Historical Events week5 alot of reading

See the  attached example . Please list five significant historical events/leaders from this era (Chapters Nine and Ten) and choose two to compare and contrast. Your Discussion Forum response will satisfy the following requirements:

a. Five events and the date each event occurred is listed

b. Two events are chosen and a Venn Diagram is completed showing (at least three in each category) the similarities and differences of each chosen event.

c. Three of the following five questions have been answered

· These events are still significant today because____.

· If I could change the outcome of one of my listed events I would change___ because____. 

· If only one of these events/individuals could have taken place; I would chose ___ because____. 

· If I could change the outcome of one of my chosen events I would choose___ because____. 

· What would you say is the most important result of each of your chosen events? 

9.1 Conservatism Takes Center Stage

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 brought a resurgence of conservatism in both politics and education. Reagan's new federalism philosophy called for reduced taxes and reduced federal spending for social programs, including education, as well as decentralization of responsibility for, and control over, domestic issues to state and local governments. It also proposed greater involvement of the business community in supporting schools and setting educational goals and standards. The conservative position was articulated by members of the so-called New Right, who were associated with the Washington-based think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and centrist conservatives with ties to another conservative think tank, The American Enterprise Institute.

Both groups expressed concern about the expanded involvement of the federal government in education. Both attributed the "rising tide of mediocrity" in American education to the "failed social experiments" of the 1960s and to excessive federal intervention in schools. However, although the New Right would have eliminated almost all federal involvement in education, abolished the Department of Education, and downgraded civil rights regulations, the centrist conservatives saw some federal involvement as necessary to identify the national interest in education and promote its accomplishment, to ensure the perpetuation of a common culture, and to promote educational equity, albeit on a limited basis (Pincus, 1985).

Driving the conservative agenda was the fact that many conservatives blamed the schools for the social unrest of the 1960s and early 1970s, and for many of the social problems that they saw as undermining the moral fabric of the country. "The popular opinion of this period suggested that poor education was contributing to the difficulties facing America in unemployment and job loss" (Good, 2010, p. 368).

Both the New Right and centrist conservatives favored greater accountability, higher standards, tuition tax credits, increased parental choice, and an expanded role for private schools. The New Right advocated for prayer in schools and the elimination of all things deemed to be associated with so-called secular humanism, while the centrist conservatives were more concerned that the schools teach the basic values of the American capitalist society (Pincus, 1985). Initially, the Reagan administration's education agenda, as well as its rhetoric, closely followed that of the New Right, though throughout much of his time in office, Reagan's actions, if not his words, seemed more in keeping with the centrist position.

One of the major items on Reagan's education agenda was to reduce the number, complexity, and confusion of federal education programs. As discussed in Chapter 8, the 1960s and 1970s had witnessed a proliferation of these programs, and by 1980 their number had risen to over 500 (Rosmiller, 1990). Most of them were directed at children not in the mainstream of the education system and were intended to supplement, not supplant, state and local funds. In an effort to ensure that both of these directives were met, a plethora of often confusing and sometimes conflicting rules and regulations were promulgated. As time went on and the number of programs increased, so did disenchantment with the red tape, duplication, and bureaucracy that accompanied federal aid.

President Ronald Reagan.

Photri Images/SuperStock

While simplifying the large number of educational programs to eliminate red tape, Reagan also cut funding across the board for those same educational programs.

In keeping with his own agenda and the 1980 Republican Party platform to "replace the crazy quilt of wasteful programs with a system of block grants that will restore decision making to local officials," one of Reagan's first major proposals was to consolidate Title I of the ESEA, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the Emergency School Aid Act, and the Adult Education Act into one block grant (called Chapter 1), and most of the other elementary and secondary programs into a second block (called Chapter 2).

The legislation that Congress enacted, the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) of 1981 in the end did not combine Title I with the other acts, but it did consolidate 33 elementary and secondary categorical programs into one single block grant. But Chapter 2 was the most visible indicator of the attempt to shift power from the federal government to the states and local school districts. Chapter 2 made a lump sum distribution of funds to each state based on a formula that considered the number and kinds of students in each state, and it allowed states to reallocate funds to local schools on whatever basis they deemed appropriate.

The ECIA thus incorporated Reagan's new federalism—"decentralization, simplification, and increased flexibility—in an attempt to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of educational programs at the local level" (Darling-Hammond & Marks, 1983, p. ix).

However, Reagan's funding proposal for the entire block was less than what had formerly been spent for the ESEA alone. In fact, in every budget request made while he was in office, Reagan proposed reductions in federal spending for education. From fiscal years 1980 to 1989, federal funds for elementary and secondary education declined by 17% and for higher education by 27% in constant dollars (Snyder & Dillow, 2013). So, although the ECIA did deliver less red tape, it also delivered fewer services. After years of increased federal funding, the effect of ECIA was dramatic.

9.2 The School Reform Movement

Another major concern of the Reagan administration was to respond to concerns about school quality. In the 1950s, Sputnik and technological competition with the Soviet Union had focused attention on the education system. In the 1980s, economic competition with the Japanese and a deteriorating domestic economy brought the education system into the forefront of public debate once again, and with it a return to the belief that education is directly linked to the economic well-being of the nation (Horn, 2002).

Although some historians question the economic justification for school reform in the 1980s, the very fact that schools were seen as tools for solving the nation's economic problems overwhelmed their other popular and historic purposes (Cuban & Shipp, 2000). For almost two centuries, public schools had been expected to promote citizenship, cultivate the moral and social development of students, and unite diverse groups into one nation. In the 1980s, as public schools were asked to build the human capital believed to be necessary for the nation to maintain its place as the world's economic leader, these other purposes appeared to be distractions (Cuban & Shipp, 2000).

With the shift to a business purpose came an increased prominence of the business community and business principles in planning school reform. The public schools, as well as colleges and universities, struggled to find ways to apply such business beliefs as total quality management (TQM) to their operations, and business leaders became the heads of prestigious reform commissions.

In response to the concerns about the quality of the schools, as well as to their newly stated importance in arresting the nation's declining economic and intellectual competitiveness, Reagan's Secretary of Education, Terrel H. Bell, appointed a National Commission on Excellence in Education. Its report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (1983), used strong and stirring language to describe a "rising tide of mediocrity in education" and an educational system that was failing America's youth. Commissioners declared that it would have been seen as "an act of war" if any unfriendly power had imposed the nation's education system on it.

The report was particularly critical of four things: (1) the curriculum, which it said had been "homogenized, diluted, and diffused"; (2) lowered expectations in terms of grades, testing, and graduation and college entry requirements; (3) decreased time spent on academic subjects; and (4) the teaching force and its training. A Nation at Risk called for a nationwide (but not federally supported or administered) system of standardized tests of achievement:

This call for a nationwide system of tests marked a new era of federal education policy, an era in which educational opportunities would be measured not so much in terms of financial aid, special programs, or even racial desegregation but, rather, in terms of standardized tests. (New York Education Department, 2009, p. 49)

A Nation at Risk has been described by some as a "bombshell" on the American education scene, by others as a "call to action," and by still others as a "conservative call to arms" (Horn, 2002). Whereas Sputnik had focused the nation's attention on the fears attendant to the Cold War, A Nation at Risk focused attention on the fears attendant to competition in the global economy (Johanningmeier, 2010). Once again education critics and reformers called for public schools to provide more and better science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction (Johanningmeier, 2010).

There is no question that the report was a landmark in the history of education reform in the United States, one that has lasted more than 40 years and spanned both Democratic and Republican administrations (Johanningmeier, 2010). Its recommendations (see the From the Archives feature box) became the blueprint for widespread reform at both the state and local levels and for the entire K–12 system, even though the Commission focused only on the high school and its criticisms were addressed only at this level (Good, 2010).

Throughout the 1980s, numerous other reports on the status of education, both nationally and in many states, from various institutions, foundations, educational organizations, government agencies, political associations, and academic researchers followed A Nation at Risk. A number of these were sponsored by the business community.

The reports were motivated by the confluence of two different public concerns. One was America's seeming economic decline and loss of international power, which had been based on the nation's scientific and technological preeminence. A second concern was certain negative trends in American education: low test scores, lower enrollments in math and science, a weakening teaching staff in many schools, and low math and science scores on international tests (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990). Collectively, the reports were responsible for what has been referred to as the educational reform movement, or the excellence movement.

Although few educators would have questioned the need for some school reform in the 1980s—indeed one could hardly cite any time in history when the schools or any other institution could not benefit from some reform—many members of the education community expressed skepticism that a "crisis" in education existed or that the schools had failed. Perhaps the most cited challenge to the reformers was Berliner and Biddle's (1995) The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools, an excerpt from which is included as a Primary Source Reading for this chapter.

Berliner and Biddle contended that the reform reports used questionable techniques to analyze data, distorted findings, and suppressed contradictory evidence that refuted their major conclusions. Berliner and Biddle's own research showed that there had in fact been no decline in achievement test scores, students were outperforming their parents, and they performed well on international exams. In other words, the so-called crisis in American education did not exist.

Despite their critics, though, the various reform reports painted a picture of an education system in crisis, and politicians, the business community, and educators turned their attention to reforming the schools. The school reform movement that followed has been characterized as having three waves (Murphy, 1990).

Reform: The First Wave

The first wave of the school reform movement, dating from 1982 to 1985, responded to the recommendations of A Nation at Risk and similar reports and acted on the assumption that the schools could be fixed by top-down state actions directed at improving achievement and accountability. These reforms reflected, in part, the corporate formula for success:

Set clear goals and high standards for employees. Restructure operations so that managers and employees who actually make the product decide how it is to be done efficiently and effectively. Then hold those managers and employees responsible for the quality of the product by rewarding those who meet or exceed their goals and punishing those who fail. (Cuban, 2001, p. 178)

States enacted higher graduation requirements, standardized curriculum mandates, raised certification requirements for teachers, and increased the testing of both teachers and students. School districts increased their emphasis on computer literacy, homework, and basic skills; established minimum standards for participation in athletics; and privatized selected school operations. A more detailed listing of the initiatives from the first wave of reforms is provided in the From the Archives feature box. These early policy initiatives, with their focus on accountability, put tremendous pressure on local schools, in most cases providing little help while increasing the overload and fragmentation of reform efforts (Fullan, 2007).

Reform: The Second Wave

No sooner had the ink dried on the first wave of reform measures than they came under attack for being inadequate and misdirected. According to second wave reformers (1986–1989), the first wave was wrong to try to prop up the existing system because the system itself was the problem and needed fundamental change. As articulated by the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy (1986), "We do not believe the educational system needs repairing; we believe it must be rebuilt to match the drastic change in our economy if we are to prepare our children for productive lives in the 21st century" (p. 14).

A Closer Look: A Nation at Risk

At the closing of the Cold War and the years immediately following, the U.S. shifts from military and scientific competition to economic competition internationally.

The second wave shifted the focus of reform from state-level mandates to local-level school structures and processes. A major theme was the redistribution of power among the schools' critical stakeholders. The belief was that the most effective reforms were those that emanated from those closest to the students—namely, educators and parents. Recommendations from such noted educators as John Goodlad, Theodore Sizer, and Ernest Boyer called for change from the bottom up, not from the top down, and dealt with such issues as decentralization, site-based management, teacher empowerment, parental involvement, and school choice.

Restructuring, the buzzword of the second wave of reform, was associated with a number of prescriptions: year-round schools, longer school days and years, recast modes of governance, alternative funding patterns, all-out commitments to technology, and various combinations of these and other proposals (Kaplan, 1990). The second wave of reform also sought to balance the first wave's concern over the impact of education on the economy and the push for excellence with a concern for equity and the disadvantaged students who might become further disadvantaged by the "new standards of excellence."

