The+Reagan+Bush+Era

The Reagan Bush Era **__ The Reagan Years: Education - National Concern, State Responsibility __** The fact that state leaders seized the initiative for accountability reforms pleased officials in the new Reagan administration, which began in 1981 to shift a broad array of responsibilities back to the states. Promising to devolve financial and regulatory powers to state and local agencies whenever possible, Reagan persuaded the Congress to cut not only the amount of federal aid to education but also the extent of federal regulation in schools. Major cuts accompanied the Educational Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) -part of the [|Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981] (P.L. 97-35). Taking effect in June, 1982, the ECIA represented the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) -but it substantially altered the original law. It changed the name of Title I to "Chapter 1" and then collapsed twenty-nine smaller categorical programs into block grants to the states, which it called "Chapter 2." All told, the ECIA cut federal aid to schools by more than $1 billion, or 15 percent, in its first year (1982-1983) and specified even larger cuts for the future. In June of 1981, Vice President George Bush and Secretary of Education Terrel Bell (who served as interim federal commissioner under Nixon and had since returned to his home state of Utah to serve as state commissioner of education) held a meeting with all fifty chief state school officers to discuss Reagan's domestic policy goals, which were, in a nutshell, to reduce the federal budget deficit, to attack inflation, to cut taxes, and to decentralize as well as deregulate a wide range of federal social welfare programs. These were the building blocks of the so-called New Federalism agenda, which traced its roots back to the Nixon administration. Reagan's top priority in education was to scale back federal categorical aid programs-not only to save money and reduce the deficit, but also to give "control" back to states and localities. At the same time, however, the president wanted to show that he was still "concerned" about education and would use his office to build support for public schools. As one scholar put it, "Understanding the distinction between education as a national //concern// but a state and local //responsibility// is important in understanding the president's contention that education is high on the national agenda but low in his budgetary priorities." media type="youtube" key="2QFLsxeEl5I" height="385" width="480"

**__ The Reagan Years: Block Grants and Local Control __** After decades of steadily expanding federal aid to schools, the Educational Consolidation and Improvement Act marked a sudden federal retreat-and its effect was dramatic. Unlike the original ESEA, which federal officials had used, in part, to promote civil rights and desegregation, the ECIA pulled back from these priorities and insisted that local officials were best suited to solve "local" problems. The centerpiece of the ECIA-the piece that most directly fostered the devolution of power away from the federal government-was Chapter 2, with its block grant to each state. Under Chapter 2, the federal Department of Education allotted a lump sum to each state, which then parceled this sum out to local schools. The amount of each state's block grant was set according to a pupil-weighting formula that allowed states with more pupils in high-cost or heavily weighted programs-programs for low-income or non-English-speaking or disabled pupils-to receive larger Chapter 2 grants. Once a state received its Chapter 2 grant, however, it was under no obligation to use this grant to serve high-cost students; instead, it could use its Chapter 2 grant in any way it wished. On the one hand, this flexibility allowed states to meet the educational needs they considered most pressing. On the other hand, it allowed funds to bypass students from politically weaker groups. One consequence of this system was that urban schools with large enrollments of high-cost students helped their states obtain large Chapter 2 grants but did not themselves receive large grants. Indeed, most urban school districts received comparatively small grants under Chapter 2, which "consolidated" (i.e., eliminated) many of the categorical programs that previously distributed aid to high-cost students in the inner city. Whereas the original ESEA had targeted aid at educationally disadvantaged students, Chapter 2 allowed states to decide for themselves how best to use federal aid, and it was clear that most state education agencies felt intense political pressure to direct more aid to suburban areas (where voting rates and tax paying were higher) and less aid to urban schools. It is important to note that block grants did not succeed politically at a time of federal budget surpluses (the circumstance that had given rise to the original block-grant idea in the 1960s); rather block grants succeeded politically at a time of growing budget //deficits//. The reason for their success was that the perceived purpose of block grants had switched from fiscal to governance concerns. Rather than merely a way to redistribute money from the federal treasury to states and localities, block grants came to be seen in the 1980s as a way to redistribute //power// and control over social programs. No longer were block grants simply considered a form of "revenue sharing"; rather, block grants had been repackaged as a form of "power devolution," and they gained political traction in this guise. In the wake of the Watergate scandals of the 1970s, when "trust" in the federal government was at a low ebb, block grants became a way for Congress to give responsibility back " to the people."

