Elementary And Secondary Education Act Research Articles

Re-centering civil rights in the reauthorization of ESEA: An equitable, ecological, evidence-based framework

This article considers the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in light of current educational inequities and the impact of the pandemic. The reauthorization presents an opportunity to center equity and justice and revitalize the civil rights aspects of the law. The authors review recent studies about the myriad ways the COVID-19 pandemic affected students, teachers and school systems and situates the reauthorization within the broader political context, including federal aid to states and districts during the pandemic. The authors present overarching policy recommendations: (1) a restructuring of the law’s titles to focus on students, teachers, and systems (i.e. schools and districts); (2) a focus on the principles of racial equity, an ecosystem approach to serve students’ needs across policy silos (i.e., housing and health), and a focus on research evidence; (3) policy targets for students; (4) policy targets for educators, including professional renewal and retention; (5) policy targets for the education system as a whole, including a focus on fiscal equity and facilitating regional approaches to cross-sector collaborations. The article presents a coherent conceptual framework for a redesign of ESEA with an emphasis on equity, evidence use, and ecosystems that is argued would directly address the needs of students, teachers, and systems.

From NCLB to ESSA: Implications for Teacher Preparation and Policy

With the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the term highly qualified teacher (HQT) became an important component of teacher licensure, including for special educators. However, when ESEA was reauthorized in 2015 as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the highly qualified regulations were removed. The purpose of this study was to look back at the historical record of policy implementation of HQT and compare the record across states to provide implications for teacher preparation and licensure policy in the era of ESSA. This was accomplished through a review of the history of special education teacher licensure and completion of a comprehensive analysis of state licensure requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. Despite a general consistency across three domains (i.e., degree, examination, and licensure) of the highly qualified statute, inconsistencies among states at both the elementary and secondary levels of special educator licensure may yield significant challenges related to the impact of teacher quality on student outcomes. Better understanding of these challenges is important as policymakers will be better able to make decisions regarding what teachers need to know prior to entering the field to meet students’ needs and generate student achievement.

The ‘production’ of education: the turn from equity to efficiency in U.S. federal education policy

ABSTRACT The U.S. federal government has played a growing role in setting nationwide education policy since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. This Act, along with the ‘Equality of Educational Opportunity’ report commissioned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, led the U.S. Office of Education to pursue a policy agenda focused on equalizing access and ameliorating poverty through the education system. Despite the promotion of equity serving as the officially stated goal of federal policy, expert evaluations of the government’s efforts incorporated technical assumptions from the field of economics that prioritized maximizing efficiency between inputs and outputs in the education system. When the ESEA was reauthorized in 2002 as No Child Left Behind, significant ‘policy drift’ had occurred such that the evaluation of teacher quality – which was the subject of a large literature in economics on the ‘education production function’ – was incorporated as a key component of the education system’s flagship anti-poverty initiative, Title I.

A Validity Argument in Support of the Use of College Admissions Test Scores for Federal Accountability

AbstractIn 2018, 26 states administered a college admissions test to all public school juniors. Nearly half of those states proposed to use those scores as their academic achievement indicators for federal accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); many others are planning to use those scores for other accountability purposes. Accountability encompasses a number of different uses and subsumes a variety of claims. For states proposing to use summative tests for accountability, a validity argument needs to be developed, which entails delineating each specific use of test scores associated with accountability, identifying appropriate evidence, and offering a rebuttal to counterclaims. The aim of this article is to support states in developing a validity argument for use of college admission test scores for accountability by identifying claims that are applicable across states, along with summarizing existing evidence as it relates to each of these claims. As outlined by The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, multiple sources of evidence are used to address each claim. A series of threats to the validity argument, including weaker alignment with content standards and potential influences in narrowing teaching, are reviewed. Finally, the article contrasts validity evidence, primarily from research on the ACT, with regulatory requirements from ESSA. The Standards and guidance addressing the use of a “nationally recognized high school academic assessment” (Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Negotiated Rulemaking Committee; Department of Education) are the primary sources for the organization of validity evidence.