The second wave reform reports also stressed increased professionalism among educators. Proposals included not only teacher empowerment but also the reform of teacher training. One of the major proposals was presented in A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century (1986) by the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. The report called for teacher preparation to be transferred from the undergraduate to the graduate level and for "lead teachers" to be appointed in every school to assist in supervising and mentoring new teachers and in curriculum development.

It also recommended the establishment of a system of national certification for teachers based on standards established by the profession, not by state departments of education. Out of this recommendation grew the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). Since it began work in 1987, the NBPTS has not only developed standards for teaching but also created certification in 25 fields.

The certification fields are structured around student development levels (early childhood, middle childhood, early adolescence, adolescence, and young adulthood) and subject areas (art, career and technical education, English as new language, English language arts, exceptional needs, health, library media, literacy, mathematics, music, physical education, school counseling, science, social studies–history, and world languages). The attainment of national board certification came to be associated with teacher competency; in 2014 the majority of states and hundreds of school districts offered financial or other incentives to teachers who received national board certification.

The same year the Carnegie report was published, the Holmes Group, a consortium of deans of colleges of education and chief academic officers from major research universities, also released a plan for the reforming of teacher education. Tomorrow's Teachers, as it was called, also proposed that the preparation of teachers take place at the graduate level, a proposal that generated significant controversy. However, although a number of Holmes Group institutions did move to a 5-year teacher education program, the costs to students, as well as to school districts, when all beginning teachers entered with master's degrees, limited wide-scale adoption of the proposal.

In the years immediately following the release of Tomorrow's Teachers, there was considerable debate and activity concerning the reform of teacher education, but within a decade, by the time the Holmes Group released Tomorrow's Schools of Education (1995), the initial momentum for reform had become more diffuse (Fullan, 2007).

At the same time that these attempts were made to reform teacher education, a growing shortage of teachers plagued the American education system. Over the objection of teachers' unions, the latter part of the 1980s saw an increase in states allowing alternative routes to certification. These programs were aimed at noneducation college graduates who had an academic major in a subject matter taught in the schools. Unions saw the practice of alternative certification as a threat to teacher professionalism by allowing what they considered underprepared individuals to enter the classroom. Nonetheless, with the continued demand for teachers, the number of states offering alternative certification grew from 8 in 1986 to 47 in 2010.

Reform: The Third Wave

The third wave of reform began in 1988, and, like its predecessor, it started with a critique of the previous wave (Murphy, 1990). This group of reformers proposed a more comprehensive model of change than did the two previous waves. Instead of focusing on the education system, as did the first wave, or the adults in it, as did the second wave, the third wave reformers focused on children and looked beyond the school to seek a comprehensive system for delivering services to them. Third wave reformers spoke in terms of children's policies rather than school policies. They envisioned a major redesign of programs, with both the family and the school at the center of the service wheel (Murphy, 1990). Other comparisons between the third wave and the first two waves are presented in Table 9.1.

The Schools' Response

The response of state and local education systems to the various reform agendas suggests that they did not concern themselves with "waves" marked by changing directions. Rather, they looked at them as a broad set of policy recommendations, which they considered in timeframes that reflected their own needs (Firestone, Furhman, & Kirst, 1990). In the final analysis, the recommendations that involved the least redistribution of money, status, or authority and those that were the least expensive and the least complex (for example, increasing graduation requirements) most often were adopted, whereas those with the opposite characteristics (such as lengthening the school year) were under adopted or not adopted at all (Firestone et al., 1990).

Thus, first wave strategies were more widely adopted than were the proposals of the second and third waves. For instance, immediately following the release of A Nation at Risk, California enacted omnibus education legislation that among other things increased graduation requirements, expanded student testing, and increased school funding (Adams, n.d.). Other states followed. As discussed at the conclusion of this chapter, the reform movement brought policy changes at all levels of government, changes in governance structures, and shifts in control among key actors and among levels of government.

9.3 Essentialism, Perennialism, and Progressivism Revisited

In addition to the numerous reports issued by various commissions, foundations, and organizations, education scholars from across the ideological spectrum lent their voices to the chorus of reform recommendations.

The Essentialists

Among the most influential and public were a group of essentialist scholars associated with the back-to-basics movement, which had begun in the late 1970s as a response to a perceived lack of rigor in the curriculum and the decline in standardized test scores (scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test fell almost 60 points in the 1970s). With its emphasis on academic subjects and the transmission of a core body of knowledge, the back-to-basics movement was a revisitation of the essentialist positions of the 1940s and the back-to-basics push by Bestor, Rickover, and others.

One of the individuals most identified with this neo-essentialist movement was E. D. Hirsch, Jr. In his 1987 best-seller, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which became a manifesto for the back-to-basics movement, Hirsch identified 5,000 names, dates, facts, and concepts from the fields of art, religion, science, and culture that he maintained an individual must know in order to be considered educated. Cultural literacy, he claimed, had become the "common currency for social and economic exchange in our democracy" and was therefore "the only available ticket to citizenship" and "the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children" (p. xiii).

Cultural Literacy was such a success in the popular press that Hirsch followed it with a dictionary of cultural literacy and books about what children should know at various grade levels. He also developed a core knowledge curriculum that is still promoted by the Core Knowledge Foundation, founded in 1986.

Hirsch's critics charge him with elitism and with promoting a Eurocentric view of the world that ignores the contributions of minorities to American culture. He has also been criticized for elevating rote memorization over critical thinking and higher-order reasoning, and for producing lists that fail to promote understanding of content and context. Still, the Core Knowledge Curriculum has been adopted by hundreds of schools nationwide, and volumes in Hirsch's Core Knowledge series, which began with What Your Preschooler Needs to Know, have been national bestsellers and remain popular with homeschooling parents.

In a similar vein to Hirsch's work was Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn's What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (1987). After analyzing the results of the history and literature sections of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Ravitch and Finn concluded that the students had failed in both subjects. They then advanced the essentialist position that there is a body of knowledge that is so important it should be possessed by all Americans.

Another very visible essentialist was the secretary of education during much of Reagan's second term, William Bennett. While secretary, Bennett designed the curriculum for the model essentialist high school, James Madison High School (1987) and the model elementary school, James Madison Elementary School (1988). According to Bennett's design, all students except those in vocational programs would have the same curriculum of high academic standards. Bennett also used his position as a "bully pulpit" to advance the administration's (and his) moral crusade against abortion and for the "Just Say No" drug policy, abstinence, and prayer in the schools.

The Neo-Perennialists

Separate from the neo-essentialists, but also supportive of a more traditional curriculum, were the neo-perennialists, represented by Mortimer Adler and Allan Bloom. In The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982), Adler presented a plan for K–12 educational reform. Adler, like Robert Hutchins (see Chapter 7), his former colleague at the University of Chicago, opposed a differentiated curriculum (that is, vocational, technical, academic) and maintained that all students in a democratic society should be exposed to the same high-quality education, one that included language, literature, mathematics, natural sciences, fine arts, history, geography, and social studies. Also similar to Hutchins, Adler maintained that by studying the Great Books, one could learn the enduring lessons of life.

In 1988 Adlter established the National Paideia Center at the University of North Carolina to develop and promote programs that focus on pedagogy and school reform. The center continues to disseminate information and research and train educators in Paideia principles and methods to this day.

Bloom delivered a similar message regarding the higher education curriculum. In The Closing of the American Mind (1987), he stressed the importance of teaching and learning from the Great Books and the responsibility of education to transmit our cultural heritage to our children. Bloom argued that universities no longer taught students how to think or the lessons that could be learned from studying the past, and he maintained that technology, cultural diversity, and other popularized courses had been introduced into the curriculum at the expense of the classics. Bloom's indictment of academia sold more than a million copies and is still quoted by those who see the universities as "beds of liberalism."

The Progressives

Another call for change and another philosophical position was represented by Theodore Sizer, the former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, described by Ravitch (2000) as "the leading voice of contemporary American progressivism" (p. 418). Published shortly after A Nation at Risk, Sizer's Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (1984) did not offer a set of top-down reform recommendations but proposed a set of nine principles that could be individualized to guide reform in any community. Among them were that teaching and learning be personalized to the maximum extent possible and that school staffs be empowered to make the majority of educational decisions.

According to Sizer, the goal of the school should be simple: to ensure that each student masters a limited number of essential intellectual, emotional, and social skills and areas of knowledge. He was not concerned with the quantity of learning (in fact, he proposed that the curriculum consist of only three areas: math/sciences, history/philosophy, and the arts), but rather with its quality and that it be personalized to the maximum extent feasible. He maintained that the central focus of the schools should be the intellect and helping students to use their minds well.

Sizer established an organization called the Coalition of Essential Schools to promote his reform ideas. Beginning with 12 schools in 1984, 30 years later hundreds of schools nationally and internationally have become members of the coalition.

Also associated with the new progressivism was the pedagogical theory of constructivism. As noted in Chapter 7, constructivism builds on the theoretical framework of Bruner and Piaget and is based on the premise that learning is an active process by which students construct their own meaning and understanding by reflecting on their past experiences and accumulated knowledge. By the mid-1980s, constructivism had become the dominant idea among education theorists, who quoted Dewey and Piaget to argue that students would only be motivated to learn if they were actively involved in the learning process, constructing their own knowledge through their own experiences (Ravitch, 2000).

9.4 National Goals, National Standards, and Accountability

By the end of the 1980s, despite the adoption of myriad reform initiatives, the reform and restructuring of education proposed by the various commissions and individuals did not appear to have produced any significant change in educational outputs. As a result, the quality of education and the perceived need to "fix" it remained major topics of public debate.

Opening the Door to Goals and Standards: The Bush Administration

Responding to ongoing criticism of both education and his administration's failure to offer any remedies or enact any significant federal legislation, President George H. W. Bush co-convened, with the National Governors Association, an "education summit" at Charlottesville, Virginia, in the fall of 1989. It was chaired by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and attended by business leaders, but no educators.

The summit was the first meeting of the governors and the president since the Great Depression, a fact that alone made it a noteworthy event (New York State Education Department, 2009). The governors agreed that the states should focus on raising student achievement, raising academic standards, and holding schools accountable. There was also agreement on the need for the creation of national education goals.

Accordingly, in early 1990, the National Governors' Association and the Bush administration announced six national education goals to be accomplished by the year 2000 (see Goals 1–3 and 5–7 in From the Archives: The National Education goals) and created a National Goals Panel to monitor and report on progress toward meeting the goals (but without any means to support or enforce implementation).

President George H.W. Bush talks education reform at his Education Summit in 1989 while Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, left, and Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos, right, look on.

Associated Press/Doug Mills

Despite his efforts to restructure the American educational system, President George H. W. Bush did not make any significant impact on fixing U.S. schools.

Bush's plan to implement the goals, America 2000: An Education Strategy, presented to Congress in April of 1991, called for the creation of "world class" national standards and voluntary national standardized tests for assessing their attainment. Bush was unable to gain congressional support for his plan, largely because of controversy surrounding one of its key features—vouchers to promote school choice (discussed in Section 9.5)—but also because of concern from liberals over the testing provisions and from conservatives over usurpation of state power and how it would be funded.

Ultimately Bush decided not to continue to push passage of the bill. However, in the last 2 years of his administration, he was able to provide grants to the professional organizations in the major subject areas of the arts, civics and government, foreign languages, geography, history, and science to develop voluntary national standards. The math standards already developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in response to A Nation at Risk served as a model for the other groups.

