Education: Broken Promises

"The blood is ankle deep over there," said a Washington lobbyist for the National Education Association.

"Everybody's been out knifing."

He was talking about the U.S. Office of Education, a sedate institution that is not ordinarily a scene of such gore. The reason for the change: the White House budget experts wanted next year's federal aid to education cut by about 10%. That meant squeezing more than half a billion dollars out of an overall budget now providing $5.7 billion.

Just last spring President Nixon and Congress promised the nation's colleges and universities a vastly...