The fiftieth anniversary of the ESEA is coming up in April
of 2015, and we’ll be hearing a lot about it – you know, “looking forward,
looking back.” Make no mistake, I adore
history and historians of the federal role. I like
to kvetch about NCLB’s problems as much as the next College of Education
faculty member. But my intellectual
commitments are increasingly to policy analysis aimed at the future tense, and
I am looking for new collaborators to get me to think in creative ways about
that.
My colleague Professor Eric Houck, a
school finance scholar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and I
wrote a paper for the Russell Sage Foundation’s gathering on ESEA at 50 in New
York last week. We are very interested
in how Congress could build some incentives for states to re-vamp their state
finance systems to make them more equitable into the ESEA. We argue that
federal policy has swung toward adequacy since NCLB, and suggest that when we
meld the concepts of adequacy from school finance and opportunity-to-learn from
education policy together, there is a justification for incentivizing
equity. We propose a competitive
grant program within ESEA to make awards to states willing to revamp their
state finance systems, either through better weighting of formulae to support
students with the greatest needs, or by asking states to increase their share
of spending, thereby blunting somewhat the effects of the local property-tax
base system. Although the Equity
and Excellence Commission’s 2013 Report to the Secretary of Education called
for a stronger federal role in that dimension, it never explained how it could
be accomplished in policy.
You might say it is impossible for the new Congress to care
about equity, and that everyone is wedded to the current NCLB accountability
model. But let’s consider some
political realities about the present and future Congresses: there is a lot of
dissatisfaction with the NCLB model, and a lot of indications that Rep. Kline and
Sen. Alexander favor
deregulation for the next round of proposals. In fact, it is probably “Deregulate or no
deal.” So I think progressives and
centrists alike ought to ask how the current model of categorical programs (like
Title I, Title II) could be restructured to support heightened accountability
and targeting, more equitable state funding formulae, and expanded investment
in early childhood, health, and other community supports. (There are some fascinating forthcoming books
about this; look for my spring blog.)
Eric and I heard a lot of very valid pushback about our
ideas: there’s limited federal capacity within the Department to support such
ambitious reforms; states won’t want to participate; you can never assess if
you’ve ever truly provided equality of opportunity. And those all deserve the best answers we can
provide. My point is that if those of us in academia don’t start writing some
policy proposals that are based on research – especially those of us past the point
of promotion and tenure – there are plenty of think tank staffers who will
readily jump in to fill the void (minus the research). I am willing to re-think
some of my long-held suppositions about what the federal contract with states
ought to look like, so long as civil rights are held sacrosanct. I’m looking for a few venturesome friends to
help me.
PS – The paper is too drafty to post here now, but write me
if you are interested, email me (edebray@uga.edu) and I will send it once it’s
further toward publication.
by Elizabeth DeBray
Elizabeth DeBray is a professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration& Policy in the College of Education, University of Georgia. She received her Ed.D. from Harvard University. Her research interests are the politics of federal education policy, policy implementation, and interest group politics.
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