"The Education President": The Clinton Administration

The election of 1992 saw education assume a place of prominence on the political agenda that it had never held before. As observed by Terrel H. Bell, the secretary of education under President Reagan:

George Bush proclaimed himself to be the "Education President" during his successful 1988 campaign. President Bill Clinton brought the less-than-spectacular Bush record in education to the attention of the voters during the campaign of 1992 and promised to be a more effective "Education President." This has never happened in the nation's history. Education is now a major, high priority national concern, as well as a state and local responsibility. (1993, p. 595)

Known as an "education governor," Clinton came to the presidency talking excellence and accountability, the catchwords of state school reform during the 1980s (Newman, 1998). The Clinton administration did, in fact, attempt to honor its commitment to education. Its first 2 years have been said to be the most productive in terms of major education legislation since 1965– 1966, and included increasing Head Start funding, reforming the student loan program, funding violence prevention programs, and supporting programs that link education and the workplace (the School to Work Opportunities Act), to name a few.

Clinton's first major education initiative, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, adopted the six goals articulated by the National Governors' Association and added two new goals related to parent participation and teacher education and professional development (see the From the Archives feature box, Goals 4 and 8). Goals 2000 was essentially a grant program that supported standards-based systemic state reform. It was different from other federal programs in that it did not target a particular category of students or subjects; rather, it supported a generic reform strategy that emphasized the development of state standards and state assessments of progress toward meeting them (New York State Education Department, 2009).

Goals 2000 served as a major source of funds to support systemic reform efforts. By the end of Clinton's administration, the initial funding of $94 million had grown to approximately $500 million, and over 5,000 school districts received funds.

The adoption of Goals 2000 marked a turning point in the direction of state and federal education policy: "Emphasis shifted from educational inputs to educational outcomes and from procedural accountability to educational accountability. Equity was reconceptualized as ensuring all students access to high-quality educational programs rather than providing supplemental and often compensatory services" (Goertz, 2001, p. 62). Thus, while many states had already begun standards-based reform, Goals 2000 encouraged and accelerated the process. The intent was that the majority of the funds from Goals 2000 grants be spent at the local level. However, the reliance on state-by-state initiatives meant that its impact varied from state to state, district to district, and school to school.

The Clinton administration also reauthorized the ESEA, called the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA). As a companion to Goals 2000, the major purpose of this version of the ESEA was also to encourage comprehensive reform at the state and local levels to meet national goals. A major provision of the act required states (with the input of local school districts) to develop school improvement plans that established challenging subject matter performance standards, to implement assessments to measure progress in meeting those standards, and to adopt measures to hold schools accountable for achievement of the standards.

Unlike previous versions of the ESEA, it required that Title I students be held to the same standards as non-Title I students and that students with disabilities be included in state and local assessment and accountability systems. Also, unlike previous federal programs, which bypassed state education policies, these initiatives were designed to be integrated with state and local reform initiatives.

Opposition and Ongoing Calls for Reform

Although the standards movement received strong support from the business community and the majority of the education community, it did have its critics. Many conservatives, for instance, remained concerned that national testing would result in federal control of education. Still other critics were concerned that the standards were being "dumbed down" and that they focused too much on minorities and women or, more generally, that they reflected a liberal bias.

Objections to the standards also came from religious groups such as the Christian Coalition, which directed its criticism to what was called outcome-based education. Some of the standards included in student learning outcomes involved values and attitudes (such as "give examples of your own positive and negative impact on the environment and assess your personal commitment to the environment"), which religious conservatives challenged as potentially penalizing students who gave the "wrong" answer or who gave an answer that reflected so-called family values (Newman, 1998).

Still other religious groups and creationist organizations challenged the science standards and sought to block the teaching of evolution or at least promote the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution.

Controversy also arose over the history standards, in particular how much attention should be given to non-Western civilizations. So vocal were figures such as William Bennett in promoting the study of Western culture and its intellectual tradition, and waging war against world history and international studies, that in 1995 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to reject the national history standards and require that any recipient of federal money "have a decent respect for the contributions of the Western civilization." As Lockard (2000) asserts, "The resolution had no legal force, but the ultimate effect on history education was chilly nonetheless" (p. 21).

Nevertheless, throughout the remainder of the 1990s, the calls for school reform continued, and standards and accountability became the key words in reform proposals. However, states and school districts faced a number of difficulties in their efforts to establish challenging academic standards and assessment systems. And, in the absence of any federal review or approval mechanism, states varied widely in the scope and rigor of their standards, in what they measured, and in how they measured it. In addition, in state after state, standards became battlegrounds for ongoing "curriculum wars," as educators and policymakers faced off over such issues as whole language versus phonics or whose history to teach (Campbell, 2000).

Despite the challenges, and in no small part as a result of the work of the various curriculum organizations, by the end of the decade, content standards were in place in 47 states, along with statewide assessments in 30 of them. Local school districts were expected to align their curricula with the standards, and colleges of education were expected to incorporate the standards into their curricula and instruction.

This push for standards and standards-based assessment was accompanied by the enactment in most states of so-called high-stakes testing to determine who would be promoted and who would graduate from high school. However, from the beginning several states experienced serious problems with test construction and, more importantly, with the high numbers of students who failed the tests. In most states those who performed the poorest on the exams were low-income and minority students, especially those with limited English-speaking ability and those from low-income, mostly urban districts—the victims described in Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities (1991).

In response, states and school districts sought to ensure tests contained no gender bias, ethnic or racial prejudice, or socioeconomic favoritism, and they looked at alternative forms of assessment. However, as discussed in Chapter 10, the No Child Left Behind Act continued the use of standardized tests that have important outcomes for students.

Simultaneous with the standards and assessment movement was the accountability movement. States and school districts began to issue "report cards" to parents and the general public, grading schools on one or more quality or performance indicators. Although the indicators varied somewhat, student performance was always included.

States also differed widely in how they graded the schools, how they measured improvement, the assistance they provided low-performing schools, the penalties they enacted for continued low performance, and the rewards they bestowed on high-performing schools. Twenty states enacted legislation authorizing the state to initiate takeover action when a school was chronically underperforming and showed inadequate improvement, but in only a limited number of cases did state officials have the political will to take such action.

9.5 School Choice

Although some indicators, such as SAT scores, did show improvement in the wake of the reform movement, an increasing number of parents demanded the right to send their children to the school of their choice.

Support for school choice came from parents across the socioeconomic and ideological spectrum. Low-income and minority parents saw choice as a way to extend educational opportunities to students who historically had not had the resources to choose between public and private schools, or even among public schools. Other parents saw choice as providing the opportunity to protect their children from violence or to provide them with a more academically challenging or enriching experience. Religious conservatives saw choice as a way to support schools that promoted a particular religious ideology.

However, despite the fact that almost all parents and politicians supported the concept that parents should be given greater choice in the schools their children attended, how this was to be achieved was very much in debate. The most often seriously considered approaches were school vouchers, charter schools, and privatization. Yet another option, homeschooling, while not new, also grew in popularity.

Vouchers

Education vouchers are certificates issued by a state, school district, or the federal government for a specific sum of money, which a parent can take to a school of their choice and apply toward the cost of tuition. As previously noted, President Bush had unsuccessfully proposed federal vouchers as part of his America 2000 plan. In 1996, Republican presidential candidate Robert Dole proposed vouchers that could be used at public as well as private schools. Supporters argued that giving financial grants to consumers and treating education as a "consumable item," subject to the forces of the marketplace, would force schools to operate more efficiently.

Although not rejecting the concept of vouchers, Democrats opposed their use at parochial schools. They argued that this would violate the separation of church and state. Other opponents, including teachers' unions, also opposed vouchers because they worried that vouchers would shift money from the chronically underfunded public schools to private ones. They were also concerned that vouchers would exacerbate inequities and stratification by race, color, or class. Since the private school would be free to charge a tuition greater than the value of the voucher, many low-income parents would not be able to afford to supplement the voucher. In the end, voucher opponents argued that the schools should be improved, not abandoned.

With the prospect of federal vouchers in gridlock, several states considered their own voucher proposals. Only two, Wisconsin and Ohio, ultimately adopted voucher plans, with programs being initiated in Milwaukee in 1990 and Cleveland in 1995. Although the Milwaukee program initially did not include religious schools, in 1995 it was expanded to include them, as had the Cleveland program from its inception.

Both programs were immediately challenged in the courts. Conflicting lower court decisions regarding whether the use of the vouchers at religious schools was an unconstitutional support of religion paved the way for appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision upholding the Milwaukee program (Jackson v. Benson, 1998). In 2002 the Court ruled that the Cleveland program, which was aimed at providing students with scholarships of up to $2,250 to attend the school of their parents' choice, was not unconstitutional as long as parents had a choice among a range of public and nonpublic schools (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 2002).

Following the Zelman decision, voucher supporters anticipated their widespread adoption. However, while voucher bills have been introduced in over half the states, this did not happen, in large part because the increasing number of other school choice options, in particular charter schools, led to decreased interest in pursuing the voucher alternative. In most states where vouchers have been approved, they are for low-income students, special needs students, or students attending a low-performing or failing school.

Charter Schools

Charter schools, publicly supported nonsectarian schools established by the issuance of a charter (contract) from the state department of education, local school board, public university, or other designated entity, gained increasing favor in the 1990s. Charter schools are intended to give greater autonomy to the school (they are typically exempt from all state regulations except those governing health and safety and civil rights), encourage innovative programs and practices, promote efficiency through competition, and most important, provide greater choice in education programs to parents and students within the public school system.

In 1991 Minnesota became the first state to enact legislation providing for the establishment of charter schools. California followed suit the next year. Arizona, the state with the most liberal charter school legislation, came aboard in 1993. The Arizona law, which allows any individual or group to apply for a charter, led to many false starts and charter school closures, many times leaving students in the lurch.

Teachers' unions have not opposed the concept of charter schools outright (in fact, NEA affiliates in several states applied for charters [Newman, 1998]), and the AFT has voiced support for the freedom charter schools would provide teachers. However, teachers' unions have opposed state charter school laws that, like those in Arizona, do not require teachers in charter schools to be certified.

Charter schools have received support across the political and ideological spectrum and have been called the "all things to all people reform":

Free-market conservatives see them as a way to enhance competition in education and a step in the direction of vouchers. Teachers union leaders such as the late Albert Shanker see them as a way to increase the power of teachers. Cultural conservatives hope that they will increase parental control over the values taught in schools their children attend, while those interested in restructuring schools see them as a way to further their goals. Moderate Democrats hope that charter schools will provide parental choice, competition and accountability while avoiding actual privatization through school vouchers. (Bulkley, 2005, p. 527)

The Republican takeover of many state legislatures in 1994 lent support to the charter school movement, as did President Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address, when he pledged $100 million to help create 3,000 more charter schools by the year 2002. Charter schools received additional support from President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which allowed students attending underperforming schools to transfer to a charter school and allowed failing schools to be reorganized into charter schools. Additional support was provided by President Obama's Race to the Top program (see discussion in Chapter 10).

Today almost 5,300 charter schools operate in 41 states and the District of Columbia, with Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas having the largest numbers (Snyder & Dillow, 2013). As the charter school movement has grown, it has changed from an effort to provide alternative and innovative approaches to a small number of students into a "nationally funded effort by foundations, investors, and educational management companies to create a parallel, more privatized system" (Karp, 2013, p. 3).