Look Back: The feds, the states, and Kappan

Across the decades, the balance of power between the federal government, states, and local districts has shifted numerous times, and Kappan authors have weighed in on each of those shifts. Kappan Managing Editor Teresa Preston traces those shifts, beginning with the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which gave the federal government a larger role in public education. Further expansion occurred under the Carter administration, with the launch of the new federal Department of Education. As the new department continued operations under Reagan, its priorities expanded, but actual decision-making authority reverted to states. States, in turn, began involving themselves more with instructional and curricular matters, a trend that eventually made its way back to the federal level, with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Under NCLB, federal mandates had the effect of requiring state and local levels to take on additional responsibilities, without necessarily having the capacity to do so. This capacity issue remains a concern under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Preparation and The Real World of Education: How Prospective Teachers Grapple with Using Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices in the Age of Standardized Testing

The most highlighted provision and consequence of the reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, is obsessive practices of assessing students across the United States (U.S.). Despite newly named policies, including Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) of 2015, which governs current U.S. K-12 education standards, concerns over NCLB’s unprecedented fixation on high stakes testing remain acute for many school districts. This manuscript examines the struggles of four preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PMTs) who grappled with enacting culturally responsive teaching practices at schools that aimed to meet accountability standards.

Negotiating Intergovernmental Relations Under ESSA

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has generated considerable buzz in education circles and the general media. But how much has really changed, and what does this mean for states as they begin the process of implementing a new federal education law? In this article, we apply principal-agent theory to explore intergovernmental relations under ESSA, focusing specifically on the relationship between the federal government (the principal) and state governments (the agents). First, we review power dynamics under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and ESSA, exploring implications of changes in the substance of both laws for the principal-agent problem. Next, using political discourse analysis, we show how shifts in the content of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and its implementation by the current administration influenced the federal review process of state plans for the sixteen states that submitted plans under the early deadline. We find the federal government was most likely to provide feedback around Title I, Part A, Section 4 pertaining to accountability and school improvement. Ultimately, however, states that ignored or defied federal feedback were successful given both the limits ESSA places on U.S. Department of Education authority and the current administration’s reliance on negotiation over sanction. Thus far, this approach has ensured states are realizing the maximum flexibility available through the law, as all state plans were approved, regardless of whether states heeded federal feedback and complied with the law.

The Bilingual Research Journal: Dreams, possibilities, and necessity

ABSTRACTThe Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), signed in 1965, was a pivotal civil rights law to address the dream of equitable education for all children on the mainland and in U.S. territories. The ESEA was followed by the Bilingual Education Act (BEA), signed by President Johnson in 1968. The BEA specifically addressed the necessities of students whose dominant language was not English. Together these two Acts passed in the 1960s offered new government attention in the form of grants and programs for the purpose of providing bilingual education. Both Acts were reauthorized in their 50-year-plus history. Rather than dwell on the government documents themselves, this article examines the question: In what ways do research studies published in the Bilingual Research Journal inform and hold us accountable to the dream of equity—a dream that mandates equitable access to and opportunities for successful learning outcomes for children from all communities including immigrant communities? A qualitative analysis is used to address the question.

All Means All: Connecting Federal Education Policy and Local Implementation Practice Through Evidence and Equity

AbstractThis article discusses equity-based inclusive education and federal policy drivers that can be used to make positive sustainable change in state, district, and local practice to improve the academic, social, and behavioral outcomes for all students including students with extensive support needs and those with labels of intellectual and developmental disabilities. Educational policies addressed include the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA), Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and civil rights legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The policy domain feature of the Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation (SWIFT) model is examined regarding how it was implemented in districts and schools, working toward the goal of providing an equity-based inclusive education for all students. Translating federal education policy into state, district, and local practice requires leadership and political courage to align federal, state, and district policy with the vision and values of equity-based, inclusive education.

The Making of a “Legislative Miracle”: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965

The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was one of the most significant legislative accomplishments in twentieth-century American politics. To date, legislative histories have usually argued that the ESEA's passage was the result of either auspicious political circumstances or the political skill of the Johnson White House. Complicating these histories, I argue here that the ESEA was the result of skillful entrepreneurship on the part of policymakers in the White House and in Congress, and that while some auspicious political circumstances existed, these had less to do with the 1964 landslide election and more to do with subtler changes in congressional rules and commitment assignments that had taken place over the previous decade. I illustrate how ESEA supporters collectively overcame daunting legislative roadblocks, including a fractious House of Representatives and the “Three Rs.” I conclude by reflecting on the relevance of the 1965 debates for today's education policy environment.