media type="youtube" key="LFAXnCFk5IE" height="385" width="480" __**Secretaries of Education**__
 * Terrel Bell (1981-1985)

In 1983, a year after the de-regulation and de-funding of education programs took effect under the ECIA, the administration issued a major-and extremely critical-report on the state of American education. Coordinated by federal commissioner Terrel Bell, //[|A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform]// used standardized test scores to paint a bleak picture of performance levels in the schools: "Average achievement of high school students on most standardized tests is now lower than 26 years ago when //Sputnik// was launched," the report claimed. "The College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) demonstrate a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980. Average verbal scores fell over 50 points, and average mathematics scores dropped nearly 40 points." The report suggested that public schools had prioritized access over achievement (//equity// over excellence) and had, in the process, shortchanged the very students who most needed high academic standards. Calling for a renewed commitment to schools "of high quality throughout the length and breadth of our land," //A Nation at Risk// also called for a nationwide system of standardized tests. "Standardized tests of achievement should be administered at major transition points from one level of schooling to another, and particularly from high school to college," it noted. "These tests should be administered as part of a nationwide (but not federal) system of state and local standardized tests." This call for a nationwide system of tests marked a new era in federal educational policy, an era in which equal educational opportunities would be measured not so much in terms of financial aid, special programs, or even racial desegregation but, rather, in terms of standardized tests. This emphasis on standardized tests derived, in part, from a sense that the United States was losing its edge in vigorous economic competition with other industrialized countries, especially Japan. The Council of Chief State School Officers had represented the United States in several international forums in the early 1980s and had argued that America's poor showing in international assessment comparisons indicated a need for federal action in the schools. William Bennett (1985-1988) Bennett and Finn cited countless education evaluation studies to show that twenty years of "dumping money" on public schools had done little to boost academic results. They stated repeatedly that increased funding to schools could not guarantee higher test scores and insisted that excessive federal regulations had bloated state and local school bureaucracies while diverting limited resources from classrooms. Bennett's famous "wall charts" (a tool invented, actually, by one of Bennett's predecessors, Terrel Bell) ranked states in order of per-pupil spending (as well as test scores, poverty rates, teacher salaries, and dropout rates) to show that expenditures had little correlation with academic achievement. Bennett's critics, however, accused him of hiding behind a flurry of statistics that bore no connection to actual reforms in curriculum or instruction. Critics also commented that Bennett's outspoken support for national testing systems epitomized the centralization, bureaucratization, and standardization that he himself had criticized the federal Department of Education for fostering.
 * Nation At Risk Report 1983
 * After his re-election, Reagan appointed a new secretary of education, William Bennett, who, in turn, appointed a new assistant secretary for research and improvement, [|Chester E. Finn, Jr.], to help press for greater emphasis on academic achievement as measured by standardized tests.

In Bennett's view, the collection and dissemination of program evaluation data was a central purpose of the federal department. "This department has no function more important than the production of high quality research and accurate information about the condition of all levels of American education," he said in July of 1985. "The American people, equipped with the right answers, equipped with what's true, equipped with the facts, can in my view go about the business of fixing their schools." Even as Bennett used data generated by federally funded education research centers to push for change, however, he blamed those very centers for consuming too much of the federal education budget. He pushed hard to reorganize the government's education research activities and abolished the National Institute of Education. He brought its functions, as well as those of the National Center for Education Statistics (founded in 1972), under the purview of assistant secretary [|Finn] at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI).





