Power, influence, and déjà vu

Since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), one of ESSA’s coauthors, has made one thing abundantly clear: The law prohibits the federal government from acting as a “national school board.” No longer can the U.S. Department of Education compel states to adopt its favored policies on academic standards, teacher evaluation, or any other matter. And if Betsy DeVos or other federal staff try to reassert the department’s power to shape state-level policies and practices — by, for example, pressuring states to strengthen their goals for student achievement — Alexander will not hesitate to call them out, as he has done on several occasions already.

But if ESSA has reined in the federal government’s influence over state and local educational decision making, then who will take the lead? Who among public schooling’s dizzying array of stakeholders — governors, state legislators, school boards, superintendents, parents, and so on — will define the education agenda in the coming years?

Of course, like every other moment in the history of American education, the present one triggers a sense of déjà vu: Similar questions came to the fore nearly 40 years ago, when President-elect Ronald Reagan announced plans to cut back the federal government’s role in education.

As Jack Schuster wrote in a 1982 article for Kappan, Reagan seemed to have “jammed” the gears of education policy making “abruptly into reverse.” The previous two decades had seen the passage of the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act, rapid expansions in funding for Title I and other programs, and the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Education. But now, argued Schuster, “a new era is upon us, an era in which the federal government appears intent on sharply de-escalating its involvement.” During the 1980s, predicted Schuster, Congress would become a less cohesive force in K-12 education, power would shift to the states (though few state leaders had the knowledge and expertise to govern their schools wisely), and interest groups would have to figure out how to wield influence in a decentralized environment, in which the old D.C. power brokers no longer mattered.

On the other hand, added Schuster — citing a thesis being circulated at the time by Chester Finn, then a faculty member at Vanderbilt — it might be possible for education advocates to rally around a new agenda, one powerful enough to attract widespread support and perhaps even bring federal policy makers back into the fold. According to Finn, the liberal education groups that shaped policy in the 1960s and ’70s had been run out of town because they were “smug,” “greedy,” and too narrowly focused on equity issues. But if a new coalition were to organize around improving the quality of K-12 education, he argued, then a wide range of stakeholders might be persuaded to sign on.

And sign on they did. The following year, 1983, saw the publication of A Nation at Risk, which helped give rise to a new school reform movement (focusing on academic standards, accountability, and school choice) led mainly by businesspeople and governors. Thirty-five years later, that movement looks to have stalled (or suffered complete engine failure, as Jay P. Greene and Michael Q. McShane argue in this issue of Kappan). As a political strategist, though, Finn proved to be correct: When the federal government gave up its lead role in K-12 education, that created an opportunity for a new coalition of players to seize the agenda.

Will history repeat itself in the coming years? Will some blue-ribbon commission publish another call to action, inspiring a new coalition to organize around a fresh agenda for educational improvement? Given how toxic our politics have become, it’s hard to spot any such movement on the horizon. More visible, for now, are two of the other trends that Schuster saw in 1982: Many state-level officials are now scrambling to develop their own capacity to take the lead on K-12 education, and all sorts of advocacy groups are scrambling to figure out how they can wield influence effectively in this new environment.

In this month’s Kappan, we ask who’s best positioned to shape education policy and practice in the coming years. Could the recent spate of teacher-led protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and other states signal a resurgence of organized labor in education? What’s next for parents who’ve led the charge to opt their children out of standardized tests? Are state-level officials capable of shaping a public consensus around priorities for K-12 education, or are they too partisan to seek common ground with practitioners and political rivals? And will Gates, Broad, and other big foundations continue to have an outsized influence on education policy?

Reference

Schuster, J.H. (1982). Out of the frying pan: The politics of education in a new era. Phi Delta Kappan, 63 (9), 583-591.

Citation: Heller, R. (2018). Power, influence, and déjà vu. Phi Delta Kappan 99 (8), 4.