Adoption of Comprehensive School Physical Activity Programs: A Literature Review

P-12 physical education (PE) has evolved significantly over the last several decades, with one of the most important changes occurring recently with the inclusion of PE as a core academic subject (Society of Health and Educators [SHAPE America], 2015c). Well-designed PE programs have been acknowledged as having the unique potential to address student learning in all three of Bloom's domains (psychomotor, cognitive, and affective; National Association for Sport and Education [NASPE], 2011; SHAPE America, 2015a), but PE did not become a validated core subject until the recent 2015 revision of the federally legislated Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), a designation long since desired in the field (SHAPE America, 2015c).The advancement of a holistic approach emphasizing the education and health of students began in the late 1980s with the promotion of the Coordinated School Health Program model by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The model identifies schools as essential agencies of change in youth health behaviors (Wechsler, McKenna, Lee, & Dietz, 2004) and includes eight components known to strongly influence student health, with PE serving as one of the components (Allensworth & Kolbe, 1987). In 1991, Sallis and McKenzie published the seminal paper Physical Education's Role in Public Health, highlighting the vital potential contribution of schools and PE in addressing the nationwide concerns related to childhood obesity and physical inactivity.In response to this critical national concern, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS, 2008) introduced the first set of approved guidelines addressing physical activity (PA): the 2008 Activity Guidelines for Americans. The guidelines recommend that children and adolescents engage in at least 60 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) daily. To further convey the importance of increasing PA opportunities, NASPE (2008) released a position statement recommending that all P-12 schools implement a Comprehensive School Activity Program (CSPAP). A CSPAP should include (a) quality PE (QPE), (b) PA during school, (c) PA before and after school, (d) school employee wellness and involvement, and (e) family and community involvement.The National Activity Plan (NPAP Alliance, 2010) includes comprehensive strategies to promote PA by eight sectors of society. The education sector is responsible for outlining strategies and tactics that could be implemented in and around the school setting (NPAP, 2010), with the first of seven strategies specifically targeting the comprehensive approach of the CSPAP. The goal of Strategy 1 is to access to and opportunities for high-quality, comprehensive physical activity programs, anchored by physical education, in Pre-kindergarten through grade 12 educational (Education section, para. 4). In line with this strategy and the NASPE (2008) recommendation, schools have been identified as one of the most appropriate settings for increasing PA (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2013; Kelder, Karp, Scruggs, & Brown, 2014; NPAP Alliance, 2010; USDHHS, 2008), and national initiatives such as Let's Move! Active Schools (n.d.) have been established to provide schools and teachers with the necessary resources and tools to increase PA opportunities for students.Most recently, in The Essential Components of Education, SHAPE America (2015a) outlines four components that establish a more direct path for attaining QPE programs: (a) policy and environment, (b) curriculum, (c) appropriate instruction, and (d) student assessment. SHAPE America (2015a) identifies these as foundational components designed to guide schools and physical educators in making PE a more validated subject area. In addition to emphasizing more rigorous policies and higher accountability in the field, SHAPE America (2015a) also strongly endorses the use of the CSPAP framework to increase overall PA opportunities for students. …

Advocating for All Children

Advocating for All Children

Pendulum Swings in Educational Policymaking

Reforms in American public education have not resolved the wide academic performance gap between students. Officials respond by developing reforms, that is, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Flexibility Waivers. The Waivers modified the more controversial aspects of ESEA/NCLB, which imposed a strict compliance deadline. This was a difficult task for many and an impossible one for the poorest school districts. Using factor analysis and logistic regression, this study provides a methodology for generating data to explain variation in student performance in Michigan school districts associated with organizational, school, financial, and social characteristics.

From No Child Left behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act: Federalism and the Education Legacy of the Obama Administration

This article offers an analysis of the legacy of the Obama Administration’s education agenda, focusing on implications for American federalism. Faced with partisan gridlock in Congress—which was not able to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) until the last year in office—the Obama Administration opted to make education policy through creative, expansive, and controversial uses of executive power that changed the national political discourse around education and pushed states to enact important policy changes regarding charter schools, common core standards and assessments, and teacher evaluation. The administration’s aggressive efforts on school reform, however, eventually led to a political backlash against those same reforms and federal involvement in education more generally and resulted in an ESEA reauthorization (the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act) that rolls back the federal role in K-12 schooling in important ways. One of the enduring legacies of the Obama presidency may well be the invigoration and expansion of the state role in education.