The George H.W. Bush Years: Business and Achievement Early in his tenure, George H. W. Bush declared his intent to be an "education president" and began to raise expectations for elementary and secondary achievement. He used close links to the business community and its increasing focus on educational outcomes to advance the movement toward a "new accountability" based on standardized performance outcomes for all students. The groundwork for this idea had been laid in a report from the National Governors Association called //Time for Results//, released in 1986 under the chairmanship of Lamar Alexander, then governor of Tennessee. This report followed up on //A Nation at Risk//, released three years earlier, and proposed a deal between the levels of government. Schools would be released from many constraints of government regulation and in return would produce demonstrable gains in achievement. Schools were to be held accountable for their performance and would suffer consequences, including reductions in their newfound autonomy, if they did not improve. Such relaxation in regulations appealed to Bush and his desire to put a "kinder and gentler" face on his administration. The deregulation also appealed to the business community, which was looking for ways to spur innovation and improvement in the education sector.

The George H.W. Bush Years: Education Summit In September 1989, Bush convened the governors of the various states in a national education summit. Though initial plans for the summit proposed to showcase the best examples of educational practice from a number of states, planners decided instead to use the opportunity to engage the governors in a new focus on educational goals. Held in Charlottesville, Virginia, the summit included business leaders, members of the Bush administration, and forty-nine of the fifty governors (Governor Rudy Perpich of Minnesota did not attend). Tellingly, there were no educators or members of Congress in attendance (besides those from Virginia who were helping to host the conference). In welcoming remarks, Bush made clear that the federal government was a supporting and coordinating partner, not a leader of the effort. He said, "There are real problems right now in our educational system, but there is no one Federal solution. The Federal Government, of course, has a very important role to play, which is why I'm here and why so many members of our Cabinet are here. And we're going to work with you to help find answers, but I firmly believe that the key will be found at the State and local levels." The 1989 summit was the first meeting of the governors and president devoted to education since the Depression. That fact alone made it a noteworthy event. The summit furthered the commitment to a set of "national performance goals" that focused leaders on a set of benchmarks to be achieved by the year 2000. Although the goals were written after the summit, the principles that informed them were discussed and outlined. Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who had played a leading role at the summit, also led the subsequent effort to create a set of widely supported goals. The six goals that President Bush shared with the country in his [|1990 State of the Union address] were that, by the year 2000: The George H.W. Bush Years: Goals Panel Although the summit developed the groundwork for these goals, it did not design or produce any strategies to realize them. To maintain a focus on the effort, the administration created the National Education Goals Panel in July 1990 by executive order. The charge to the panel was to monitor and report progress toward the goals to the public. The panel was created with fourteen people-four from administration, six governors, two senators, and two members of the House of Representatives. Years later, four representatives of state legislatures were added. The National Governors Association, having been instrumental in the development and adoption of the goals, selected Colorado governor Roy Romer as the panel's first chair. Initially, the panel received a good deal of attention and considerable support. It created a task force for each of the six goals to investigate potential activities for that particular area. However, without any power or mechanisms for implementation at its disposal, and without any particular entities to hold accountable for progress toward the goals, the panel came to be seen as limited in its effectiveness. After years of turnover and diminished interest, funding for the panel was eliminated in 2002, and it ceased to exist. Though it did not directly stimulate a great deal of activity and met its demise without seeing the goals achieved, the panel did bring together Republicans and Democrats around a shared set of goals and helped to focus the nation's attention on expected student outcomes.
 * 1) All children in America will start school ready to learn.
 * 2) The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.
 * 3) American students will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography; and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.
 * 4) U.S. students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement.
 * 5) Every adult American will be literate and possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
 * 6) Every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a safe, disciplined environment conducive to learning.

The George H.W. Bush Years: Systemic Reform During the hearings for the bill, the concept of "systemic reform" first appeared in widespread public discussion. Endorsed by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and other organizations, this theory pushed for aligning curriculum, standards, assessments, teacher training, and resources. As described by Marshall Smith and Jennifer O'Day in their seminal article "Systemic School Reform," systemic reform would "set the conditions for change to take place not just in a small handful of schools or for a few children, but in the great majority." The two authors placed a heavy emphasis on the role of the //states//-a role they argued had been previously neglected in favor of school and district efforts at restructuring and improvement. For some, this argument raised concern about the direct federal-to-school grants in Bush's proposal.

