Cabinet department number 13.

If and when it happens, many will interpret the creation of a Department of Education as a victory for President Carter. "Education is something that has been relegated to a secondary position in the past," Carter said in 1976 while hot on the campaign trail. Since the campaign, Carter has pushed hard for a separate Department of Education within his overall plan to reorganize the federal government. In November 1977, his special study team presented him with three options for redefining the position of education in the federal machinery: (1) the creation of a separate Department of Education; (2) the creation of a Department of Education and Human Services; and (3) uplifting the status of the Education division of HEW. Carter opted for the first alternative. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.) and Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) got the ball rolling on Capital Hill, and the fight was on.

Essentially, the legislation would consolidate more than 300 Federal education programs administered by approximately 40 agencies into one unit with Cabinet-level jurisdiction and power. Many of the controversial parts of the bill--portions which advocate Department of Education control over Head Start, child nutrition and American Indian education programs, for example--were eliminated from this year's version. Alfred Sumberg, executive director of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) says the legislation is "not watered down, but realistic in terms of what's possible." Nevertheless, lobbying on the bills has been intense and a great deal of money and manpower--$1.4 billion in programs, 16,000 employees--is at stake. More than a simple victory (or defeat) for Carter, the fate of "his department" threatens to redefine the pecking order among organizations and individuals concerned with all levels of education in the United States.

This is not to deny, of course, the extremely political nature of the legislation. "It's no secret that this is a political payment on a 1976 promise and a down payment on the 1980 election," says Bruce Wood of the House Subcommittee on Education and Labor." The Department of Education represents the spoils of interest group politics." Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) observes that the National Education Association--the bill's hardest pushing and most important lobby--never endorsed a presidential candidate until Carter promised he would create a Department of Education. Rep. John N. Erlenborn (R-Ill.) is less kind. "H.R. 13778 is a political payoff in every sense of the word," he told his colleagues, adding, "it is the cargo preference legislation of the education community." One longtime Capitol Hill observer is almost incredulous. "When you want to satisfy an interest group," she explains, "you give them a dinner--not a department." Many Washington analysts simply point to Carter's political ambitions as the motivation behind the legislation. Gregory Humphrey, legislative director of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)--the organization spearheading the lobbying drive against the legislation--puts it bluntly. "A politician in the middle of a campaign is similar to a moose in the running season--he'll support almost anything."

Many people prefer a grander view, however; they see the bill as an indicator of the government's outlook on education. Paul N. Ylvisaker, dean of the Graduate School of Education, says the prevailing attitudes are being shaped by people who no longer have children in school. "The parents of those in school are in the minority," says Ylvisaker, adding that the national feeling towards education is unfavorable. Current government spending problems and reordering of national priorities threaten, as one longtime observer puts it, "to once again leave education out in the cold." The battle over a Cabinet-level Department of Education is no mere bureacratic reshuffling; the proposal and its advocates and opponents stretch from the inner sanctum of the Oval Office to Longfellow Hall at Harvard's Ed School.

Although most of the issues in national education that effect Harvard will remain outside the jurisdiction of any Department of Education, the opinions of those in Cambridge are a microcosm of the national debate on the issue. Harvard, primarily because of President Bok's opinions, has officially opposed the formation of the department. While the legislation is not the top priority of the Office of Government and Community Affairs--the University is more concerned with patent legislation and research allocations in the fiscal 1980 budget, as Cottington explains--Harvard has joined a group of about 60 universities criticizing the legislation. "We feel there should be more debate and discussion before a department is created," argues Robin Schmidt, vice president for government and community affairs, who handles the issue in the office. Schmidt's (read: Harvard's) concerns are echoed by national decision-makers. "Frankly, I am appalled by the rush of some members of Congress to create this department despite the lack of information available about the actual impact of these structural changes," Rep. Chisholm told the House Government Operations Committee last year. Chisholm labels the department "a $17 million shot in the dark."

Yet at Harvard, as in Washington, a random sampling of administrators reveals not everybody agrees that a Department of Education is such a bad idea. Even Bok, who is seen as a leader among University presidents who have voiced opposition to the department-creating legislation, says that "reasonable men" might come out on different sides of the issue after weighing the advantages and disadvantages of creating a department.

One of these reasonable men is Ylvisaker. "As I weigh it," he says, "my scale tips the other direction." The dean says that in order to determine national educational policies, one must add up the views of the Director of the National Institute for Education, the Commissioner of Education (who heads the Office of Education within HEW) and the Assistant Secretary for Education.

Education policy, says Ylvisaker, is too fragmented. "Within HEW," he says, "it tends to get submerged; health is number one, welfare is number two, and education just plods along behind all that." The dean compares educational policy to urban policy, saying that somebody must risk making clear and controversial arguments. "You have to put somebody in charge if you're going to get a coherent policy," he says, adding, "I would rather have one person in charge--even to shoot at--to clarify policy rather than run around to 1000 different departments with different responsibilities."

Those on the national scene who support the legislation echo Ylvisaker's call for increased coordination and coherence in educational policy. Elizabeth Abramowitz, the White House's chief lobbyist for the proposal, says educational decision-makers are buried in bureaucracy. "It may sound trivial on the face of it," Abramowitz explains, "but the Secretary of Labor, for example, may never consult with the Commissioner of Education because he (the Commissioner) is five levels below."

Stephen K. Bailey, professor Education and Social Policy and president of the National Academy of Education, says he has been devoted to the notion of a separate Department of Education for more than 10 years. "HEW suffers from elephantitis," says Bailey. "Enormous budgets and resources end up going to the 'H' and the 'W' but not to the 'E."' The Commissioner of Education, as Bailey puts it, is on the fourth bureaucratic level. To make matters worse, he argues, "there have been 15 commissioners in the last 18 years--it's just a revolving door. Nobody knows who's responsible or accountable for anything. "We must give somebody the power to make a mesh of things."

Such arguments have found friendly ears in the halls of Congress. Rep. Cecil Heftel (D-Hawaii) adequately summarized the feelings of many in his testimony before the House Committee.