Education Policy Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Education policy in the United States is divided into two areas: (1) elementary and secondary education and (2) higher education. Elementary and secondary education policy has historically been handled by local government, according to state guidelines and with funding from state and local taxes. Federal involvement began with the effort to desegregate schools in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, and continued in a series of desegregation cases in the 1960s and 1970s that followed passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Federal funding of elementary and secondary education increased through the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act of 1965, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1971, and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2002. Higher education policy has largely been handled as a mix of privately run colleges and universities that are paralleled by state systems of higher education. The federal government has had some involvement in higher education policy making, beginning with the Morrill Act of 1862, which set aside lands for state universities. Federal involvement grew in the post–World War II era with the significant funding of university research, provision of education grants, and creation of the guaranteed student loan program. Affirmative action policy, in particular Title IX, helped to expand access to higher education by women and minorities.

Elementary And Secondary Education Policy

Elementary and secondary education is delivered at the local level, through school districts administered by elected school boards that are responsible for overseeing school district hiring, curriculum, and finances. In many states, school boards must conduct periodic levy campaigns to raise local property taxes to support increasing costs and new services. States are responsible for setting and enforcing standards for teacher and administrator certification, setting curriculum guidelines, and providing financial aid to supplement districts that are unable to completely fund operating with local taxes.

States typically provide supplemental funding either through foundation formulas that calculate a statewide per-pupil cost for education and then supplement local districts to bring their spending up to the per-pupil average or through set grants-in-aid that are not dependent on raising all districts to similar per pupil spending averages. State court challenges to state systems of funding, beginning with the landmark Serrano v. Priest (1971) in California, led to increases in state spending on education in the 1980s and 1990s, although funding formulas that relied on property taxes remained largely unchanged. Total spending on primary and secondary education in the United States was $536 billion in 2005. Of this, 45.6 percent came from state funds, 37.1 percent from local taxes, 8.3 percent from federal support, and 8.9 percent from private sources (primarily tuitions paid for private schooling.) The national average per-pupil spending for 2004 was approximately $9,000, according to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE; see www.ed.gov/about/overview/ fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#5).

Federal education policy, administered through the DOE since its creation in 1978 out of the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, has created mandated standards for curriculum, teacher certification, and implementation of accountability through testing in NCLB. Prior to NCLB, the federal government provided supplemental funding, primarily for districts with high poverty rates, and for special education services. Poverty service funding included Title I funds for supplemental educational enrichment services and the free and reduced lunch program. Special education funding resulted from federal court mandates and the subsequent passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1971. The federal government was also very involved in pushing local school districts to desegregate, using the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to initiate court action, threaten withholding of federal funding, and provide oversight of desegregation orders.

Calls for reform of public education in the 1980s and 1990s were highlighted by the 1983 A Nation at Risk report issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education and in the Goals 2000 report issued in 1991 by the National Governors Association. States responded with stricter standards for teacher certification, increased pay for teachers (particularly in Southern states), and experimentation with proficiency testing.

NCLB Of 2002

President George W. Bush campaigned for increased accountability of schools for student performance, in particular, the performance of students of color living in urban districts. His plan for accountability resulted in the creation and passage of NCLB. NCLB added new requirements to maintain eligibility for federal funding. These involved mandatory tests of students at different grade levels to measure proficiency in math, reading, and writing as well as subject area tests in science and social studies. NCLB requires public notification of the test results aggregated by individual school building. School districts are rated on a set of standards called Adequate Yearly Progress, which measures the degree of improvement of test scores over the prior year. Districts are also required to report student attendance rates, graduation rates, and incidence of violence. Schools deemed at risk receive additional federal funding to be used to improve student performance. If Adequate Yearly Progress scores do not improve during the following two years, the DOE can require the school district to reorganize or close the school or risk losing federal funding. States are required to align their curricula with testing standards as well as align teacher certification requirements with guidelines stipulated by the DOE.

Higher Education Policy

Higher education policy at the federal level is largely concerned with two areas: research funding and student financial aid. Federal student support is provided through the Pell Grant and Stafford loan programs, as well as through the guaranteed student loan program, in which banks provide education loans to students at lower interest rates and the federal government pays the difference in interest and guarantees payback of the loans. Recent developments in policy include the use of federal student loan eligibility as an enforcement tool to require colleges and universities to provide access to student records for military recruitment and to closely monitor adherence to visa requirements for foreign students. The federal government also stimulated expansion of two-year community colleges through the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Affirmative action policies implemented by higher education to increase enrollment of minorities and women have been gradually narrowed through Supreme Court decisions, beginning with Bakke v. California Board of Regents (1978), which excluded the use of quotas. In 2003, a pair of cases (Gratz v. Bollinger; Grutter v. Bollinger) challenging the admissions policies of the University of Michigan resulted in a 5–4 decision by the Supreme Court that banned the use of a point system to advantage students based on race but upheld the use of race as a factor in admissions to achieve diversity.

Bibliography:

Hochschild, Jennifer, and Nathan Scovronick. The American Dream and the Public Schools. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Long, Bridget Terry. “What Is Known about the Impact of Financial Aid? Implications for Policy.” NCPR working paper, National Center for Postsecondary Research, New York, 2008.
Reed, Douglas. On Equal Terms: The Constitutional Politics of Educational Opportunity. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.