Federalism and Inequality in Education: What Can History Tell Us?

Abstract

This chapter assesses the history of government efforts in the United States to enhance opportunity in education and to suggest lessons from the past. We focus primarily on federal policy, keeping in mind that solutions must depend upon successfully blending the resources and prerogatives of the federal government, the states, and local school districts. This chapter takes a chronological look, starting at free public education's onset to provide a foundation for the problems of inequality we face today. It then moves through the expanding federal role in the post-World War II years, followed by the battles over desegregation and the focus on providing resources to disadvantaged students. It then discusses standards-based reform, with a focus on how we arrived at the No Child Left Behind law and the issues surrounding the Common Core. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which targets impoverished students, is reviewed in detail. The lack of connection between Title I assignments and family income level, as well as lack of connection between Title I assignment and performance on the National Assessment of Academic Progress (NAEP), renders research results inconclusive in judging Title I's effects, but given that NAEP does show increasing average scores for Black and Hispanic students as well as declining gaps between those groups and White students, the evidence is suffi cient that the program should be continued and improved. The chapter concludes by drawing some generalizations about the federalist governance system and its relation to educational equity and offers suggestions on ways to move forward, including changes regarding Title I and the federal role in education.

History of Testing in the United States: PK–12 Education

“…For example, the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional and called on federal officials and governors to eliminate racial discrimination in schools. In the ongoing debates about desegregation, the results of student tests often were used to document the disadvantages that African American students faced (Kaestle 2016;Patterson 2001). And three years later the Soviet launch of Sputnik raised questions about the academic quality of American education and led to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which provided funds for foreign languages, mathematics, and science instruction at all levels of schooling, as well as federal research funding and assistance for state statistics (ravitch 1983; Urban 2010).…”

“…Senator robert Kennedy (D-MA), however, insisted that ESEA programs be evaluated for their effectiveness. Unfortunately, those assessments were not routinely or rigorously carried out (Kaestle 2016;Vinovskis 2005).…”

Together and Alone? The Challenge of Talking about Racism on Campus

“…More than sixty years after Brown, our public schools are more segregated today than they were in 1980. 3 Nationwide, nearly 75 percent of Black students today attend so-called majority-minority schools, and 38 percent attend schools with student bodies that are 10 percent or less White. Similarly, approximately 80 percent of Latinx youth attend schools where students of color are in the majority, and more than 40 percent attend schools where the White population is less than 10 percent of the student body.…”

Thirteenth AnnualBrownLecture in Education Research: Public Education and the Social Contract: Restoring the Promise in an Age of Diversity and Division

“…As the postwar baby boom tested the ability of states to manage overcrowded facilities, entrenched norms of local control softened—at least enough to accept federal aid. President Johnson—a master statesman and political strategist—made school aid a centerpiece of the Great Society Programs, not by using the defense rationale as Lincoln and Eisenhower had done but instead under the umbrella of the War on Poverty (Kaestle, 2016; Wolfensberger, 2005). Appealing to the nation’s sense of fairness and shame during a period of national mourning, Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).…”

“…Even without a constitutional or even federal statutory right to education, the decentralized U.S. educational framework served the nation well through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Several historians of education have adroitly chronicled the common school movement, highlighting the early move to local public funding, high investments relative to the nation’s economic prosperity, an emphasis on core curricula, and broad access to working class and poor students—except Blacks (Black & Sokoloff, 2006; Gamson, 2007; Goldin & Katz, 2008; Kaestle, 2016; Persky, 2015). These curricular and financing innovations were achieved before matters of access to quality education became contested terrain.…”