From Title I to ESSA, Fifty Years of Washington Meddling in Your Schools

Washington has a signature move in education. It arrives with a bag of money and a bipartisan press conference, promises a lighter touch, and leaves behind a heavier hand and a new acronym. Then it comes back a few years later to fix what the last acronym did.

I've followed that pattern through fifty years of law, from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, and what stands out is that nobody in the story was a cartoon villain. Every law had sincere sponsors and a real problem to solve. The disappointments came from the machinery, not the motives. If you want to argue about Washington's role in your child's school, you ought to know the timeline, so here it is, in order, with what each law tried to do and where the control went.

1965 to 1979: money first, rules later

April 11, 1965: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, as part of the Great Society. Its heart was Title I, money for school districts serving large numbers of children from low-income families. The act had other titles, too: funds for library books and instructional materials, for supplementary education centers, for educational research and for strengthening the state education agencies, which were the offices that would receive and oversee the money.

The politics were delicate, because federal aid to schools had been stuck for years over one question: could money go to religious schools? The compromise was the "child benefit" theory. The aid went to help children, not to the schools, and public districts provided certain services to eligible students in private schools as well. It was a clever solution, and it opened the door to everything that followed.

What it tried: close the money gap between rich and poor districts. Where the control went: very little, at first. The original law had minimal accountability. Money went out by formula, and districts were largely trusted to use it for the poor children it was meant for. Congress has since reauthorized the law roughly every five years or so, and each time it added more rules.

November 29, 1975: the Education for All Handicapped Children Act

President Gerald Ford signed this law, which Congress passed in response to court decisions and to the stories of children who had been shut out of public schools. It required states that took the money to provide a free appropriate public education to children with disabilities, to write an individualised education program for each child and to educate them in the least restrictive environment, along with due process rights for parents. It was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990.

Ford signed it with reservations. He worried it promised more than the federal government would pay for, and he was right: Congress authorised up to 40 percent of the extra costs and has never appropriated that. The states and districts carry the gap.

What it tried: guarantee that no child with a disability would be turned away. Where the control went: up. This was a rights-based law, enforced by hearings and lawsuits, and it put federal process rules into every school in the country. Few people argue today that the goal was wrong. The argument is about the paperwork and the unfunded cost.

1979: a department of its own

In October 1979, President Carter signed the law that made education a Cabinet department. That story, and the promise to abolish the department that followed, is told in The Department of Education, From an 1867 Office to a Cabinet Fight.

The 1980s: a block grant and an alarm bell

1981: Chapter 1 and the block grants

The Reagan administration tried the other direction. The Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981 folded many small federal programs into a single block grant to the states, with fewer strings, and renamed Title I as "Chapter 1." It was the closest Congress has come to the conservative ideal: send the money, drop the micromanagement. Title I got its old name back in 1994, and the fight over how many strings to attach has never stopped.

April 1983: A Nation at Risk

The National Commission on Excellence in Education, created by Reagan's Secretary of Education, Terrel Bell, issued a report with a sentence that rang like a fire alarm: "the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity." It argued that if a foreign power had imposed the schools Americans had then, "we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Its recommendations included tougher graduation requirements (four years of English and three each of math, science and social studies were among its "new basics"), longer school days and years, and better teacher preparation.

What it tried: shame the country into higher standards. Where the control went: almost none, legally. The report had no force of law. But it launched the "standards" movement, and the states, not Washington, made the changes: they raised graduation requirements and began setting academic standards. That was the system working as designed, and it set the stage for what came next.

1989 to 2001: the standards go national

1989 to 1994: summit, goals and a rewritten ESEA

In September 1989, President George H.W. Bush met the nation's governors at Charlottesville, Virginia, for an education summit, and the governors, including Arkansas's Bill Clinton, agreed that the country needed national education goals. In 1994, President Clinton signed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act (March 31) and the Improving America's Schools Act (October), which rewrote ESEA. The new Title I required states to develop academic content standards and tests and to hold schools accountable for results.

What it tried: tie the money to standards. Where the control went: quietly toward Washington. For the first time, the federal government's largest school program required states to have standards and assessments. The states mostly set them, and many did the work slowly. Washington noticed.

2002: the high-water mark

January 8, 2002: No Child Left Behind

President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio. It passed with broad bipartisan support, and Senator Edward Kennedy and Representative George Miller, two prominent Democrats, stood with the Republican President. Its core provisions are worth stating exactly.

1. Annual testing. Every state had to test every student in reading and math in grades three through eight, and once in high school, plus science tests at three points.
2. Adequate yearly progress. Each school, and each group of students within it (by race, income, disability and English proficiency), had to hit targets set by the state.
3. A deadline. The law's goal was that all students would be proficient in reading and math by the 2013-14 school year.
4. Consequences. Schools that missed targets year after year faced escalating steps: letting students transfer, paying for tutoring and, in the end, restructuring the school.

