Jimmy Carter, who as president on Oct. 17, 1979, signed the bill creating the modern day U.S. Department of Education, died Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia at the age of 100. At the time of his death, he was the nation's longest-living president.
In a speech at the signing of S. 210 to establish the Education Department by combining offices from various federal agencies, Carter called the action a personal commitment. The department would become fully operational in May 1980.
In creating the Education Department, Congress said the intention of the agency was to strengthen equal education opportunities for students and to improve the quality of education by supplementing the efforts taking place in the states and local districts. At the signing, Carter said, “At no time in our history has it been more obvious that our Nation's great educational challenges cannot be met with increased resources alone."
Carter first held public office as a county school board member in Georgia. As a state senator and governor in the Peach State, he said he dedicated much of his time to education issues.
"Our ability to advance both economically and technologically, our country's entire intellectual and cultural life depend on the success of our great educational enterprise," Carter said in the 1979 speech, according to The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"The time has passed when the Federal Government can afford to give second-level, part-time attention to its responsibilities in American education," said Carter, a Democratic one-term president. "If our Nation is to meet the great challenges of the 1980's, we need a full-time commitment to education at every level of government — Federal, State, and local."
Since the department was created 45 years ago, there have been calls to limit its power or eliminate it entirely, with those opposing the department seeking less federal influence in state and local educational issues. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate the Education Department and send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.” There have been congressional proposals in the past to close the department but the legislation never got traction.
Also while president, Carter, an advocate of Head Start, recommended moving the early childhood education program for low-income students from the Office of Child Development in what was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to the Education Department — a move that did not happen. Still, the budget for Head Start nearly doubled during his four-year term, according to the National Head Start Association.
Peaceful conflict solutions
Carter was born Oct. 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia. He attended public schools and graduated in 1946 from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. That same year, he married Rosalynn Smith, who died on Nov. 19, 2023. The Carters had three sons, John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip) and Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff), and daughter Amy Lynn.
After his presidency, Carter was named university distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1982. He and Rosalynn founded The Carter Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that addresses national and international issues of public policy.
Over the decades and until 2020, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter volunteered for a week every year for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that renovates and builds homes for people in need and became associated with the couple.
In 2002, Jimmy Carter was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of work in finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, according to The Nobel Prize website.