Private Contractors

Another favorite policy reform among choice advocates was to allow private contractors to bid to provide various services to the schools. The assumption was that private contractors would operate more effectively and efficiently than public schools. The practice of contracting with private companies or individuals outside the school system for services (such as transportation, food services, and custodial services) has been around since the establishment of the first New England schools. However, such contracts typically had not been for the delivery of instructional or administrative services. In the 1990s the push for efficiency and privatization opened the door, often over objections of teacher groups, for an expansion of the concept to include these professional domains.

Some districts contracted with for-profit firms to tutor students to raise test scores or to deliver other instructional services. Other districts contracted for leadership or instructional services (for example, Minneapolis contracted with a private firm for an employee to serve as superintendent of schools). Others went so far as to contract with for-profit firms such as Educational Alternatives Incorporated (EAI) or the Edison Schools to operate one or more public schools.

The outcomes of these experiments varied. Many of the contract schools were located in disadvantaged urban areas. In a number of cases, the most public being the 2-year EAI experiment in Baltimore, the contract was not renewed either because of political controversy or underperformance. The most successful of the private contractors was the Edison Schools, which by the end of the 1990s operated over 100 schools in 20 states.

Although the move to contract with private, for-profit firms did not expand as widely as was originally anticipated, it was given added life by its association with the charter school movement. That is, some charter schools hired private contractors to run their programs. In fact, in a number of states, including Arizona and Michigan, private contractors became major players in the charter school movement. In Michigan 70% of the charter schools came to be operated by education management organizations (Arsen, Plank, & Sykes, 2001). The convergence of the choice strategies has thus proven to benefit both private contractors and charter schools.

Homeschooling

Homeschooling is, in effect, a form of private schooling. Throughout history some parents have chosen to educate their children at home, whether by themselves or with the help of private tutors or a friend or family member. Homeschooling is a legally recognized alternative to attendance at a public or private school in all states. The major motivations of parents who homeschool include concerns about the curriculum or quality of public schools, concerns about safety, and the desire to provide religious instruction to their child.

The major controversy surrounding homeschooling focuses on how much a state can, or should, regulate the home school. In most states home schools are legally under the supervision of the local school district, but in practice, districts typically provide little monitoring or supervision. Most states require home schools to be periodically assessed for academic progress, that periodic reports be made to local authorities, and that a minimum number of hours of instruction per day be provided. The number of children being homeschooled in the United States almost doubled between 1993 and 2007, from 85,000 to 1.5 million.

9.6 Cultural and Gender Wars

The Republican takeover of the U.S. Congress and many state legislatures in the 1994 elections put Clinton's educational goals in conflict with a renewed conservative agenda and signaled an escalation of what historian Joel Spring (2010) describes as the "cultural wars." The major battles of the cultural wars were waged over bilingual and multicultural education.

Despite the attention focused on school reform and standards and accountability, and although some indicators, such as SAT scores, had improved, large numbers of parents continued to be dissatisfied with a school system that valued diversity over diction and affirmative action over arithmetic. They demanded greater control over curriculum content and materials and the end of multicultural and bilingual education and affirmative action.

Bilingual Education Debate

Bilingual education became a major political target during the Reagan and Bush administrations. Some Republicans supported a movement opposing bilingual education and promoting the adoption of English as the official language of the United States, insisting that it be the language used in conducting public affairs and voting. The movement was led by such ultraconservative groups as U.S. English, English First, and Save Our Schools.

In 1981 Reagan's secretary of education withdrew the proposed federal regulations for compliance with the Lau decision (see Chapter 8) and left it up to the states to decide which bilingual education model to support. Unlike previous administrations, Reagan supported the English immersion programs that had been used with earlier immigrant groups. The change symbolized the intractable and heated controversy surrounding bilingual education: which bilingual education program model (transition, immersion, or maintenance) works best, whether any work, or, more fundamentally, whether they are needed at all.

In states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, where large numbers of language minority students were underperforming and dropping out of school, it was clear that something needed to be done. Many believed bilingual education was a key way to reach these students. They cited study after study showing bilingual education's cognitive, social, and emotional benefits.

However, opponents argued that the time and money bilingual education required could be better spent elsewhere, that providing bilingual education actually discouraged children from using English by allowing them to function in school without it, and that bilingual education was harmful to their academic progress. They also argued that bilingual education, like multicultural education, promoted cultural separatism, not cultural unity. This argument was especially common among those who saw the primary goal of the school as transmitting a core body of knowledge and the cultural values of the dominant society.

Opposition was particularly strong to bilingual maintenance programs, which deliver instruction in both English and the native language and seek to promote fluency in both. Critics charged that such programs produced students who spoke neither language well and were not prepared to succeed in an English-dominated society. Supporters counterclaimed that the programs were not a threat to the core academic program, but that they served a vital role in reform of the education system and in the attainment of equal educational opportunity for not only language minority students, but all students.

The 1988 amendments to the Bilingual Education Act reflected the success of the opposition to the bilingual maintenance model. These amendments provided additional funding for English-only instructional programs and decreased funding for bilingual ones. The act also limited student participation in bilingual programs to 3 years.

Opposition to native language teaching continued in the 1990s and grew to include many immigrant parents, who became concerned that their children routinely remained segregated in bilingual programs for at least 3 years, and in some cases more than 6 years. Nowhere was the opposition more heated than in California. In 1994 California voters passed Proposition 187, banning undocumented immigrants from public education as well as from receiving other social services. Supporters believed that the denial of services would decrease illegal immigration. (The proposition was later declared unconstitutional.)

Jose Antonio Gonzales, left, applauds the passing of California's Proposition 227. Author Ron Unz, middle, and other children, right, look out toward the media gathering.

Associated Press/Chris Pizzello

Opposition to bilingual education grew during the 1980s and 1990s. This opposition culminated in the passing of California's Proposition 227 in 1998, which called for the end of bilingual classes in California public schools.

Another volley in the cultural wars in California came in July 1995, when the regents of the University of California adopted a policy eliminating the consideration of race and gender from admission decisions.

Then, in 1998, California voters approved another referendum, Proposition 227, the so-called English for the Children initiative, which mandated that limited-English-proficiency (LEP) students be taught in a special English immersion program for no more than 1 year before being mainstreamed into the regular classroom.

Two years later a similar initiative, Proposition 203, was overwhelmingly approved in Arizona. Several other states have also considered English-only initiatives. Concerns and debate, far from fading, have continued into the next century.

Pioneers in Education: Jaime Escalante

The Teacher Who Stood and Delivered

Jaime Escalante was born in La Paz, Bolivia, the son of two teachers. He began his teaching career in Bolivia, where he taught math and physics for 12 years before immigrating to the United States in 1963. Once in Los Angeles he worked odd jobs, learned English, and earned a college degree before deciding to return to teaching. In 1974 he began teaching basic math at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, a barrio school facing the loss of its accreditation. Initially discouraged by the undereducated and unruly students, Escalante decided to teach up rather than teach down, and without the support or encouragement of his colleagues he began to teach more advanced math classes.

He demanded a lot of his students and himself. In his fifth year he decided to offer an Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus class. The first year five students completed the class and two passed the AP test. Two years later seven of nine passed the test and in 1981 14 of 15 students took and passed the AP calculus test. Escalante's students studied before school, after school, and on weekends with "Kimo," their nickname for Escalante inspired by Tonto's nickname for the Lone Ranger, "Kemo Sabe," acting as their coach and cheerleader (Woo, 2010).

Escalante gained national attention in 1982, when all 18 of his Advanced Placement students passed the AP calculus exam but 14 had their scores invalidated by the Educational Testing Service when they found similarities in the mistakes they made on the exam. When asked to retake the exam, 12 agreed, and all 12 did well enough to have their scores reinstated. Escalante and others contended that the actions were racially motivated. True or not, they were vindicated when the next year the number of Escalante's students passing the AP test doubled.

By 1987 Garfield and Escalante were attracting national attention for their impressive success: "Those students—kids from the barrios, kids not necessarily expected to graduate from high school—went on to universities like MIT, Princeton, and the University of California, Berkeley" (Lanier, 2010, p. 32). The remarkable success of Escalante's students brought national recognition, and in 1988 the Oscar nominated film Stand and Deliver detailed the events of 1982 and Escalante's battle to raise standards and aspirations at this largely Mexican American school.

The attention given to Escalante generated jealousy among some of the faculty at Garfield, and in 1991 Escalante left to take a position at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California. However, while the student AP pass rate at Hiram Johnson was a very respectable 75%, he was never able to the duplicate the AP pass rate at Garfield, a fact he attributed to cultural differences and administrative turnover (Gardner, 2010).

When the debate over Proposition 227, the ballot measure to dismantle bilingual education, erupted in California in 1998, Escalante campaigned for its passage. The hate mail he received for taking this position contributed to his decision to resign from Hiram Johnson and return to Bolivia in 2001. However, it was not to retire. In Bolivia he once again returned to teaching (at a local university) but returned often to the United States to visit his family and to lecture. Escalante died in Sacramento in 2010 after a long battle with cancer.

Jaime Escalante was a passionate teacher who sought to instill that same passion in his students. Escalante touted ganas, the desire to succeed, as the most important factor in the success of his students.

The president of the College Board, the company that sponsors the Advanced Placement exam and the very company that challenged his students almost two decades earlier, paid this tribute to Escalante:

Jaime Escalante has left a deep and enduring legacy in the struggle for academic equity in American education. . . . His passionate belief [was] that all students, when properly prepared and motivated, can succeed at academically demanding course work, no matter what their racial, social, or economic background. Because of him, educators everywhere have been forced to revise long-held notions of who can succeed. (Woo, 2010, p. 1)

Multicultural Education Under Fire

The civil rights movement brought an increase in ethnic pride and increased pressure to recognize and respect the history and contributions of each racial and ethnic group as well as women. Schools began to offer such courses as cultural awareness, African American history, Native American history, and ethnic and gender studies.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as the reform movement and back-to-basics movement sought to bring more "rigor" to the curriculum and increase graduation requirements, opposition to the place of such courses in the curriculum grew. Supporters of a basic curriculum considered these courses "frills" and argued that they undermined cultural unity and family values while promoting radical feminism and gay rights. Perhaps equally damning, they suggested that efforts to gain equal access and equal educational opportunities undermined the pursuit of excellence.

A Closer Look: Multicultural Education

In this video, the notion of multiculturalism is presented as a valued-added aspect of schools and society.

In fact, beginning with the Reagan administration, excellence was counterpoised as effectively the opposite of equity, and many questioned whether the nation could have both (Bernard & Mondale, 2001c); support for programs designed to promote equity and multiculturalism declined. In response, proponents of multicultural education argued that an excellent education is multicultural and that those who seek equal educational opportunities seek, in fact, an excellent education, not a lesser one.

Many groups and individuals also expressed grave concerns over the impact of the standards, testing, and accountability movements on poor and minority children and the schools they attended (for instance, the National Coalition of Advocates for Students in Barriers to Excellence: Our Children at Risk [1988] and Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities [1991]). Educators and policy analysts noted growing economic segregation, as well as the racial and ethnic resegregation discussed later in this chapter, and documented their negative consequences. However, the continued attention given to the perceived deficits in the quality of American education ensured continued debate about the place of multiculturalism in the curriculum.

According to Spring (2010), the cultural wars of the late 20th century reflected "yet another battle in the centuries old effort to make English and Anglo-American Protestant culture the unifying language and culture of the United States" (p. 411). The perceived threats coming from the civil rights movement and the new waves of immigration from Mexico and Asia were different, but the war was the same.