What it tried: expose achievement gaps that averages had hidden and force action. Its supporters, including many who are not at all liberal, credit it with shining a light on groups of children who had been ignored. That's the strongest part of the argument, and it deserves credit.

Where the control went: to Washington, more than ever before. States still wrote their own tests and standards, but the federal government defined the system, the consequences and the timetable. Critics pointed to three problems. First, the goal of 100 percent proficiency by a fixed date was unreachable, and as the deadline came closer, more and more schools were labelled as failing. Second, the focus on two subjects and a few tests narrowed what was taught. Third, a single national formula can't fit the difference between a rural school and a city one. A conservative adds a fourth: when a law written in Washington defines the remedy for a school in your town, the school board and the parents who elect it are the last to be consulted.

2009 to 2015: incentives, backlash and the handback

2009 to 2010: Race to the Top and the Common Core

In 2009, the stimulus law set aside $4.35 billion for a competition called Race to the Top. States applied for money and earned points by adopting policies the administration favoured, including "college- and career-ready" standards, charter-friendly laws and teacher evaluations that used student growth.

At the same time, governors and state school chiefs, through the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, were writing a shared set of math and English standards, the Common Core State Standards, released in June 2010. Washington did not write them. But Race to the Top rewarded states that adopted college- and career-ready standards, and most states adopted the Common Core within months. In 2011 and 2012 the administration also began granting waivers from NCLB's deadlines to states that agreed to adopt such standards and to evaluate teachers in particular ways.

What it tried: use competitions and waivers to move states without passing a new law. Where the control went: toward Washington by the side door. Supporters said that states chose freely, and the standards were state-led. Opponents, including many conservatives and many parents, said that when billions of dollars and relief from a failing law depend on adopting a standard, the choice isn't free. The backlash was fierce. Several states later dropped or rewrote the standards, and the argument over who controlled the classroom helped shape the politics of the next years.

December 10, 2015: the Every Student Succeeds Act

President Obama signed ESSA, which replaced NCLB with large bipartisan majorities. It kept annual testing and the reporting of results by student group, which many reformers viewed as the heart of the old law. But it ended the federal "adequate yearly progress" system and the mandated sanctions. States now design their own accountability systems, choose goals and indicators, including at least one that isn't a test score, and decide how to improve schools. The federal law requires states to identify the lowest-performing five percent of Title I schools, and high schools with low graduation rates, for support.

And it drew a bright line the other way. ESSA bars the Secretary of Education from requiring or incentivising particular standards, naming the Common Core among them. More on that in What the Education Department Actually Does, and What It Cannot.

What it tried: hand back the design while keeping the data. Where the control went: back to the states, at least on paper.

What the pendulum teaches

Put the entries side by side and the pattern is hard to miss.

The pendulum swung. It never swung all the way back. Even after ESSA, the states still must test every year and report by group, and the department still runs the compliance machinery. Every step added a layer, and the layers stuck.

There's a lesson in that for conservatives who want less federal involvement. The 1981 block grant shows that the idea is not a fantasy. But it survived only a few years in its original form, because the interest groups that depend on a program fight to keep its rules. Reform has to come with a plan for the constituencies on the other side.

And there's a lesson for everyone about a promise that sounds good: "tie the money to results." Results are worth wanting. But the machine that measures them has costs, and the people in the classroom pay them. For the constitutional framework under all of this, see The Constitution Never Mentions Schools and That Is the Whole Point, and for the budget side, A Worksheet for Reading Your School District's Budget Line by Line shows where federal dollars land in a district's accounts.

How to check the record yourself

I have not quoted a single test score in this post, and that is on purpose. The honest story of whether these laws worked is told in numbers, the numbers change, and you should read them at the source rather than take them from me or from anyone with a point to make.

Two places to start. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, called the Nation's Report Card, is a sample test run by the National Center for Education Statistics, and it lets you compare states and years on the same yardstick. And under the Every Student Succeeds Act, every state and every district must publish an annual report card with results broken out by student group. Yours is online. Pull it up and ask three questions: what changed between the years, which groups gained and which did not, and what the district says it did about it.

A good rule for any claim about education policy, from either side: if the speaker gives you a result without naming the test, the grade, the group and the years, they are selling something.

The bottom line

• Federal involvement grew in steps, and every step was bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats both signed on, from the 1965 act to NCLB. Blaming one party doesn't fit the record.
• Washington started with money and ended with rules. Title I began as a formula grant. By 2002 it came with annual tests, deadlines and sanctions.
• The pendulum swung back in 2015, but not all the way. ESSA returned design power to the states. The testing and reporting requirements stayed.
• Reform needs a plan, not a slogan. The 1981 block grant worked as an idea but not as a lasting law. If you want fewer strings, learn who benefits from the current ones.
• Judge a federal education law by who decides. Ask whether the parent, the school board or a Washington formula makes the call. Then tell your representative what you think, using the votes at /politics/bills/.