Stimulating school reform: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the shifting federal role in education.

• Author: Superfine, Benjamin Michael

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. THE EDUCATIONAL GOVERNANCE LANDSCAPE A. The Growth of the Federal Role in Education B. The No Child Left Behind Act C. Federal Education Law "from the Capitol to the Classroom" III. THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT A. Key Provisions 1. Funds for Existing Federal Educational Programs 2. The State Fiscal Stabilization Fund B. Implementation of the ARRA Educational Provisions 1. ARRA Guidance for Distribution and Use of Funds 2. Informal Federal Communications 3. States' Responses to Federal Efforts to Push Reform 4. Distribution of RTTTF Money IV. EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ON THE REFORM STRATEGIES OF THE ARRA A. School Turnaround Policies B. Charter Schools C. Standards and Assessments D. The Educator Workforce and Linking Student and Teacher Data V. MOVING FROM THE ARRA TO THE REAUTHORIZATION OF NCLB A. Research, Politics, and the Stimulation of Educational Reform B. Recommendations for Reauthorizing NCLB VI. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) is primarily aimed at stimulating and stabilizing the American economy during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and reflects significantly new dimensions of federal action in the area of educational reform. (1) The ARRA devotes approximately one-eighth of its $787.2 billion total, or $97.4 billion, to education. (2) Of this $97.4 billion, $80.2 billion is devoted to K-12 public education. (3) While the ARRA is designed to keep school systems afloat in difficult financial times, (4) it is also aimed at fixing existing educational policy problems and sparking future educational reform efforts. (5) As such, the ARRA will frame the Obama administration's subsequent educational reform efforts, including the impending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). (6)

The ARRA provisions designed to spark legal and policy change represent a subtle but considerable expansion of the federal role that builds on NCLB and other recent educational reform efforts. In light of both political tradition and the belief that states and localities are best positioned to make decisions about education, the federal role in education historically has been small. (7) When the federal government has become deeply involved in education, it has focused primarily on civil rights issues and providing financial resources for the education of poor and minority students. (8) However, especially since the mid-1990s, the federal government increasingly has focused on student performance and sanctioning schools when students fail to demonstrate particular levels and types of performance. (9) The ARRA further expands the federal focus on student performance and contains an unprecedented emphasis at the federal level on spurring the development of particular state-level policies, especially affecting the organization of schools, which more directly targets the improvement of students' learning opportunities and achievement. In addition to strongly encouraging states to improve student learning standards and assessments, link student and teacher performance data, and develop teacher incentive systems based on such data, (10) the ARRA stresses specific school "turnaround" strategies and the implementation of robust charter school policies as the keys to large-scale educational reform. (11)

Given historical concerns about the expansion of the federal role in education, recent critiques of this expansion as specifically embodied by NCLB, and the extent to which the ARRA will likely frame NCLB's impending reauthorization, it is imperative to understand the ways in which the ARRA expands the federal role in education and the implications of this change for schools. Accordingly, this Article analyzes the educational provisions of the ARRA. In particular, it examines the educational reform provisions of the ARRA given the history of the federal role in education, the historical implementation of federal education laws, and the educational research on the substantive policies supported by the ARRA.

This Article argues that in addition to stabilizing financially beleaguered school systems, (12) the ARRA effectively draws on the significant political and financial strengths of the federal government to leverage educational reform. (13) Moreover, certain parts of the law are built to respond to important concerns about the historical ineffectiveness of the federal government in this area and directly respond to some of the most common and important critiques NCLB has faced. (14) However, building on the legal and policy foundation of NCLB, the ARRA continues the federal government's recent trend of identifying and pushing particular reform strategies without sufficient evidence or nuance at the federal level. (15) Additionally, the law was designed without adequate attention to the significant problems associated with the implementation of education laws "from the capitol to the classroom." (16) In this way, the ARRA reflects an overly simplistic approach to educational reform that has historically plagued federal involvement in this area. Given such problems, the ARRA may actually exacerbate existing educational inequities among schools in some respects. (17) As a result, the federal educational reform efforts embodied by the ARRA are unlikely to prove effective at ultimately boosting students' learning opportunities and outcomes at scale, or across a large number of schools. Based on this analysis, this Article suggests ways in which the federal role could be restructured during the impending NCLB reauthorization to take better advantage of federal strengths and minimize federal weaknesses in this area.

In order to analyze the ARRA and its implications on the federal role in education, this Article is divided into four primary parts. Part II provides an overview of educational governance in the U.S., including a historical overview of the growth of the federal role in education and the major difficulties that have traditionally faced the implementation of education law "from the capitol to the classroom." In addition to broadly fleshing out the historical background of the ARRA in order to frame the major issues reflected in the design and implementation of the Act, this Part includes a narrower discussion of NCLB, which articulates major policy problems to which the ARRA particularly responds. Part III discusses the major purposes and requirements of the provisions of the ARRA devoted to education and how these provisions have been implemented thus far. Part Iv examines the relevant educational research, particularly regarding standards and assessments, teacher quality, educational data systems, school turnaround models, and charter schools. Finally, Part V analyzes the ARRA in light of the history of the federal role in education and educational research and accordingly provides recommendations for the NCLB reauthorization process.

2. THE EDUCATIONAL GOVERNANCE LANDSCAPE

   Education in the United States has traditionally been considered a function of state and local governments and thus is very decentralized compared to most other industrialized nations. (18) For most of U.S. history, the federal role in education has been small, (19) and the "[n]otion[] of 'local control' over education[al] policy [has] occup[ied] an exalted place in American lore." (20) The states primarily possess the legal authority to govern education. While the U.S. Constitution does not mention education, every state constitution specifies at least some vague legal duty that a state has to provide its students with a system of public schooling. (21) For example, many state constitutions contain "education clauses" that require states to provide citizens with an "efficient" system of education. (22) The Supreme Court has further underscored that "[n]o single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools," (23) and its jurisprudence generally evinces the notion that states and local school boards are better positioned than other institutions to set educational policy. (24) Teachers have long been considered among the most important decision-makers in the educational policy process, as they have traditionally made decisions independently of much government oversight when they "close the classroom door." (25) Indeed, even though legal authority over education has technically rested with states, school boards and local communities have exercised much of the power to make educational decisions. (26) Still, especially in the second half of the twentieth century, this governance structure began to change considerably.

   1. The Growth of the Federal Role in Education

      Since the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954,27 the role of the federal government in education has grown dramatically. Federal involvement in education in the 1950s largely centered on civil rights issues. In Brown and the wave of cases that followed, federal courts found various instances of segregation in public schools unconstitutional. (28) In 1958, in the wake of Sputnik's launch, the U.S. Congress enacted the National Defense Education Act, which directed funds to localities

      in order to promote innovation in education, especially in the areas of science and foreign languages. (29) congress expanded its reach with the passage of the civil Rights Act of 1964, which articulated educational rights that apply to all students. (30) In 1965, Congress enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which has provided and continues to provide billions of dollars of grants for the compensatory education of economically disadvantaged students under programs such as Title I.31 The ESEA has historically served as the flagship federal education law. (32) Congress expanded its focus on civil rights with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in...