PUBLIC VALUES AND SCHOOL POLICY CHAPTER ONE OVERVIEW Instructor
L. Larsen Course Organization and Governance of American Education
Slide 2 Public Values and School Policy Public Value and School
Policy: The Roots of Conflict Main Idea is around how social values
impact public policy Slide 3 Public Values and School Policy Key
Vocabulary Policy instruments - Mandates, inducements, capacity
building strategies, systemic changing strategies, as used in the
various waves of education reform. Social values - Equity,
efficiency, excellence and choice as used in developing policy in
school reform. Slide 4 Public Values and School Policy Mandates-
Inducements- Capacity building- System changing- Equity-
Efficiency- Choice- Excellence- Slide 5 Public Values and School
Policy The context for schooling was established with the political
evolution of the USA. Since the US Constitution does not mention
education, it became the responsibility of the state to meet the
demand for educating the populace. As the 13 original colonies
became states under the Constitution and the country eventually
expanded to the current 50 states, the states handed the
responsibilities of education to the local jurisdictions. Slide 6
Public Values and School Policy It was the Soviet launch of Sputnik
that presented the first national challenge to state control over
education. Although there was a federal department of education
from as early as the 19 th century it did not have the authority to
develop policy over the states until more recently. Slide 7 Public
Values and School Policy BRIEF HISTORY US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
The original Department of Education was created in 1867 to collect
information on schools and teaching that would help the States
establish effective school systems. While the agency's name and
location within the Executive Branch have changed over the past 130
years, this early emphasis on getting information on what works in
education to teachers and education policymakers continues down to
the present day. Slide 8 Public Values and School Policy The
passage of the Second Morrill Act in 1890 gave the then-named
Office of Education responsibility for administering support for
the original system of land-grant colleges and universities.
Vocational education became the next major area of Federal aid to
schools, with the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act and the 1946 George-Barden
Act focusing on agricultural, industrial, and home economics
training for high school students. Slide 9 Public Values and School
Policy World War II led to a significant expansion of Federal
support for education. The Lanham Act in 1941 and the Impact Aid
laws of 1950 eased the burden on communities affected by the
presence of military and other Federal installations by making
payments to school districts. And in 1944, the "GI Bill" authorized
postsecondary education assistance that would ultimately send
nearly 8 million World War II veterans to college. Slide 10 Public
Values and School Policy The Cold War stimulated the first example
of comprehensive Federal education legislation, when in 1958
Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in
response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. To help ensure that
highly trained individuals would be available to help America
compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields,
the NDEA included support for loans to college students, the
improvement of science, mathematics, and foreign language
instruction in elementary and secondary schools, graduate
fellowships, foreign language and area studies, and
vocational-technical training. Slide 11 Public Values and School
Policy The anti-poverty and civil rights laws of the 1960s and
1970s brought about a dramatic emergence of the Department's equal
access mission. The passage of laws such as Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,
and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which prohibited
discrimination based on race, sex, and disability, respectively
made civil rights enforcement a fundamental and long-lasting focus
of the Department of Education. Slide 12 Public Values and School
Policy In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act launched
a comprehensive set of programs, including the Title I program of
Federal aid to disadvantaged children to address the problems of
poor urban and rural areas. In that same year, the Higher Education
Act authorized assistance for postsecondary education, including
financial aid programs for needy college students. Slide 13 Public
Values and School Policy In 1980, Congress established the
Department of Education as a Cabinet level agency. Today, ED
operates programs that touch on every area and level of education.
The Department's elementary and secondary programs annually serve
nearly 14,000 school districts and some 56 million students
attending roughly 99,000 public schools and 34,000 private schools.
Department programs also provide grant, loan, and work-study
assistance to more than 15 million postsecondary students Slide 14
Public Values and School Policy Getting back to Sputnik The US
appeared to be at risk as the Soviet Union appeared to be leading
the race to space. The American educational system was to blame for
this and the solution was to have the federal government protect
the public interest by initiating massive education reform. We
began to see a major shift in how schools were to be governed and
administered. Federal funds began to be sent to states to be
distributed to local districts with new mandates, which prescribed
what local schools must do and how they were to do it. Slide 15
Public Values and School Policy In 1983 another major development
in American education emerged as The National Commission on
Excellence released a stunning report. The report, A Nation at
Risk, (1983) revealed that American education was lacking and that
other nations were doing a much better job of educating their
students and helping with the development of their own countries.
The prominence once held by the US as a leading industrialized
country had eroded and American were no longer providing a first
class education to its children. (See quote on page 3 in your
text.) Slide 16 Public Values and School Policy By 1986 education
reform began again with an emphasis on capacity building and
systemic change. With a series of reports and commissioned research
projects the emphasis moved to address issues such as : a.