Gender Wars

As discussed in Chapter 8, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, feminist activism brought attention to the issue of gender equity in the schools and resulted in significant gains in female representation in the curriculum, athletics, scholarships, and the professions. Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the attention to gender issues in school continued to focus on the barriers and the sexism females faced in achieving equal educational opportunity. (See, for example, Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America [AAUW, 1991]; How Schools Shortchange Girls [AAUW, 1992]; Hostile Hallways [AAUW, 1993; AAUW, 2001b]; and Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children [AAUW, 1998].)

At the same time, the New Right unleashed what has come to be understood as a backlash against feminism, an attempt to undo the social and legal gains made by women and the acceptance of feminist thought in the popular culture.

The backlash was a response to what feminists and their supporters saw as myths created by the media, popular culture, psychology, and right-wing conservatives about the mental, physical, and emotional problems and sacrifices of career women and their families; the dangers and costs of child care; a "crisis of masculinity"; reverse discrimination; and other related ills. According to Faludi (1991),

Just as Reaganism . . . shifted political discourse far to the right and demonized liberalism, so the backlash convinced the public that women's liberation was the true contemporary scourge—the source of an endless laundry list of personal, social, and economic problems. (p. 26)

Others consider the backlash to be an example of the "backlash politics" that occurs when individuals or groups in society feel they are declining in their perceived social, economic, and political power and influence, while others are gaining power and influence in these areas.

The backlash against feminism has not been as visible in education as it has been in the larger society. However, it has been reflected in charges of discrimination against males and in claims that boys experience the most gender bias in the schools (see, for example, Sommers [2000], The War Against Boys).

The response of the American Association of University Women, Beyond the Gender Wars (2001a), acknowledged that both boys and girls experience sexism. Other researchers, such as David Sadker in the Primary Source Reading for this chapter, however, refuted the charge that in the gender wars boys are the victims and "girls rule." The disinterest of the first Bush administration in supporting women's equity programs and affirmative action were also reflections of, if not the backlash, the mood of the times.

Resegregation

Also as discussed in Chapter 8, during the 1970s a number of urban districts came under court orders to desegregate their schools. Many of these districts were home to poor and minority students and had tried in good faith for years to integrate their schools. However, they were often frustrated in their efforts by changing economic and community demographics that resulted in many urban areas becoming increasingly populated by minority students and the subsequent resegregation of the schools.

In a series of decisions in the 1990s, a more conservative Supreme Court responded to the plight of these districts. In 1991, in Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell and in 1992 in Freeman v. Pitts, the Supreme Court ruled that court-ordered desegregation can be terminated when the school board had in good faith made efforts to comply with the court order and had, to the extent practical, given history and current conditions, eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination. The decisions ended judicial oversight of desegregation plans for a number of school districts and provided them the opportunity to fashion new remedies that appeared more likely to succeed given their circumstances.

In a landmark case in 1995, Missouri v. Jenkins, the Supreme Court more specifically addressed what must be done and spent in attempting to desegregate. The Kansas City school system and the state of Missouri had reportedly spent $1.7 million between 1986 and 1995 on a massive desegregation plan. The Supreme Court ruled that desegregation plans should be limited in time and scope and that their goals need not be to achieve racial balance but to restore control to state and local authorities as soon as possible. The Court ruled that once the district had eliminated the effects of legally imposed segregation, the schools could revert to their "natural" pattern of segregation. According to the Court, "The Constitution does not prevent individuals from choosing to live together, to work together, or to send their children to school together, as long as the state does not interfere with their choice on the basis of race" (p. 2063).

The decisions in Dowell, Pitts, and Jenkins were viewed by some as necessary corrections to judicial excesses. But many others saw them as the Court turning its back on Brown (see Chapter 8). Lower courts following the lead of the Supreme Court declared districts to have achieved unitary status and removed their judicial oversight.

The effect of these decisions has been a steady unraveling of 25 years of progress in integration, as school districts to bring an end to busing and other desegregation strategies in favor of neighborhood schools. Over 500 court-ordered and voluntary desegregation plans were eliminated. Today, most major plans have been eliminated despite powerful evidence of the harms of school segregation: Separate remains unequal (Orfield, Kuscera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012).

The resegregation that has taken place affects both African American and Hispanic students. In fact, for a number of years, Hispanic American students have been more segregated than African Americans, not only by ethnicity but also increasingly by language (Orfield, 2001; Orfield, Frankenberg, & Lee, 2003).

Segregation by race and ethnicity is also highly correlated to segregation by class. The typical African American or Latina student today attends a school with almost twice the percentage of low-income students as the typical White or Asian American student (Orfield et. al, 2012). And resegregation has increased. In 2009, 80% of Latino and 74% of African American students attended predominately minority schools, and 43% of Latinos and 38% of African Americans attended schools that are 90% to 100% minority (Orfield et. al, 2012). In effect, although overall school enrollment has become increasingly diverse, the nation's schools are becoming increasingly segregated.

9.7 The End of a Presidency, a Decade, a Century

During President Clinton's second term, debate continued at the federal level over whether there should be a Department of Education, voluntary national testing, and private school choice. The influence of the business community on education and the emphasis on the importance of an educated workforce to international competition begun during the Reagan administration also continued. In fact, both were reinforced by a second education summit sponsored by the National Governors Association and held in 1996 at IBM's Executive Conference Center in Palisades, New York. The summit included executives of major national businesses but again, no educators.

Although faced with a larger Republican majority in Congress, and weakened by personal scandals and threats of impeachment, Clinton was able to increase federal spending for education. But he was unable to advance any of his major education proposals. Still overall,

The Clinton legacy—including IASA, Goals 2000, and standards-based systemic reform changed the face of federal education policy. The fundamental ideas informed the reauthorization of not only the ESEA but also the Higher Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. All of these now require that schools and teachers serve in a standards-based environment with challenging standards and curricula for all students. If this shift did not immediately achieve Clinton's goal of equalizing opportunity and raising achievement for all, it would most certainly impact the educational efforts of his successor. (New York State Education Department, 2009, p. 73)

As the century closed and the nation looked back on almost two decades of education reform efforts, the results were visible on several levels. First, reform brought policy changes at all levels of government: (a) At the national level, political and business leaders articulated national education goals; (b) at the state level, states developed tests to measure student performance and academic standards, as well as measures to hold schools accountable for results; (c) at the local level, schools and school districts adopted, adapted, or created improvement initiatives.

Second, reform brought new additions to the institutional and governance structures of public education, including charter schools, vouchers, service contracts, and school site councils.

Third, reform brought a shift in authority and control from educators and education interest groups to state policymakers, business leaders, and parents (through site councils and charter schools). At the same time, authority shifted simultaneously upward from school districts to state agencies and downward to the schools (Adams, n.d.).

Despite all the efforts, reforms did not produce what they sought: a meaningful increase in academic performance. From the beginning of the reform movement to the end of the century, average reading scores for all age groups on the National Assessment of Educational Progress remained essentially flat, and mathematics scores on the same test showed only a modest improvement (see the data reported in the Digest of Education Statistics. Chapter 10 covers continued reform efforts in the 21st century.

10.1 An Education President, Again

Education was again a major political issue during the 2000 elections. George W. Bush took credit for education reform in Texas that had resulted in improved test scores, especially among minorities, during his governorship. (Those results were later revealed to have been exaggerated.) The Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, never really found his voice on education during the campaign, and the Republicans were able to take the education issue from the Democrats (Lemann, 2002).

The Republican platform supported private school vouchers, promoted phonics-based reading instruction, and, unlike the platforms of the previous 2 decades, did not call for the abolishment of the Department of Education. To appease the religious right, a moving force in the Republican Party, Bush did support character education and abstinence-based sex education. However, over the objections of the conservative wing of the party, Bush pushed for mandated state standards and testing. The effect of Bush's proposals was to create "the greatest intrusion into local control of the school curriculum in the history of the federal government" (Spring, 2002, p. 11).

10.2 No Child Left Behind and the New Educational Federalism

The cornerstone of George W. Bush's education program was the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, entitled the No Child Left Behind Act.

The law, more than 1,100 pages in length, was passed with wide bipartisan support. In the decade leading up to NCLB, polls had made it clear that the general public was dissatisfied with public schools and also did not support Republican proposals to cut education spending. As it became an important electoral issue, Republicans in Congress began to put more money into education, and Democrats were forced move away from their traditional focus on inputs and equity and toward standards, accountability, and public school choice (McGuinn, 2005).

By the 2000 election, when both Bush and Gore declared education reform to be a high priority, the Republicans and Democrats had come to an agreement about the need for a more active federal role focused on standards, accountability, and public school choice (McGuinn, 2005). As a bipartisan bill, "NCLB was a defeat for liberals on the left and conservatives on the right—it was a bill that was designed to run right down the middle" (Wilkens, cited in McGuinn, 2005, p. 57).

President George Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act into legislation on January 8, 2002.

Associated Press/Ron Edmonds

The No Child Left Behind Act was signed by President George Bush on January 8, 2002. The Act set the education agenda for most of the first decade of the 21st century.

NCLB marked a major expansion and change in the direction of federal involvement in education. It also created a vastly expanded regulatory role for states and local school districts. The goal of NCLB was to have all students achieving at grade-level proficiency by 2014. Its funding was directed at promoting higher achievement of low-income and minority students and holding schools accountable for the progress of all students. The law was also intended to increase parental choice and increase the flexibility of school districts in directing federal dollars to areas of need.

NCLB continued the strategy begun by the Clinton administration's Goal 2000: attempting to improve student achievement by providing support for standards, assessment, and accountability. The key provisions of the law concerned the development and implementation of "challenging" academic standards, student assessment against these standards, accountability, and teacher quality.

The act required that by the end of the 2005–2006 school year, 95% of all students in grades 3–8 be tested annually in reading and math using state-prescribed tests, and that the tests be aligned with state-developed standards in these areas. It also required that schools make adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward reaching grade-level proficiency on the state test. NCLB set a target of 100% of tested students meeting state-established proficiency levels in reading and mathematics by 2014.

For Your Reflection and Analysis

Why did NCLB set such a high priority on yearly testing? How does this requirement affect school operations?

The act also specified that by 2003 all new teachers (and paraprofessionals) hired with Title I funds must be "highly qualified," and that by 2005–2006 all teachers must be highly qualified, regardless of the funding source.

In exchange for meeting these new federal requirements, NCLB provided a significant increase in federal education funding, as well as increased flexibility in how the funds could be spent. Initial federal funding for education increased from $18.8 billion to $22 billion. At the same time, school districts were permitted to reallocate up to 50% of the funds they received among selected non-Title I programs and to shift funds from non-Title I programs to Title I to help schools meet AYP.

Additional funding was also provided through the Reading First program for reading programs that are "grounded in scientifically-based reading research." NCLB refers to the review of research by the National Reading Panel, which identified five skills considered central to learning to read: phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. In effect, NCLB supported phonics over whole language in the debate about the best way to teach reading (often described as the "reading wars") that had been going on since the 1980s and 1990s.

NCLB's expanded role and new direction for the federal government was evident in several important ways. First, unlike previous federal legislation, which focused on inputs, was directed to children with special needs, and contained few mandates, NCLB was directed at every student and every teacher in every public school in the country and was very prescriptive. This major shift in emphasis marks what many have referred to as "the new educational federalism," a change in the distribution of power between the federal and state and local governments.

NCLB also changed the very underlying purpose of the federal government's involvement in education. Historically, that involvement was based on the premise that an educated citizenry would contribute to the national political and economic welfare and that it was an appropriate involvement of the federal government to promote equality of educational opportunity. NCLB, however, made clear that the purpose of federal support for education would no longer simply be to support additional services, but also to promote substantive educational outcomes. Quality, not just equity (Manna & Ryan, 2011), and ensuring that students learn worthwhile academic content and increase academic achievement, would become national priorities.

