The federal government's role in education, though limited, is real and essential. Few things are as important to any nation as the education of its citizens, and that is especially true in America where educated workers are setting records for productivity and innovation unheard of elsewhere around the globe or throughout history. The rise in average educational attainment of our work force accounted for fully one-fifth of the growth in productivity that took place in America between 1963 and 1992. What made that possible, of course, was America's commitment to public education.
Public education is the backbone of America's education system.
America's tradition of providing a free, public education stretches all the way back to colonists in Massachusetts who provided the first tax-supported public schools here in 1647. Today 93 percent of school-aged children in America depend on public education. Clearly, it is a national priority and one that goes directly to our strength as a nation. Basic responsibility for education funding and policy decisions remain, as the framers of our Constitution intended, at the local level. But the federal government still has a responsibility to provide leadership on educational issues that are important to us as a nation.