KEPPEL, FRANCIS 1916-1990

Dean, harvard graduate school of education, u.s. commissioner of education

Work to Improve Teaching. As dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Keppel served for fourteen years, quadrupling the enrollment and establishing the school as a site for national leadership in education. He redesigned the master of arts in teaching (MAT) degree and expanded the program. He also created the School and University Program for Research and Development (SUPRAD), which conducted pilot projects on topics such as team teaching and the use of teaching machines.

Commissioner of Education

In his position as commissioner of education from 1962 to 1965 he worked for vastly expanded federal support of education. As the head of the 1965 Keppel Interagency Task Force, he was asked to propose programs to accomplish the following tasks:

1. Relieve the doctor, nurse, and medical technician shortage, especially in light of new Medicare demands;
2. Expand financial aid to middle-class college students;
3. Develop a year-round preschool program;
4. Refine the hastily developed ESEA Title I so as to reach more disadvantaged children;
5. Devise a grant program for quality improvement to selected institutions of higher learning;
6. Explore how best to transfer NDEA student loans, which were line items in the federal budget, to such off-budget devices as an "Educational Development Bank";
7. Improve drop-out prevention for talented students;
8. Develop a program of international education.

Keppel devised plans to make inroads on all of these problems.

Legacy of National Assessment of Educational Progress

One of Keppel's highest personal priorities during his national tenure was to establish a program for national assessment of educational progress. This testing would provide a reasonable benchmark against which to measure progress and to judge the effectiveness of all the newly established programs. To those legislators who believed firmly in local control of education, this idea sounded un-American. Keppel succeeded, however, by including such a plan in 1965 legislation couched in the rhetorical phrase "Planning and Cost Analysis." In the following decades the program came to be called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This national basis for comparison, as well as the sweeping federal programs he helped to form, are his legacy to education. Keppel left government in 1966 to direct private programs in educational development.

Source:

Hugh Davis Graham, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 11.

Francis Keppel 1916–90, American educator, b. New York City. A Harvard graduate, Keppel was named dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education in 1948. There he introduced television into education and created the Master of Arts in Teaching program. As U.S. Commissioner of Education (1962–65) he was instrumental in developing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and in overseeing enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the schools. In 1966, he became head of the General Learning Corporation. Keppel later served on the New York City Board of Higher Education (1967–71) and on Harvard's Board of Overseers (1967–73). In 1974 he became founding chairman of the Lincoln Center Institute and director of the education policy program at the Aspen Institute.