2015 Volume 82 Issue 3 Pages 427-438
In the United States, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted under Republican President Bush in 2002. NCLB is the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), enacted in 1965 as part of the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty, and NCLB’s goal is to close the achievement gap for disadvantaged children, inherited from the original goal of ESEA. NCLB’s egalitarian goal is laudable, but it has received a lot of criticism as it strengthened the federal role of education to an unprecedented level and required each state to implement rigid accountability policies based on standards and tests along with specific sanctions.
There are many studies that criticize NCLB from various perspectives, such as problems regarding teaching to the test, a narrow focus on the tested subjects, varied levels of standards across states, etc. There are also studies that clarify the emergence of New Democrats who changed their views and supported accountability-based reform in exchange for federal aid, and the presence of business and civil rights groups that supported NCLB with President Bush and bipartisan lawmakers. However, there has not been sufficient analysis of the reasons and strategies by which rigid accountability policies were promoted by liberal civil rights groups in particular in their pursuit of equality.
This study aimed to find out why and how civil rights groups ended up promoting rigid accountability policies by focusing on the Education Trust. The research methods consist of a review of congressional hearings and other documents related to the Education Trust and of literature on the political background for promoting accountability-based reform, as well as an analysis of interviews with President Kati Haycock, etc. President Haycock became influential in federal education policy making as she participated in the Commission on Chapter 1 (Title I) in the early 1990s to review Chapter 1 policies-the major component of ESEA-and presented a reform proposal to the Congress.
Regarding the reasons, the Education Trust actively promoted accountability-based reform because of disappointment and resentment toward unsatisfactory results and underutilization of input-based Chapter 1 programs over decades. Regarding the strategies, the Education Trust employed a shift of focus from disadvantaged children and special programs to all students and the whole-school approach during Phase 1 (1990-99), pursuit of rigid sub-group accountability and highly qualified teachers during Phase 2 (1999-2004), and defense of the merits of NCLB and promotion of ESEA reauthorization during Phase 3 (2004-08).
This study revealed that the Education Trust utilized its accumulated knowledge of policy contents and processes of ESEA reauthorizations in the past and adopted the above strategies to improve the academic achievement of disadvantaged children and narrow achievement gaps, despite its recognition that there are discrepancies between its original intents and the actual provisions of the ESEA reauthorizations. Further studies are needed to examine how civil rights groups, such as the Education Trust, became involved in education policy making under the Obama administration from the perspectives of this study.