For Your Reflection and Analysis

What were the potential benefits and drawbacks of expecting all students to achieve at grade-level proficiency by 2014?

Another way the role of the federal government changed and expanded with the passage of NCLB could be seen in its heavy reliance on student test scores as indicators of academic achievement and as the determinant of AYP, as well as its specification of sanctions against schools that did not make AYP in improving test scores. Finally, and monumentally important, for the first time in the nation's history, the federal government became involved in determining the qualifications of instructional personnel. States still issued teaching certificates, but what it meant to be a "qualified teacher" was now defined by the federal government and imposed on the states.

Changing State and Local Roles

The expansion of federal power and responsibilities under NCLB brought with it concurrent state-level shifts in power and responsibilities. States asserted power "reactively in implementing federal policy and proactively in the development of new policies" (Marsh & Wohlstetter, 2013, p. 2). That is, while NCLB required the development of standards and tests and the hiring of only highly qualified teachers, it was states that were responsible for the development of the standards and tests, and for defining proficiency and what constituted a fully certified teacher. States also had to provide technical assistance to schools identified as being "in need of improvement" and could even take over the operation of schools in extreme cases.

Perhaps most important, because states, not local school districts or the federal government, have the legal responsibility to provide education, states were ultimately responsible for meeting the goal that all children achieve at the proficient level by 2014. In effect, what NCLB did was to federalize actions and to further initiatives that had been taking place state by state since the school reform movement began in the 1980s. Broadly speaking, these actions and initiatives were addressed at improving student performance through the establishment of standards-based curriculum reform and assessment, improving the quality of the teaching force, and increasing accountability.

Raising the Stakes on Testing

As discussed in previous chapters, the American public as well as the business community has increasingly sought to hold schools accountable for student outcomes. These efforts increased during the school reform movement of the 1980s, when a number of states adopted standardized tests to determine student promotion and graduation.

High-stakes testing was also given federal support by the 1994 reauthorization of the ESEA, the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA), which required states to develop assessments in reading and math aligned with state standards, to use the assessment results to determine whether disadvantaged students were making adequate yearly progress in meeting the standards, to take corrective action against underperforming Title I schools, and to reward high-performing schools.

However, while by 2001 all states had developed content standards in reading and math, state compliance with other IASA requirements was uneven and sanctions were rare. By the time NCLB was enacted, only 19 states were in full compliance with IASA assessment requirements.

The enactment of NCLB not only toughened the IASA testing and accountability provisions, but it also extended and expanded the movement through the use of a number of more prescriptive mandates. For example, the 1994 ESEA required states to set up assessment systems and to test students in grades 3 and 8 in math and reading. NCLB required that, beginning in 2005–2006, students in every grade from 3 through 8 be tested annually in reading and math and again in grades 10 through 12, and that by the 2007–2008 school year, annual science assessments in grades 3 through 5, or 6 through 9, or 10 through 12 must be in place.

Moreover, NCLB required that schools, school districts, and states document and report on the progress of the student population as a whole, as well as the progress of each of its subgroups (racial, ethnic, English language ability, gender) in making AYP toward meeting the state proficiency standards. The reports were also to identify any achievement gaps between each student subgroup and the majority population. This requirement was to ensure that the achievement of these groups was not lost in an overall average for the school or district.

Although NCLB required yearly testing, it did not mandate what these tests must be, or even that they be standardized. But the law did say that the state tests must be aligned with state standards. NCLB also did not mandate what the proficiency levels should be on the state tests. What was judged to be proficient in one state might not be in another. In addition, the measurement of AYP differed among states: For example, some states measured AYP by progress between the beginning and the end of the year with the same students, while others measured one grade-level score with the same grade-level the next year.

Because of the variation in the rigor of state tests, as well as in the setting of state proficiency levels, states differed dramatically in the way they viewed school performance and categorized student proficiency, or what constituted AYP. Students with the same skills may be considered proficient and making AYP in one state but not in another.

As a result of these variations, the number of schools identified as in need of improvement varied significantly from state to state. Michigan identified over 1,500 underperforming schools and California over 1,000, whereas Wyoming and Arkansas identified none. In Florida, 87% of the schools, including 22% of the "A" schools, failed to make AYP under NCLB guidelines. Urban districts, districts serving high proportions of minority and poor students, and rural districts reported the highest percentage of schools in need of improvement.

NCLB also required that state results be compared to the results from a small sample of fourth- and eighth-graders taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP comparability

is supposed to ensure that states are not setting the bar too low on their standards and tests. That is, if a state shows progress on its statewide test results but does not show comparable progress on the NAEP, it would suggest that the state's standards and tests are not challenging enough. (PBS Frontline, 2003, p. 2)

NCLB did not, however, provide for any penalties if disparities were found; it merely mandated that the comparative results be made public. And, indeed, major disparities have been found between the percentage of students reported to be proficient on the NAEP and state tests. In Tennessee, for example, the NAEP rated 28% of eighth graders as proficient on reading while Tennessee itself rated over 90% to be proficient (Whitehurst, 2010).

A major challenge for states in complying with the NCLB testing mandate was that most did not have tests developed in reading, math, and science at every grade level from 3 through 8. Initially a few states considered not participating in the program and forgoing its federal funds because of the expense involved in setting up and administering a testing program that would essentially more than double their existing one, but in the end all states did apply for funding.

Holding Schools Accountable

Although NCLB did not specify what tests or proficiency standards states should use, it did say that states were to set annual targets for improving achievement and closing achievement gaps among groups of students. More importantly, it specified consequences for schools that did not achieve AYP in the aggregate or for any of the major student subgroups on the test the state adopted.

This provision of NCLB generated support from advocates for poor children because of its stated goal of preventing children from being trapped in underperforming or dangerous schools. And, although actual sanctions detailed in NCLB applied only to Title I schools, each state was required to have in place a state system of accountability to address the consequences for non-Title I schools that failed to make AYP. In practice, many states adopted the same sanctions for non-Title I schools and Title I schools.

Adequate yearly progress is determined for NCLB purposes by a formula that anticipates that an additional 4%–6% of students will become proficient each year until 2014, when all were expected to be proficient. An entire school can be considered not to have made AYP if even one of the subgroups in the school fails to make the targeted progress. According to the provisions of NCLB, any Title I school that fails to show AYP for 2 consecutive years is considered "in need of improvement."

Schools in need of improvement are required to adopt a 2-year school improvement plan and are eligible for financial and technical assistance to implement it. NCLB stipulated that the plan focus on programs for which scientifically rigorous research has produced strong evidence of effectiveness in improving student achievement.

Once a school has been identified as in need of improvement, the district must inform parents that their children have school choice. The district must also identify the schools to which students can transfer, including charter schools. If all schools in the district are considered in need of improvement, the district must attempt to establish an agreement with a neighboring district to serve the students. The sending district must provide transportation, and if sufficient funds are not available to transport all students who request a transfer, priority is given to the lowest-achieving students from low-income families.

If a school fails to make adequate yearly progress for a third year, students are also eligible for supplemental educational services, such as outside tutoring at district expense, after-school enrichment programs, and summer school. Supplemental services can be provided by the district or by supplemental service providers, over 1,000 of which have been state-approved nationwide. While in rural areas supplemental service providers may be limited to those available online, in urban and suburban areas a wide array of contractors are available, including religious organizations. The district must pay for these services out of its Title I funds.

After 4 years of failure to make AYP, the school is subject to corrective action, including replacement of staff and restructuring (see the From the Archives feature box). After 5 years, schools that do not improve can be reconstituted as charter schools, have their management taken over by private for-profit firms (such as Edison Schools and others), have their teachers fired, or be taken over by the state.

Although the assignment of sanctions seems to be an objective and equitable process based on a measurable standard—AYP—many educators and policymakers have considered this very equity unfair. Educators are trained not to treat all students the same, to recognize student differences, and develop individual education plans that reflect these differences. Many are critical of a system that presumes that all children can achieve at the same pace and

does not recognize that a hungry child with a poor, single parent and a violent home may not be focused on phonics each morning . . . [and] makes no distinction between a school with well-educated parents and generous resources and an impoverished school. Both schools are held to the same standards. (Mathis, 2003, p. 685)

The high pressure atmosphere created by NCLB, with not only promotions and graduations at stake but also jobs, salaries, and school and district reputations, has unfortunately led some teachers and administrators to alter best practice, "teach to the test," change test results, and even encourage low-achieving students to drop out, charges historian Diane Ravitich (2013), who is the former assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and once herself advocated using test scores to evaluate teacher performance.

From the Archives: No Child Left Behind Timeline

Title I schools in need of improvement were ordered to improve their students' overall academic performance, with penalties outlined by the No Child Left Behind Act for up to 6 years if they failed to do so.

End of Year 1: Schools are identified in terms of whether each student subgroup has met or is making adequately yearly progress (AYP) toward meeting the established proficiency level on state academic standards.

End of Year 2: Schools that fail to make AYP for a second consecutive year are identified as being in need of improvement. Schools so identified are required to develop a two year improvement plan that includes professional development for teachers. Students are given the option to transfer to a higher performing public school in the district, including a charter school.

End of Year 3: Schools that fail to make AYP for a third year must not only continue their improvement efforts and provide student transfer options, they must provide supplemental services (from public or private providers) to students from low-income families who remain at the school.

End of Year 4: Schools that fail to make AYP for a fourth year must continue all of the above and are also subject to corrective action by the district. Such action must include one or more of the following: replacing staff, restructuring, implementing a new curriculum, extending the school day or year, or hiring an external advisor.

End of Year 5: Schools that fail to make AYP for five consecutive years are subject to identification for restructuring. This requires the school to plan for restructuring and/or an alternative governance arrangement, including: state takeover, converting to a charter school, replacing staff, or hiring a private contractor to manage the school.

End of Year 6: Schools that still do not make AYP must implement their restructuring plan.

Teacher Quality and Quantity

Just as high-stakes testing and accountability did not begin with NCLB, neither did concern about teacher quality, nor attempts to improve it. As discussed in Chapter 9, the reform movement that began the 1980s brought with it increased competency testing for teachers and increased college graduation requirements for prospective teachers.

Once again, what NCLB did was to take what had been addressed on the state level and move it to the federal agenda. In what were some of its most controversial provisions, NCLB required that all currently employed teachers in the core academic subjects (that is, English, reading/language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, art, history and geography) be "highly qualified" by 2005–2006 and that newly hired teachers be highly qualified at the time of employment.

NCLB defined "highly qualified" differently for new and experienced teachers. New elementary teachers were required to pass a "rigorous" state test in the core elementary subjects. New middle and high school teachers had to either pass a "rigorous" state test in the academic subject matter or have an academic major, graduate degree, or advanced certification in the subject(s) they planned to teach. Veteran teachers had to demonstrate content knowledge by any of these means or by meeting the requirements of a "high, objective, uniform state standard of evaluation" (HOUSSE). For neither new nor veteran teachers were there requirements related to pedagogic knowledge and techniques.

The teacher quality requirement of NCLB reflected both continued public concern about teacher quality and research that suggested that teacher quality is a key variable in student achievement. It also addressed the growing concern about the alarming number of teachers teaching out-of-field or on emergency or temporary certificates.

