January 23, 2015

The Burden of Proof in Federal Education Policy

By Bellwether

Share this article

Are states entitled to federal education money? Lamar Alexander, the Republican Chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, seems to think so. His draft bill to reauthorize the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act would entitle states with $14.9 billion a year federal dollars in exchange for…not much.
For the last 50 years, since the first federal K-12 education dollars began flowing to states, states had to ensure federal money was being spent on poor students and that they weren’t using federal investments as a replacement for state or local funding. Since the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, states have also had to measure and do something about student learning results.
Alexander would end this quid pro quo relationship. Instead of states having to comply with federal rules in order to get federal money, Alexander’s bill would require the U.S. Secretary of Education to prove states didn’t deserve federal money. Here’s the key provision:

The Secretary shall…deem a State plan as approved within 45 days of its submission unless the Secretary presents a body of substantial, high-quality education research that clearly demonstrates that the State’s plan does not meet the requirements of this section and is likely to be ineffective or is inappropriate for its intended purposes.

Not only would it have the U.S. Secretary of Education acting like a time-constrained prosecutor, but the bill is sprinkled with at least 16 50 other ways to limit federal oversight over federal money.
Alexander would argue he’s relying on transparency as his tool to hold states accountable. But even those provisions are weak. A transparency strategy relies on providing easy access to comparable information, but Alexander’s bill includes so many carve-outs and limitations that we’d likely get data that wasn’t comparable across schools or districts, let alone states.
Even more importantly, transparency alone isn’t sufficient as a tool to boost educational outcomes. Policymakers have relied on transparency over and over again as their preferred accountability lever, but information alone just doesn’t have the same effect as information plus action.
When Ronald Reagan was president, he was fond of saying “trust, but verify.” Today Lamar Alexander has dropped the “verify” part and seems content doling out $15 billion to states on “trust” alone.

More from this topic

Processing...
Thank you! Your subscription has been confirmed. You'll hear from us soon.
ErrorHere