“Money Talks”: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and the African-American Freedom Struggle in Mississippi

I am honored to participate on this plenary and I want to extend my thanks to the conference planning committee for the invitation. I come to this gathering as a civil rights scholar who has an interest in black education in the South. I do not consider it hyperbole on this the fiftieth anniversary of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to say that the legislation was the most important federal government action on black education since the second Morrill Act of 1890. Surely, some in this room would disagree with my assessment and make a strong case for the 1954 Brown decision. Indeed, the Supreme Court declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional was significant. The ruling, however, had a lot of bark but very little bite, and the recalcitrant South needed bite. We know the states of the former Confederacy needed a get-tough “if-then approach”—as in, if you don't do X, then you won't get Y.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act at Fifty: A Changing Federal Role in American Education

For this first History of Education Quarterly Policy Forum, we invited participants in the special Plenary Session at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the History of Education Society (HES) in St Louis to publish their remarks on the historical significance of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) at fifty. Organized and introduced by HES vice-president and program chair Adam R. Nelson, the session consisted of presentations by three expert panelists from the fields of History and African American Studies, American Law and Politics, and Political Science and Public Policy: Crystal Sanders of Penn State University, Doug Reed of Georgetown University, and Susan Moffitt of Brawn University, respectively. What follows are the texts of Adam Nelson's introductory remarks—including his introduction of the three panelists—followed by the panelists' remarks.

The Search for Role Clarity

Over the years, a variety of political, social, and other contextual factors have contributed to the expansion of roles for PK-12 special educators, leading to a complex set of challenges and opportunities that must be addressed as the field of special education looks to the future. Today’s special educators need to collaborate with general educators in tiered systems of support while providing specialized instruction for students with the most intensive needs, yet teacher education and professional development opportunities may not always adequately prepare them for these changing roles. The recent re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) creates a new policy context with the potential to bring about additional changes in PK-12 settings and teacher preparation. In recognition of the need to more clearly articulate and align the demands of PK-12 schooling with the teacher education enterprise, the article concludes with a set of policy recommendations intended to promote clarification of special educators’ roles and inform the future of university-based teacher preparation programs (TPPs) engaged in fostering their development at the preservice and in-service levels.

<em>The Value of a Triangle: Mathematics Education in Industrial and Classical Schools in the Segregated South</em>

Mainstream education research and policy is dominated by social science orientations that primarily rely on positivist theories, models, and interpretations of the mathematical competence of African Americans or Blacks (terms are used interchangeably). Contemporary scholarship and national discourse surrounding the education of Blacks often center on the notion of pathology, a view largely supported by deficit perspectives (Martin, 2009a; Stinson 2006). As Martin has pointed out, research and policy is a site where degradation of African American children occurs (Martin, 2009a, p. 1) in part because of the on-going discussions of racial achievement gaps and comparisons to White and Asian American students.An official and public conversation about achievement gaps has been going on at least since 1969 when The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) began reporting racially disaggregated achievement data (see National Center for Education Statistics website at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/). Most policymakers and researchers use NAEP data to make consequential claims about U.S. students' outcomes - Black students' outcomes in particular. The claims can be consequential because school districts, teachers, and even families and students themselves view the interpretations of the standardized assessments as normative, correlated with intelligence, and generally disconnected from institutional issues and contexts.There are explanations in the literature for why achievement gaps exist. Some researchers point to factors such as inequitable distribution of quality teachers (Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2012). Others position Black parents negatively, blaming them for placing low value on early education (Jencks & Phillips, 1998). Still other scholars contend that the U.S. does not have an achievement gap at all, but an educational debt (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Mathematics education research and policy continue to use achievement gap language in decontextualized ways despite a growing body of literature that suggests race-comparative approaches position Black students at the bottom of the racial hierarchy of ability (Martin, 2009a, b, c). These approaches do not address issues of identity and power, which are important for decentering the assimilationist perspective in many education policy documents (Gutierrez, 2008). The perspective can be viewed as assimilationist because there is little recognition of the linguistic and cultural resources that marginalized students bring to the classroom or to the discipline of mathematics (Gutierrez, 2008, p. 361). Moreover, there is limited effort by mainstream education research and policy to understand what it means to learn while also being Black (Martin, 2012). Critical Race Theory (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 2000; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012) points out that race and racism are endemic in U.S. society; therefore, it is critical to analyze the intersection at the teaching and learning of and the story of race to interrogate ways race influences Black people's educational experiences and production of mathematical knowledge.The rise in national focus on the achievement of Blacks using state and national summative assessments can be marked by important legal decisions beginning with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. What did the education of Blacks look like before these legal decisions? While very little is known about the education of Blacks pre-Brown, there is some documentation of important issues we might find at that intersection of teaching and learning and race during segregation (Russell, 2014). The field also knows that new narratives describing the segregated schooling of Blacks, mainly in the South have challenged the master narrative that reduced all Black schools and students to unilateral inferiority (Anderson, 1988; Siddle-Walker, 2009). …