It also connected well with the groundwork that had been laid at the education summit, as well as with reform efforts already under way in several states, most notably California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York. In California, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig had embarked on a major effort to create new curriculum frameworks, develop aligned texts, provide statewide content-based professional development, and require new assessments. This initiative in the largest state in the union, together with the experience in other states, demonstrated what an aligned state education system might look like. The vision appealed to many. The George H.W. Bush Years: Common Standards and English Language Learners The meaning of common standards and assessments was also challenging for English language learners. The focus on improving instructional programs coincided with a rather sudden withdrawal of financial support from bilingual programs, the "outcomes" of which had become a subject of widespread debate. As early as 1988, as part of the Hawkins-Stafford amendments, Augustus Hawkins (the African-American chair of the House Education and Labor Committee) agreed, under pressure from the Reagan administration, to increase the proportion of "alternative" programs (i.e., immersion or English-Only programs) permissible under the law from 4 percent to 25 percent of the total. He also agreed to limit the time a student could remain in a bilingual program to three years (except in extraordinary cases, when the limit was extended to five years). So, even while the Hawkins-Stafford amendments directed more money to low-achieving schools, non-English-speaking students in those schools were often forced into English-Only classes.

__**Secretaries of Education**__ Lauro Cavazos (1988-1990)

Lamar Alexander (1991-1993)

__**Educational Developments and Programs**__


 * Comission for Excellence in Education
 * The Nation at Risk Report (1983)
 * [|Head Start Act] 1981 Updated


 * __Educational Goals__**


 * Abolish the Department of Edcuation
 * School Choice: Offering Tax Credits to go to Private Schools
 * Returning Prayer to the Nation's Schools

**__Issues Impacting Education__**

Stressing "achievement" and "accountability" as prerequisites for government aid, the Reagan administration made schools' continuing eligibility for aid contingent on rising test scores. If schools did not produce higher scores, they would lose federal aid. According to Reagan, this expectation of rising test scores was the only way to prevent schools from prolonging their eligibility for aid by perpetuating low scores. And, yet, the expectation of ever-increasing scores on standardized tests had several unintended consequences. For example, some teachers artificially inflated scores to make students seem more successful; however, by inflating test scores, they unwittingly compromised their schools' eligibility for aid targeted specifically at programs for low-scoring students. Put simply, if fewer students posted low scores, then such programs lost enrollment and, in turn, aid. Policy analysts Harriet Bernstein and David Merenda asserted that some urban districts actually had a //disincentive// to improve student achievement on standardized tests. In their words, "Since eligible children within individual schools are chosen on the basis of low achievement (and [since] the law encourages that only those with the greatest need be served), there is an additional financial disincentive to expect much and achieve well. If all the children in a Title I school were miraculously to start achieving on grade level, then the school would lose its extra positions and materials." As one test-industry critic added, the constantly growing pressure to show higher and higher scores on standardized tests "particularly harms under-achieving students, because the distorted test scores make them ineligible for remedial programs they would otherwise be entitled to." So, despite the hope that standardized tests would lead to higher achievement, it was conceivable that schools, in order to retain their grants for remedial programs serving "high-cost" students, might actually keep scores low-or //low enough// to maintain eligibility for aid. At the very least, schools with large numbers of low-scoring students faced the question: was it wiser to pursue high scores or low scores when //both// outcomes would result in lost aid?
 * Testing**

