leaders to wait and see what might happen in terms of state and federal policymaking. Rather, we ask these provocative questions: “Under what conceivable political or economic environment will effective teaching and leadership not be important? Under what set of circumstances will the best professional practices available (teacher collaboration through the PLC at Work process) not be the most effective and professional path for teachers and leaders to follow? What level of uncertainty would justify decision-making paralysis by teachers, administrators, and policymakers?”
In sum, we ask you to consider the evidence and practices in the following pages not because they are a reflection of legislation and regulations but rather because responding to ESSA through the PLC at Work process is the right thing to do under any law, administration, or political environment. The time for action is now. There is no excuse for delay. There is no justification for temporizing. Our students and our communities deserve our best, and they deserve it immediately.
CHAPTER 1
A Brief History of Education Oversight in the United States
In December 2015, Americans witnessed an event even rarer than a lunar eclipse. A deeply divided and fractious U.S. Congress passed a significant piece of legislation with strong bipartisan support. That law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), is the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act originally passed in 1965. ESSA redefines the role of the federal government in K–12 education and, in many ways, is a dramatic departure from the previous No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002) and the Race to the Top program (U.S. Department of Education, 2009). The authority of states and districts to oversee their own school-improvement processes is significantly enhanced, while the role of the federal government in school reform and accountability is dramatically reduced. Before examining the details and potential of the new law, let’s briefly review past U.S. education-reform efforts and how the federal government contributed to those efforts.
A Look Back
According to the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” (U.S. Const. amend. X). This provision provides the basis of the legal theory that education is a function of the states rather than the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court and the state courts have consistently ruled that education is one of the powers reserved for the states.
However, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) established that the federal government could limit the authority of the states when it comes to education. The plaintiffs in the case argued that state-sanctioned racially segregated schools should be ruled unconstitutional because they violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision that citizens cannot be denied equal protection of the law (U.S. Const. amend. XIV). The defendants argued that the issue had been repeatedly addressed in the courts from the time of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which authorized “separate but equal” schools, and the courts consistently supported racial segregation if the state provided equal facilities to both races.
John Davis, a renowned attorney representing the defendants, argued before the court, “This court has not once but seven times, I think, pronounced in favor of the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine” (as cited in Blaustein & Zangrando, 1991, p. 430).
Davis also pressed the doctrine of states’ rights under Article X, arguing:
Neither this Court nor any other court, I respectfully submit, can sit in the chairs of the legislature of South Carolina and mold its educational map…. It establishes the schools, it pays the funds, and it has the sole power to educate its citizens. (as cited in Friedman, 2003)
The Supreme Court rejected that argument in a unanimous decision, ruling that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal” and should be integrated “with all deliberate speed” (Friedman, 2003). This ruling established that, under the right circumstances, the federal government could indeed play a role in K–12 education.
Federal Inroads Into K–12 Education
In 1965, the administration of President Lyndon Johnson used Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to persuade the U.S. Congress to further strengthen the federal role in education. That section of the Constitution specifically gave Congress authority to “lay and collect taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States” (U.S. Const., art. I, § 8). Citing this “general welfare” clause, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) to provide “financial assistance … to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to expand and improve their educational programs” (Social Welfare History Project, n.d.).
President Johnson described the legislation as “the most sweeping educational bill ever to come before Congress…. As President of the United States, I believe deeply no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America” (Franklin, Harris, & Allen-Meares, 2006, p. 873).
The law was careful, however, not to totally circumvent the states. Each state could apply for ESEA block grants, and money would flow through the states to the local district. Furthermore, the 1965 legislation stipulated that no funds could be used to create a national curriculum. Matters regarding what students should learn and how their learning should be monitored continued to be reserved to the states. Nevertheless, this law provided the principal means through which the federal government provided funds to schools, communities, and children for education purposes. As Kris Sloan (2007) concludes:
Forty years of sustained federal commitment under the ESEA has changed the face of public education in the United States in many ways. Title I has helped bolster the academic achievement of millions of disadvantaged children particularly in mathematics and literacy…. The Title II Eisenhower Professional Development program has exposed thousands of classroom teachers to new professional knowledge and instructional techniques in mathematics, science, and other critical subject areas. Title VII, Bilingual Education, has helped generations of immigrant children learn English and succeed in school. These and other ESEA-sponsored programs have benefited numerous students, teachers, and parents. (p. 16)
Although ESEA was originally authorized for five years, Congress reauthorized and modified the law ten times between 1965 and 2015.
Although ESEA was originally authorized for five years, Congress reauthorized and modified the law ten times between 1965 and 2015. Both the NCLB Act of 2002 and the ESSA of 2015 are reauthorizations of this initial legislative effort to provide the federal government with a greater voice in K–12 public education. During these years, the call for school reform was never-ending—and the call came from many different sources.
Never-Ending School Reform
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education presented its conclusions regarding the quality of schooling in the United States in a hyperbolic report titled A Nation at Risk. The commission asserted that U.S. education had fallen victim to a “rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people” (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The report was complete with dire warnings of decline, deficiencies, threats, risks, afflictions, and plight. Americans were urged to reverse the “unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament” that had taken hold of our schools and reestablish the United States as the world leader in educational attainment (National Commission on Excellence in Education, n.d.). To address the crisis, the commission called for more—more hours in the school day, more days in the school year, more standardized tests, more credits required for