Improving teacher quality, b. Teacher preparation and c. Better
working conditions for teachers. Slide 17 Public Values and School
Policy By the 1990s a third wave of education reform turned it
attention to policies that would help schools to develop and
implement systems of standards and accountability. This began in
1989 when President George H.W. Bush convened an educational summit
of the states. The result of this initiative was Goals 2000 which
set objectives to radically changes school systems in order to help
student meet the demand for the 21 st century Slide 18 Public
Values and School Policy The goals revolved around the ideas that
1) all children should start school ready to learn, 2) high school
graduation rates should be at least 90%, 3) all student should
leave grades 4,8, and 12 with competency in challenging subjects,
and 4)US students should be ahead of their peers internationally in
math and science. Slide 19 Public Values and School Policy In 1994
under the Clinton Administration the National mandate was for
states to develop systems of accountability in education, students
should be tested annually, and student progress should be measured
against state developed proficiency standards. ( This planted the
seed for NCLB) Slide 20 Public Values and School Policy The three
waves of reform can Be seen by the ways in which policy makers
tried to make changes. First wave emphasized mandates and
inducements, Second wave focused on capacity building and the Third
wave emphasized mandates and systemic reform. The most recent and
radical attempt at education reform came with the passage of the No
child Left Behind Act of 2001, Slide 21 Public Values and School
Policy No Child Left Behind The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001,
signed into law by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, was a
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the
central federal law in pre-collegiate education. The ESEA, first
enacted in 1965 and previously reauthorized in 1994, encompasses
Title I, the federal government's flagship aid program for
disadvantaged students. Slide 22 Public Values and School Policy
Coming at a time of wide public concern about the state of
education, the NCLB legislation set in place requirements that
reached into virtually every public school in America. It expanded
the federal role in education and took particular aim at improving
the educational lot of disadvantaged students. At the core of the
No Child Left Behind Act were a number of measures designed to
drive broad gains in student achievement and to hold states and
schools more accountable for student progress. They represented
significant changes to the education landscape (U.S. Department of
Education, 2001). Slide 23 Public Values and School Policy Annual
Testing: By the 2005-06 school year, states were required to begin
testing students in grades 3-8 annually in reading and mathematics.
By 2007-08, they had to tests students in science at least once in
elementary, middle, and high school. The tests had to be aligned
with state academic standards. A sample of 4th and 8th graders in
each state also had to participate in the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) testing program in reading and math
every other year to provide a point of comparison for state test
results. Slide 24 Public Values and School Policy Academic
Progress: States were required to bring all students up to the
"proficient" level on state tests by the 2013-14 school year.
Individual schools had to meet state "adequate yearly progress"
targets toward this goal (based on a formula spelled out in the
law) for both their student populations as a whole and for certain
demographic subgroups. If a school receiving federal Title I
funding failed to meet the target two years in a row, it would be
provided technical assistance and its students would be offered a
choice of other public schools to attend. Students in schools that
failed to make adequate progress three years in a row also were
offered supplemental educational services, including private
tutoring. For continued failures, a school would be subject to
outside corrective measures, including possible governance changes.
Slide 25 Public Values and School Policy Report Cards: Starting
with the 2002-03 school year, states were required to furnish
annual report cards showing a range of information, including
student-achievement data broken down by subgroup and information on
the performance of school districts. Districts must provide similar
report cards showing school-by-school data. Slide 26 Public Values
and School Policy Teacher Qualifications: By the end of the 2005-06
school year, every teacher in core content areas working in a
public school had to be "highly qualified" in each subject he or
she taught. Under the law, "highly qualified" generally meant that
a teacher was certified and demonstrably proficient in his or her
subject matter. Beginning with the 2002-03 school year, all new
teachers hired with federal Title I money had to be "highly
qualified." By the end of the 2005-06 school year, all school
paraprofessionals hired with Title I money must have completed at
least two years of college, obtained an associate's degree or
higher, or passed an evaluation to demonstrate knowledge and
teaching ability. . Slide 27 Public Values and School Policy
Reading First: The act created a new competitive-grant program
called Reading First, funded at $1.2 billion in 2004, to help
states and districts set up "scientific, research-based" reading
programs for children in grades K-3 (with priority given to
high-poverty areas). A smaller early-reading program sought to help
states better prepare 3- to 5-year-olds in disadvantaged areas to
read. The program's funding was later cut drastically by Congress
amid budget talks. Slide 28 Public Values and School Policy Funding
Changes: Through an alteration in the Title I funding formula, the
No Child Left Behind Act was expected to better target resources to
school districts with high concentrations of poor children. The law
also included provisions intended to give states and districts
greater flexibility in how they spent a portion of their federal
allotments. Slide 29 Public Values and School Policy Given its
scope and detail, the No Child Left Behind Act was the source of
considerable controversy and debate in the education community. As
the laws effects began to be felt, some educators and policymakers
questioned the feasibility and fairness of its goals and time
frames. Slide 30 Public Values and School Policy An opinion poll
released in December 2003 found that nearly half of school
principals and superintendents view the federal legislation as
either politically motivated or aimed at undermining public
schools. Likewise, a study Policy Analysis for California suggested
that, because of its requirement to evaluate school progress on the
basis of demographic subgroups, the law might disproportionately
penalize schools with diverse student populations (Public Agenda,
2003; Policy Analysis for California Education, 2003). Slide 31
Public Values and School Policy Concerns about the law grew,
particularly concerning its rules surrounding adequate yearly
progress and the goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2013-14.