A report by the U.S. Department of Education in 2003, the year that the highly qualified standard went into effect, estimated that only 50% of English teachers in secondary schools met the NCLB criteria for being highly qualified. Comparable figures for math, science, and social studies teachers were 47%, 55%, and 55%, respectively. More importantly, nationwide, secondary students in high-poverty schools were twice as likely as students in low-poverty schools to have teachers who were not licensed in the subject matter they taught (Olson, 2003).

Added to the out-of-field teachers were the tens of thousands of teachers nationwide working on emergency or temporary certificates issued to address the shortage of teachers in high need subjects or districts. Individuals issued these certificates do not meet the requirements for regular certification. In 2001, the year NCLB was passed, in California alone, more than 42,000 teachers, 14% of the state's total, were working on emergency certificates (Kerr, 2001).

Unfortunately, in California as elsewhere, data showed that low-achieving schools and schools serving low-income and minority students were most likely to have uncertified and out-offield teachers. In California, 23% of the teachers in low-achieving schools lacked full certification compared to 6% of teachers in the highest-achieving schools.

Whether the teacher quality requirements of NCLB are likely to accomplish their intended goal of ensuring that students are taught by highly qualified teachers has been the subject of intense debate, as has whether NCLB's criteria for teacher quality are sufficient. Although NCLB defined "highly qualified," it did not comment on what should be required for full state certification. Nor did the regulations implementing NCLB, which were adopted in 2002, specify what constitutes "rigorous testing" or a HOUSSE, but left these determinations to the states.

The result has been the perpetuation of a system of widely different requirements and practices. In Arkansas, 5 years of successful teaching experience is considered sufficient for being classified as highly qualified, and Indiana maintains that having a license in the subject area is sufficient.

Other states have established elaborate evaluation systems for teachers. In New Mexico, for example, teachers must first have 5 years of experience and two evaluations before moving to a second set of requirements that include being observed by two peers who teach in the subject and compiling a satisfactory portfolio of lesson plans, student achievement data, and more. As a final step two judges must agree on whether the teacher should be considered highly qualified (Keller, 2004).

Whether NCLB will lessen or increase teacher quality may be debated, but what is not debatable is that many districts have had problems complying with the NCLB mandate because of a shortage of qualified teachers. School districts nationwide face an unprecedented demand for teachers. Projections indicate that public and private schools will need to make 448,000 new teacher hires by 2016 and 470,000 by 2021 (Hussar & Bailey, 2013).

The projected demand is a result of two major factors: record increases in enrollment and the record number of vacancies created by the retirement of an aging teacher (and administrator) population. The total PK–12 enrollment is projected to increase 7% between 2010 and 2021, to a record high of 58.4 million (see Figure 10.1).

Additionally, an increasing number of teachers retire or leave the profession each year. A study by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (2010) reported that over half of the nation's teachers and administrators are over 50 years of age and that by 2020 more than half of today's teachers could be retired.

The problem is exacerbated by the 40%–50% of teachers, both new and experienced, who leave the profession each year (Riggs, 2013). Teachers leave the profession for a variety of personal and professional reasons. Among the most commonly cited are family or personal reasons (little time to spend with family, hard to maintain work–life balance, high stress); overwhelming amount of after-hours work; high-stress classroom conditions; lack of administrative support; too much responsibility for accountability scores; salary; and other career opportunities (Riggs, 2013; Inglish, n.d.). Low pay and high stress have been reported as major factors in African Americans and Latinos leaving the profession at higher rates than their White peers (Machado, 2013).

Also not in question in discussions of teacher quality was the real and pronounced shortage of teachers in certain subject areas (such as special education, math, and science), in certain states, as well as in rural and inner-city districts—the same districts plagued by high teacher turnover rates. For many districts, having any teacher in the classroom was a challenge; having a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom seemed impossible.

Figure 10.1: Actual and projected numbers for enrollment by grade level: Fall 1996 through fall 2021

Due to the rising numbers in student enrollment in elementary and secondary schools, demand for teachers in the United States has also risen. Student enrollment is expected to near 60 million by the year 2021. The expected and actual enrollment numbers for public schools in the United States between the years of 1996 and 2021. The grades pre-kindergarten to 12th grade are shown.

Source: From U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "State Nonfiscal Survey of Public Elementary/Secondary Education," 1996–97 through 2010–11; Private School Universe Survey (PSS), selected years 1997–98 through 2009–10; and National Elementary and Secondary Enrollment Model, 1972–2010.

NCLB: Impact and Outcomes

As states and school districts sought to implement NCLB, its effects and impact were felt in every public school in the nation. An immediate concern for states and school districts was their capacity to comply with the law's mandates. Even with the increased funding NCLB provided, the costs associated with standards and test development, test administration, and supporting schools that failed to make AYP led states to challenge the law's unfunded mandates. Studies in several states found that the costs of meeting the administrative and achievement goals of NCLB far exceeded what the states received in ESEA funds (McGuinn, 2005).

Growing opposition to NCLB led Bush to not only replace his secretary of education early in his second term, but also to announce a more "commonsense approach" to the implementation of NCLB. His administration provided greater flexibility in spending, testing of students with disabilities and English language learners, and meeting the highly qualified teacher deadline, as well as approving changes in calculating AYP.

Still, by the end of Bush's second term, 18% of schools nationwide were designated as "in need of improvement," and several states had AYP failure rates of over 50%. While on paper these schools faced aggressive remedies for failure to make AYP, large loopholes weakened state and local enforcement, and federal officials lacked the capacity to keep up with the oversight and technical assistance required to hold states to the law's requirements (Manna & Ryan, 2011).

Problems also remained not only with the variations among the states in what a student needed to know to be rated proficient and in measuring AYP, but also in providing students with the support and opportunities to which they were entitled under the sanctions mandated by NCLB. Participation in supplementary services rarely exceeded 25%, and participation in the choice transfers option rarely exceeded 2% of eligible students, the latter in large part because districts with large numbers of failing students often did not have many desirable schools from which to choose (Viteritti, 2012).

NCLB expired in 2007. By the time Bush left the White House,

NCLB seemed to have had the opposite effect that its architects intended when they wrote the law. Expectations about the future of American education were being decreased. The national goal of having every child reach proficiency in basic skills by 2014 appeared to be out of reach. The talk of waivers was in the air, and local politicians were telling their representatives in Washington to be more realistic about what school districts could deliver. (Viteritti, 2012, p. 2100)

Pioneers in Education: Wendy Kopp

An Experiment in Teacher Preparation

Wendy Sue Kopp grew up in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, Texas, before attending Princeton University, where she graduated in 1989 with a degree in public policy. While she was a student at Princeton, Kopp began to realize that students from disadvantaged communities, regardless of their talents, arrived on campus less prepared for college than their more affluent peers.

Kopp also noticed that, while recruiters for financial service firms actively recruited high-performing students, nobody from the fields of teaching or public service made similar efforts. Seeking to address this disparity in her senior thesis, she designed a proposal for a national service organization, modeled on the Peace Corps, to recruit graduates of the nation's top universities to teach in underserved communities around the country.

Even before she left Princeton, Kopp began to line up corporate and philanthropic donors to fund her vision, which she called Teach for America. Upon graduation, she moved to New York, where she established a headquarters, hired a small staff, and built a network of representatives at several colleges and universities. In 1990, its first year of operations, the non-profit Teach for America organization selected 500 volunteers (from an application pool of around 2,500), gave them a summer of intensive training, and sent them to serve in schools across the country.

Teach for America soon garnered national attention for its innovative approach of recruiting elite college graduates who likely would not otherwise have become teachers. As donations increased, it rapidly expanded its operations. By 2005, it received 17,000 applications and established summer training institutes in Los Angeles, Houston, New York City, and Philadelphia. In 2007, Kopp expanded her vision yet further by founding Teach for All, a global network of individual social enterprises that seek to apply Teach for America's principles around the world (Academy of Achievement, 2013).

College graduates who join Teach for America, most of whom do not have a background in education, make a 2-year commitment to teach in low-income rural and urban schools. Instead of the extensive preparation undertaken by traditional teachers, Teach for America teachers complete a 5-week training course in the summer after they graduate. Once hired into a school district, they must pursue teaching credentials at local colleges. They are paid like other teachers in the district, and also receive AmeriCorps stipends to help defray the expenses of student loans and continuing education.

The problem that Teach for America seeks to solve is the fact that poor and minority students are often assigned low-quality teachers. The organization's publicly stated goal is to become "one of the nation's largest providers of teachers for low-income communities," where students might otherwise be taught by substitutes, emergency hires, or other inexperienced or unprepared personnel.

Teach for America's rapid growth and documented impact on many school districts has drawn both praise and criticism. Teach for America alumni often cite the program as life changing, and several of them have gone on to lead school systems in states and large cities, including New Orleans; Newark; New York City; and Washington, D.C. Additionally, many alumni now occupy high positions in fields with influence over education policy and reform, including business, politics, policy and advocacy, and social entrepreneurship. Nearly 170 school districts across the country, meanwhile, have demonstrated an eagerness to hire Teach for America teachers (Heilig & Jez, 2010).

Critics, however, point out that Teach for America teachers often enter schools with insufficient training and preparation, essentially "learning on other people's kids," and they note that affluent school districts do not hire such "instant" teachers (Veltri, 2010, 2008). Low-income students, critics argue, are instead in need of the nation's most highly trained and highly skilled teachers.

The research that has been done to date has raised a number of caution flags as well, finding that the students of novice Teach for America teachers perform significantly less well in reading and mathematics than those of novice credentialed teachers. However, such disparities disappear among those Teach for America teachers who stay beyond their initial 2-year commitment. Researchers also note that high turnover among Teach for America teachers is costly for school districts, which must continually recruit and train new faculty members (Helig & Jez, 2010).

As the debate continues, Teach for America has only grown in size and influence. By 2013, more than 10,000 Teach for America teachers served approximately 750,000 students. Kopp, who currently chairs the board of Teach for America and serves as the CEO of Teach for All, has been widely recognized for her accomplishments and impact, receiving, among other awards, honorary doctorates from Princeton, Smith College, Georgetown, Boston University, and Harvard (Academy of Achievement, 2013).

10.3 The Obama Administration: Race to the Top and Evolving Educational Federalism

When Barack Obama took office in 2009, the issues surrounding NCLB continued to stall its reauthorization. Supporters pointed out that NCLB did force greater accountability, provided public awareness of real student performance, and focused attention on the underperformance of minority groups, but achievement scores themselves showed little improvement.

Average reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2009 (and 2011) were only two points higher than in 2002, the first year of NCLB, and the same as the increase between 1992 and 2002, before NCLB. Eighth grade scores remained the same between 2002 and 2009 and increased only one point in 2011, as did 12th grade scores (see Figure 10.2). Mathematics scores did show improvement, but the gains were smaller than they had been in the decade before NCLB. Perhaps even more important, the achievement gap between White and minority students had shown only modest decline.

Figure 10.2: Average reading and math scale scores of 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-grade students: Selected years, 1992–2011

The test scores for public school students of all ages did not significantly improve in the decade after the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into legislation. Line graph showing reading and math test scores, with and without accommodations, for 4th-, 8th- and 12th-grade students.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), selected years, 1992–2011 Reading Assessments, NAEP Data Explorer. See Digest of Education Statistics 2012, Table 142.

Congressional inaction in reauthorizing NCLB allowed the Obama administration to advance its own education agenda. In 2009, as part of the massive $800 billion economic stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, $100 billion was earmarked for education. While the majority of these funds were targeted to help states and school districts hard hit by the economic recession ward off massive teacher layoffs, $4.35 billion was allocated to the Race to the Top (RTT) program.

