No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The State of Educational Improvement: The Legacy of ESEA Title I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Extract
Title I has a mixed legacy that poses a paradox. Part of that legacy has yielded tremendous accomplishments. Title I asserted a federal priority to help disadvantaged students and broke with long resistance to a significant federal role in elementary and secondary schooling. It has deepened and expanded government responsibility and management of schooling at all levels—federal, state, and local. Over time, it has helped sweep schools, regardless of their student population's poverty levels, into the broader national standards-accountability movement, most recently expressed in the Common Core. While resistance to some aspects of federal authority remains, and may have intensified, Title I has developed durable constituencies and appetites for federal funds. Improving the education of children who live in poverty remains politically salient. These are remarkable accomplishments. And these accomplishments are intimately intertwined with other policies, including the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which facilitated the passage of other legislation, such as Head Start and Title I. Title I's legacy is intertwined in other ways, beyond its connections with contemporaneous policies; and these dependencies will be the focus of my remarks today.
- Type
- Forum
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2016 History of Education Society
References
1 For an overview of the school improvement industry, see Rowan, Brian, “The Ecology of School Improvement: Notes on the School Improvement Industry in the United States,” Journal of Educational Change 3, no. 3 (2002): 283–314.Google Scholar
2 Mettler, Suzanne, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Morgan, Kimberly J. and Campbell, Andrea L., The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets and the Governance of Social Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Hacker, Jacob, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
3 I use the term “state building” in these remarks to refer to (1) the development of “coercive systems” in the United States that structure the relationships between various manifestations of “public authority,” as well as between public authority and “civil society,” and (2) the capacity to deliver on state goals. On state development as coercive systems, see Stepan, Alfred C., The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), quoted in Skocpol, Theda, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 7–8; Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 43. On state infrastructural capacity, see Mann, Michael, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” European Journal of Sociology 25, no. 2 (1984), 185–213; and Soifer, Hillel and Hau, Matthias vom, “Unpacking the Strength of the State: The Utility of State Infrastructural Power,” Studies in Comparative International Development 43, no. 3/4 (2008), 219–30.Google Scholar
4 Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89–10, 79 Stat. 27.Google Scholar
5 Cohen, David K. and Moffitt, Susan L., The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 Carter, L. A., A Study of Compensatory and Elementary Education: The Sustaining Effects Study, Final Report (Santa Monica, CA: Systems Development Corporation, 1983); and Carter, L. A., “The Sustaining Effects Study of Compensatory and Elementary Education,” Educational Researcher 13, no. 7 (August–September 1984), 4–13.Google Scholar
7 No Child Left Behind Act, Pub. L. No. 107–10, 115 Stat. 1425.Google Scholar
8 For a discussion of the development of the New York State Department of Education during the Progressive Era, see Moffitt, and Cohen, , “The State of Title I,” 192–93.Google Scholar
9 Murphy, Jerome T., State Education Agencies and Discretionary Funds: Grease the Squeaky Wheel (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1974).Google Scholar
10 For a discussion of state-level capacity, see Jochim, Ashley and Murphy, Patrick, The Capacity Challenge: What it Takes for State Education Agencies to Support School Improvement (Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2013).Google Scholar
11 Moffitt and Cohen, “The State of Title I,” 193.Google Scholar
12 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, The Federal-State Partnership for Education: The Fifth Annual Report of the Advisory Council on State Departments of Education (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 8–9.Google Scholar
13 Lankford, Hamilton, Loeb, Susanna, and Wyckoff, James, “Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban Schools: A Descriptive Analysis,” Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis 24, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 37–62.Google Scholar
14 For a compelling account of the weak technical culture of teaching in the United States, see Lortie, Dan C., Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).Google Scholar
15 See, for instance, Cohen, David K., Peurach, Donald J., Glazer, Joshua L., Gates, Karen E., and Goldin, Simona, Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).Google Scholar
16 Baker, Bruce D. and Welner, Kevin G., “Premature Celebrations: The Persistence of Inter-District Funding Disparities,” Educational Policy Analysis Archives 18, no. 9 (2010): 1–27; Baker, Bruce D. and Corcoran, Sean P., The Stealth Inequalities of School Funding: How State and Local School Finance Systems Perpetuate Inequitable Student Spending (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2012); and Baker, Bruce D., America's Most Financially Disadvantaged School Districts and How They Got That Way: How State and Local Governance Causes School Funding Disparities (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2014), https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2014/07/09/93201/americas-most-financially-disadvantaged-school-districts-and-how-they-got-that-way/.Google Scholar