ESEA Reauthorization:
Where We on the Issues and the Process?
A Forum — November 19, 1999
Thirty-five years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law. Passed amidst a barrage of legislative activity at the start of the War on Poverty, ESEA aimed to create equal educational opportunities for all Americans. To this end, Title I (Education for the Disadvantaged) allocated federal funds for poor school districts. Today, Title I provides $8.3 billion for 12 million students in 44,000 schools. As the House and Senate wade through the process of reauthorizing ESEA this year, Title I and many of the other programs funded by ESEA are being reevaluated and restructured.
Several issues emerge in the contemporary debates surrounding ESEA reauthorization. Congress is attempting to strike a balance between flexibility and accountability in federal education programs, state block grants and targeted funding for school districts, and finally, omnibus legislation that incorporates all educational funding for disadvantaged students or numerous smaller bills that focus on new initiatives for these students.
The AYPF forum on ESEA reauthorization allows participants to hear from Congressional staff and representatives of major education associations. Panelists at the forum include: Sally Lovejoy, Senior Education Policy Advisor, House Committee on Education and the Workforce; Danica Petroshius, Education Advisor, Office of Senator Edward Kennedy; Bruce Hunter, Director of Public Policy, American Association of School Administrators; and Jeff Simering, Director of Legislative Services, Council of Great City Schools. These individuals bring informed and diverse opinions to the debate on the role of the federal government in funding education.
Sally Lovejoy shepherds Republican proposals on ESEA reform in the House of Representatives. The House proposals divide Title I into several smaller bills, including the Education Flexibility Partnership Act (EFPA), Student Results Act (SRA), Teacher Empowerment Act (TEA), and Academic Achievement for All (AAA). These bills stress quantifiable accountability and rely primarily on block grants to distribute funds to the states. Without accountability, Lovejoy argues, it is difficult for Congress to ensure that federal funds are having the desired impact on student achievement and school reform. On the question of fund allocation, Lovejoy believes that block grants provide more flexibility for state authorities to channel funds into programs that make sense on the local level.
While Lovejoy represents education-oriented Republicans in the House of Representatives, Danica Petroshius works on the other side of the Capitol as Senator Edward Kennedy’s Education Advisor. Petroshius and Kennedy share the basic assumption that the federal government can and must provide funds targeted directly to disadvantaged school children rather than through state middlemen with block grants. These grants, she fears, will be used as "blank checks" by governors to fund programs that are not necessarily targeted to needy children. Petroshius agrees that accountability is necessary, but argues that the current wording of accountability sections in Title I and recent House proposals is not well defined. Finally, though she supports a strong role for the federal government in education, Petroshius reminds those interested in improving education that the federal government provides on average only seven percent of the funding for school districts. Real change, then, must come from state and local officials, who control the majority of education funds.
Representing local school officials, Bruce Hunter from the American Association of School Administrators and Jeff Simering of the Council of Great City Schools defend the existing version of ESEA’s Title I. Hunter observes that since its passage in 1965, Title I has produced a "sea change" in the way the federal government supports disadvantaged school children. Title I provides the only funds to counterbalance allocation disparities on the local level that are a result of unequal tax-bases in school districts. Hunter warns that in the coming years, six million additional children will enter the public school system, and with 39 states capping the ability of school districts to raise property taxes, he argues that the federal government will have to increase funding through ESEA.
Jeff Simering is even more adamant about the need to reautherize Title I with increased funding. Dubbing ESEA an "endangered species," Simering believes that current legislative proposals in the House will splinter the formerly focused nature of federal education funding, setting individual programs against each other in competition for limited appropriations. The impetus for these reform efforts, according to Simering, is a false negative impression of the impact of Title I based on studies completed before 1994. More recent studies, including one done by Simering’s own organization, the Council of Great City Schools, have more positive findings. On the issue of accountability, he argues that current accountability proposals include unrealistic expectations and mandates of programs for which federal funds are unavailable.
Lovejoy responds to such arguments from school administrators and their representatives with frustration, noting that school districts demand more money without accepting rigorous accountability mechanisms. Yet, not all administrators disapprove of the new accountability proposals. In fact, Hunter favors such accountability measures as long as they are coupled with funding initiatives that support school reforms necessary to achieve the new standards.
Through constructive (and often heated) debates such as this one, education policymakers, analysts, and practitioners can hash out ideas and hopefully come to a consensus based on informed compromise. While they disagree on legislative strategies, the panelists agree that a mix of federal funding and accountability mechanisms as well as local and state funding initiatives must ensure that the 14 million disadvantaged youth served by Title I continue to receive the educational opportunities available to all of America’s youth.
This information is from an American Youth Policy Forum held on November 19, 1999 on Capitol Hill, reported by Steve Estes.
The events of the Forum are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Charles S. Mott Foundation, Ford Foundation and General Electric Fund, Ford Motor Fund, DeWitt Wallace-Readers Digest Fund, and others.