The Myth of Accountability: How Data (Mis)Use Is Reinforcing the Problems of Public Education

There is an ongoing tension in the American public education system between the values of excellence, equity, and a sustained commitment to efficiency. Accountability has emerged as a framework in education reform that promises to promote and balance all three values. Yet, this frame is often contested due to disagreements over the role of incentives and penalties in achieving desirable change, and concerns that the proposed mechanisms will have significant unintended consequences that outweigh potential benefits. More fundamentally, there is widespread disagreement over how to quantify excellence and equity, if it is even possible to do so. Accountability rhetoric echoes a broader turn toward data-driven decision-making and resource allocation across sectors. As a tool of power, accountability processes shift authority and control away from professional educators and toward policymakers, bureaucrats, and test makers. The construct of accountability is predicated on several assumptions. First, it privileges quantification and statistical analysis as ways of knowing and is built on a long history of standardized testing and data collection. Second, it takes learning to be both measurable and the product of instruction, an empiricist perspective descended from John Locke and the doctrine that knowledge is derived primarily from experience. Third, it holds that schools, rather than families, neighborhoods, communities, or society at large, are fundamentally responsible for student performance. This premise lacks a solid evidentiary basis and is closely related to the ideology of meritocracy. Finally, efforts to achieve accountability presume that market-based solutions can effectively protect the interests of society’s most vulnerable, another controversial assumption. The accountability movement reflects the application of free market economics to public education, a legacy of the Chicago School of Economics in the post-World War II era. As a set of policies it was instantiated in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2002, and reinforced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. Teaching and learning are increasingly measured and quantified to enable analysis of the relationship between inputs (e.g., funding) and outputs (e.g., student performance). As has been true in other sectors when data-driven surveillance and assessment practices are introduced, outcomes are not always as expected. It is unclear whether this data push will promote equality of opportunity, merely document inequality, or perhaps even increase racial and socioeconomic segregation. Furthermore, little is understood about the costs of increased assessment on the health and success of students and teachers, externalities that are rarely measured or considered in the march to accountability. States will need to generate stakeholder buy-in and think carefully about the metrics they include in their accountability formulas in order to balance mandates for accountability, the benefits that accrue to students from preserving teacher autonomy and professionalism, the social good of equal opportunity, and public calls for transparency and innovation.

Tensions and Transformations

Educational professionals have the challenging responsibility of serving a highly diverse population of students. Laws such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004), the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Amendment Act (ADAA, 2008), underscore the obligation to account for the needs of both children and adults with disabilities. As leaders face competing needs and demands, they confront ethical dilemmas that require a sophisticated framework to help resolve such issues. Relying on narrative analysis, this article explores the authors’ experience using an ethical framework to teach a course on disability law to graduate level education students. The reflective process that led to the integration of an ethical framework into the curriculum and instruction of a law-related course is discussed, as is the actual implementation of the model and its effect on students as evidenced through coursework, class discussions, course evaluations and personal communication. Further, the article documents the impact of utilizing an ethical framework in the evolution of the course over time providing practical information on course structure and delivery. The article concludes with implications for leadership preparation particularly with respect to education and understanding of students with disabilities. Recommendations are made for additional research and inquiry regarding the infusion of ethical frameworks into the overall curriculum and coursework within leadership preparation programs.