In 1983, in order to accommodate the new emphasis on testing and the need for more sophistication in test administration, the federal contract for the [|National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)] was transferred from the Educational Commission of the States (ECS) to the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and the frequency of the exams increased. As test industry analyst Lorrie Shepard has noted, data collection strategies expanded to include a few additional test variables: "[student] background and [school] program variables were added to help in interpreting results, and sophisticated scaling methods were introduced to produce a single summary score that could be more readily understood by the public." With voters and legislators increasingly focused on test scores as a tool to enforce "accountability" in schools, the NAEP joined other state-level tests designed to track student performance (or basic skills or "minimum competency") in schools. A number of states, including Texas, California, New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Arizona were leaders in the development of statewide tests in the 1980s. At first, the increasing frequency of tests seemed to lead to improved scores. At the same time, students became more adept at taking standardized tests. Over time, however, these early gains came under suspicion. In 1984, a few schools began to admit that, even as test scores had increased, so had dropout rates. "For the first time, we are seeing high-school dropout rates increasing," former state commissioner of education in Massachusetts, Greg Anrig, revealed. "Does this mean we are getting higher standards, or does the threat of tests encourage teachers just to get rid of kids who might not pass? In other words, are we having more push-outs? And doesn't that tend to hurt minorities?" By 1984, the high-school dropout rate in Boston exceeded 40 percent of all students. "The dropout problem is an extremely serious matter," the //Boston Globe// reported, "particularly since most of those who quit do so during the freshman or sophomore year."
 * Testing and Dropout Rates**

[|//Zelman v. Simmons Harris//] Click on text to learn more
 * <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">School Choice and Tax Credits

Ohio's Pilot Project Scholarship Program provides tuition aid in the form of vouchers for certain students in the Cleveland City School District to attend participating public or private schools of their parent's choosing. Both religious and nonreligious schools in the district may participate. Tuition aid is distributed to parents according to financial need, and where the aid is spent depends solely upon where parents choose to enroll their children.

No. In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the Court held that the program does not violate the Establishment Clause. The Court reasoned that, because Ohio's program is part of Ohio's general undertaking to provide educational opportunities to children, government aid reaches religious institutions only by way of the deliberate choices of numerous individual recipients and the incidental advancement of a religious mission, or any perceived endorsement, is reasonably attributable to the individual aid recipients not the government Charter Schools, Summary In addition to an emphasis on systemic reform, the idea of school choice garnered increasing attention in the 1990s. As noted earlier, President Bush's America 2000 proposal included publicly funded vouchers for parents to enroll their children in private schools. Charter schools offered yet another option in the school choice arena. As early as the 1980s, the relatively new concept of charter schools-that is, schools with special or independent dispensations, or charters, from their states to experiment with alternative publicly financed approaches to education-had emerged on the national scene. The name //charter schools// can be traced back to Dr. Ray Budde, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who wrote a report, //Education by Charter//, in 1988. In this report, Budde describes the shift of responsibility and control over student learning away from removed administrators to those who do the teaching. Minnesota was the first state formally to allow the creation of charter schools, and other states eventually followed, including Arizona, California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Washington, Missouri, Maine, Illinois, Texas, and Florida. The basic idea behind charter schools was that more freedom to innovate at the school level would lead to improved results.

Relatively early in the Bush administration, the charter school movement gained support from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which previously had supported ideas such as site-based management, schools-within-schools, and school-community partnerships. In a 1988 //New York Times// column and a speech at the National Press Club, AFT president Albert Shanker described charter schools as a promising front in improving education. With his faith in teachers as professionals, he saw the freedom that charter schools could offer and the scientific results from standardized tests as fostering a good environment for teachers and students to thrive. Although interest in charter schools was growing, there was no legislation enacted to support them during this administration.

Between 1989 and 1992, federal spending for education increased by 25 percent (meanwhile, the budget of the federal Department of Education increased 41 percent). In unadjusted dollars, federal aid to education had increased from $5.3 billion in 1965 to $23.3 billion in 1975 to $40.0 billion in 1985 to $71.7 billion in 1995. Although the administration of President George H. W. Bush did not produce significant breakthroughs in education legislation, funding for extant programs did increase, and the stage was set for new federal strategies to improve education results.