Traditionally high-performing schools made headlines as they failed
to meet their set rates of improvement, and states saw increasingly
high rates of failure to meet the rising benchmarks. By 2010, 38
percent of schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress,
up from 29 percent in 2006. Slide 32 Public Values and School
Policy In 2011, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as part of
his campaign to get Congress to rewrite the law, issued dire
warnings that 82 percent of schools would be labeled "failing" that
year. The numbers didn't turn out quite that high, but several
states did see failure rates over 50 percent (McNeil, Aug. 3,
2011). Slide 33 Public Values and School Policy The law allowed
states to set their own annual benchmarks, provided they reached
100 percent proficiency by 2012-13, and some simply refused to
raise their benchmarks any further or requested waivers from the
rules. In the summer of 2011, Mr. Duncan promised to create a
waiver option for all states, though it would have strings attached
requiring those states to adopt some of the administration's
education priorities (McNeil, Aug. 9, 2011). In Congress,
meanwhile, members from both parties saw a need to rewrite the law,
but agreeing on the shape of a new version of that law was slow in
coming (Klein, Jan. 16, 2011; Sept. Slide 34 Public Values and
School Policy The No Child Left Behind Act has had advocates, with
some education leaders expressing support for the laws stringent
accountability mandates, characterizing them as vital levers of
change, inclusiveness, and transparency of results. The laws
ultimate effectiveness, some observers have argued, may depend on
how closely states and schools stick to its principles of "tough
accountability" (Education Trust, 2003; West & Peterson, 2003).
Slide 35 Public Values and School Policy NCLB reflects a major
shift in federal policy from input to outcomes. A move from the
traditional notion of equity for disadvantaged students to
educational excellence for all students Critics have argued that
100% proficiency as a measure of excellence is unreasonable largely
because it is unattainable. Other problems have to do with NCLB is
the fact that some urban schools serving many disadvantaged sub
groups have a very slim change of meeting AYP because of the
likelihood that some of the sub groups are more vulnerable to
failure due to socioeconomic status and the situation that they
face. Slide 36 Public Values and School Policy The text refers to
the diversity penalty that urban schools face as a result of having
many subgroups. Another issue stemming from NCLB has to do with the
mandate of using standardized tests to determine proficiency or
success. Finally and other unintended consequence of NCLB is that
it rewards schools for pushing out students. Schools try to get rid
of students who are low performers as NCLB was more focused on test
scores more so than retention or graduation rates until recently.
Slide 37 Public Values and School Policy In Summary- Chapter
reviews how social values impact public policy as beginning with
the cold war and the launching of Sputnik, Americans were convinced
that their society was not providing an adequate education for
their children which led to a series of public reform efforts to
address the perceived inadequacies. The last reform NCLB reflects
the most recent evolution of public policy. Slide 38 Public Values
and School Policy In Summary- (continued) We are now moving very
rapidly to a new reform effort which will we will explore during
the course of this semester and analyze its implications for
bringing about changes in teaching and learning for American
students. CC CC SS SS ommon ore tate tandards Slide 39 Public
Values and School Policy Vocabulary: Mandates- required action
regardless of capacity Inducements- incentive offered to get
desired results Capacity building- knowledge or skill set required
to produce in the future System changing- Institutional
modification implemented because of problems with old system
Equity- fairness in sharing the resources available for education
Efficiency- idea of getting the most value for the economic
resources out into a system Choice- having options and the ability
to exercise local control in educational matters Excellence-
subjective term having to do with the systems ability to meet its
objectives in a manner representing high quality. Slide 40 Public
Values and School Policy Any Questions