The expressed purpose of the RTT program, the largest competitive grant program ever administered by the U.S. Department of Education, was to encourage systemic education reform and to promote specific strategies to accomplish that goal. These included:

development of rigorous standards and assessments.

building of data systems to provide teachers, administrators, and parents with information about student progress that can be used to improve teaching and learning.

support for teachers and principals to become more effective.

support and interventions to turn around the lowest-achieving schools.

President Barak Obama visits students in Brooklyn, New York.

Associated Press/Aaron Showalter

The Obama administration continued the federal support for standards and testing.

RTT asserted an even stronger federal role in educational policy than did NCLB. The priorities detailed in RTT continued to emphasize increasing student achievement and reducing achievement gaps, as well as support for standards-based reform.

But where NCLB did not endorse statedefined standards, "RTT more boldly asserted that inconsistencies across state standards were a problem" (Manna & Ryan, 2011, p. 566). Thus, the program's award criteria gave the greatest weight to those states adopting the Common Core State Standards discussed in Section 10.4.

In addition, while NCLB detailed the criteria to define highly qualified teachers, teacher quality had not been a priority of the Bush administration (Viteritti, 2012). RTT brought a new focus on teacher (and principal) quality and proposed that assessments measure their contribution to student achievement. RTT also identified increasing the number of charter schools as a strategy for turning around underperforming schools. In fact, states that set caps on the number of charter schools lost points in the selection process.

The RTT program generated both enthusiasm and criticism among educators, policymakers, and parents. Teacher organizations strongly criticized the use of student achievement test scores to evaluate and compensate teachers. The NEA's concern led to a vote of "no confidence" at its 2010 convention.

In July of the same year, several civil rights groups lead by the NAACP and the National Urban League issued a statement disagreeing with the RTT position of relying on charter schools to turn around low-performing schools in urban areas. They also argued that using competitive grants rather than a funding formula would result in those states with the greatest resources benefitting more than those with a majority of low-income and minority students.

Another criticism, coming largely from the academic community, was that RTT priorities were not supported by research. In particular, concern was raised about making student achievement a central component of teacher and administrator evaluation in the absence of substantive research support for the practice. Similar concerns were raised by the National Academy of Science in a report for the National Research Council (2011) and others (such as Ravitch, 2013) about the efficacy of test-based incentives to improve educational performance (Viteritti, 2012).

A Closer Look: Race to the Top

In this video, the push toward uniformity in U.S. education through the Common Core State Standards is explored.

Concern has also been raised about the emphasis placed on charter schools. While the results have been mixed, the body of research indicates that, on the whole, with perhaps the exception of students in low-income, urban districts (Angrist, Pathak, & Walters, 2013), charter schools do not perform any better than other public schools.

According to the New Teacher Project (2010), RTT resulted in more educational reform than in the previous 2 decades combined. RTT provided "political cover" for state education reformers to assert more power and initiate reforms in the controversial areas of teacher evaluation, compensation, accountability, closing low-performing schools, and increasing charter schools (Marsh & Wohlstetter, 2013; McGuinn, 2012). Among the state reforms were policies

to overhaul teacher evaluation, including some that give student achievement data substantial weight in those judgments. Teaching politics governing entry into the profession through traditional or alternative routes also received attention. These changes were intended to create more options for aspiring teachers . . . . Politics to facilitate the development of public charter schools . . . . In some states, state changes altered the rules governing how charters can open or operate while increasing . . . . the number of charters that can exist. Other changes created additional options for states wishing to intervene in schools that perform poorly for several consecutive years, including changes that made it easier for states themselves to take over schools or dictate particular changes in school management. (Manna, 2010, p. 115)

Ultimately, 11 states in 2010 and 7 additional states in 2011 were awarded RTT grants, thus moving forward one part of the Obama education agenda. (In 2012, RTT was opened to individual school districts.)

Another of Obama's education priorities was to revamp NCLB, which he considered "flawed." The continued inability or unwillingness of Congress to reauthorize NCLB (ESEA) allowed him, to some extent, to do this. With no state likely to reach the 100% proficiency target by 2014 and states clamoring for relief from NCLB's prescriptive provisions, in 2011 Obama announced a plan to give states waivers in regard to meeting the 2014 deadline, as well as flexibility in identifying schools in need of interventions and in the use of federal funds.

The stated intent of these changes was to allow states to replace the "one size fits all" prescriptive provisions of NCLB with state developed reforms tailored to address their most pressing challenges (Taber, 2013). In exchange for the NCLB waivers, states were required to submit comprehensive plans to: (1) adopt college and career-ready standards and assessments; (2) develop systems of differentiated recognition, accountability, and support that give credit for progress toward college and career readiness; and (3) evaluate and support teacher and principal effectiveness.

Ultimately, 41 states and the District of Columbia received waivers, with others still pending at the time of this writing. The result of this action is that most states now adhere to Obama's educational policies rather than to those approved by Congress through NCLB (Layton, 2012). It remains unanswered whether the Obama strategies will improve student and teacher performance and better prepare students for college and careers, or whether this will be just another chapter in the school reform literature.

10.4 Common Core State Standards and Assessments

The RTT initiative provided a major incentive for the states to adopt the Common Core State Standards. As previously mentioned, RTT gave points in its grant competition to states that adopted the standards. Within 2 months of the dissemination of the English and math standards, and before the deadline for RTT proposals, 39 states and the District of Columbia had signaled their intent to adopt the CCSS. Since then, seven additional states have signed on to the CCSS. The process requires states to adopt the CCSS as written, with the understanding that they can add 15% more standards to each subject to address specific state preferences.

The Common Core standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers with input from teachers, parents, administrators, researchers, and education experts from across the country. In writing the standards, the group looked at the best existing state standards, as well as the research and literature on what students need to know for success in college and careers.

They also examined the expectations of students in high-performing countries and the results of international tests such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which pointed to the deficiencies in the mathematics, science, and reading curriculum in U.S. schools. (See Table 10.1 for PISA test results for OECD countries).

The intent of the CCSS initiative was to replace the patchwork of inconsistent academic standards from the 50 states with a common core of internationally benchmarked standards aligned with work and post-secondary educational expectations and including the higher order skills that students need. The standards are designed to be challenging, relevant expectations that are uniform across states and districts regarding what students are to learn at each grade level in order to be prepared for college or to enter the workforce.

Contrary to the charge of many of its critics, the Common Core State Standards initiative is not a federal program; the federal government was not involved in the development of the standards and does not direct their implementation. Also contrary to the charge of its detractors, the Common Core State Standards initiative does not predict a national curriculum or tell teachers what or how to teach. While the intent is for standards to be consistent across states and districts, it is left up to the individual teacher, school, or district to design and implement curricula aligned with them.

While there has been some controversy surrounding the Common Core standards, even most of their critics acknowledge, as one administrator put it, "that train has left the station." A 2013 survey by George Washington University's Center for Public Policy found that in 30 states, curricula aligned with the CCSS in math and English language arts are already being taught in some districts.

The vast majority of states are currently taking actions to develop and support implementation, such as developing or revising curriculum guides or materials aligned to CCSS, conducting professional development sessions, preparing and disseminating professional development materials, or recommending or requiring the use of textbooks or other instructional materials that have been aligned to the CCSS (Center on Education Policy, 2013a). The survey found the major roadblocks to implementation to be cuts or freezes in state funding and state agency capacity to carry out CCSS-related activities.

The extent to which the CCSS will be able to ensure that students are prepared with the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful in their careers and college will depend not only on how states implement the standards but also on how they assess student progress in learning the content they require (Center on Education Policy, 2013b). To support that effort, two state-led consortia with support from RTT—the Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)—are developing assessments aligned to the CCSS in math and language arts. These are expected to be ready to administer in 2014–2015.

Even ahead of this effort, the survey (Center on Education Policy, 2013b) found that 27 states were already taking steps to assess student mastery of the Common Core. Once the CCSSaligned assessments are in place

many states will tie their accountability systems—including consequences for schools and districts—to performance on the assessments. Teachers and principals will also be directly affected; many states are developing educator evaluation systems that hold these professionals accountable for their students' mastery of the CCSS. Students, too, will be impacted—not only because they will be expected to learn and pass tests on more rigorous content, but also because many postsecondary institutions are considering using scores on CCSS-aligned assessments to make decisions about such issues as which students need remedial courses. (Center on Education Policy, 2013a, p. 1)

The adoption and implementation of the Common Core have not gone without controversy. Conservative opponents charge that it is an unwarranted federal involvement into state education, while progressives

bristle at the emphasis on testing and the role of the Gates foundation which funded the development and promotion of the standards. Some academics say the math and reading standards are too weak, others that they are too demanding especially for students. (Layton, 2014, p. 1)

At the same time, teachers around the country, many of whom lack the training to implement the standards, are struggling to develop lessons and curriculum without the necessary resources and support. Teachers are also concerned about the use of tests and the likelihood of test results being used in teacher evaluations. Some parent groups have also raised concerns about over-testing and the large numbers of students who will potentially fail the assessments. Initially, it is feared, curriculum and textbooks will not have caught up with the standards.

Responding to some of the growing concerns about the Common Core, as well as the accompanying assessments, several states have taken the step to remove the term "Common Core" from their standards or assessments, instead referring to them as the Iowa Core or other such labels, hoping to remove the toxicity associated with the "Common Core" label (Layton, 2014). In still other states, bills have been introduced to delay the implementation of the Common Core and/or the assessments. While it may indeed be true that "the train has left the station," it is also true that there may well be detours and delays as it goes down the track.

10.5 21st Century Education

Concurrent with the CCSS initiative has been the 21st century skills movement. This movement seeks to address how students can master the multidimensional skills, knowledge, and expertise required of them in the 21st century. In 2002, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a coalition of business leaders, educators, policymakers, was established to identify these skills. P21 subsequently identified a comprehensive set of skills that, together with content mastery, are considered to be essential for success in the 21st century. The group also created a Framework for 21st Century Learning to serve as a model for integrating the skills into the curriculum.

The Framework combines a focus on student outcomes (skills, knowledge, and expertise) and the support system necessary to ensure student mastery of the skills and abilities required in the 21st century. The components of the support system (21st century standards, assessment, curriculum, instruction, professional development, and learning environments) must be aligned if they are to produce a support system that produces the 21st century outcomes (P21, 2013).

A number of states that have adopted the CCSS have also joined the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (19 states as of this writing). These states have made a commitment to fuse the 3Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) with the 4Cs (creativity, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, and collaboration), and teachers are trying to integrate 21st century skills into their disciplines as they address the CCSS.

A detailed guide developed by P21, P21 Common Core Toolkit: A Guide to Aligning the Common Core State Standards With the Framework for 21st Century Skills, provides numerous examples for those undertaking this task. According to the 21st century learning movement, "CCSS should be considered the 'floor' not the 'ceiling' when it comes to expectations for student performance in the 21st century" (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, n.d., p. 3).

As has been pointed out by both supporters and critics of the 21st century skills movement, most of these skills are not new. Critical thinking and problem solving have been stressed for decades, as has the importance of collaboration. Life and career skills had as their forerunners the activity curriculum, life adjustment education, and outcomes-based education (Ravitch, n.d.).

What is new, though, is the extent to which changes in the national and global economies make it clearer than ever that student success depends on having these skills. "Many U.S. students are taught these skills . . . but it is a matter of chance rather than the deliberate design of our school system" (Rotherham & Willingham, 2010, p, 17). The purposeful and intentional development of these skills is the intent of P21 and its partners. H.G. Wells (1920) once said that human history is a race between education and catastrophe. The goal of 21st education is to win the race.