Recalibrate Federal ESEA Efforts, Says Leading Reform Group
CER Sets a Reformer’s Vision For Change in Federal Education Programs
CER Press Release
Washington, DC
July 18, 2013
With a final vote looming in the U.S. House of Representatives on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), The Center for Education Reform (CER) this afternoon said federal lawmakers need a New Vision for federal programs that both ensures accountability and respects state reform efforts.
In a policy perspective entitled “A Reformer’s Course of Action for The Next Generation of ESEA,” CER authors Jeanne Allen, Alison Consoletti, and Kara Kerwin argue that “it’s time for a real education reform perspective to guide the debate.”
The authors call on Congress to find a balance of incentive and consequence in renewing its commitment to K-12 education, something they say neither House nor Senate visions achieve.
While acknowledging that review of ESEA is “long overdue,” the authors contend that the public backlash created by the ongoing controversy over No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has only served to move reauthorization efforts into two camps – the local control camp which wants ESEA to provide “structure but few rules,” and the federal control camp, which desires “prescriptive federal spending” on programs, so that the money is “protected from people locally” who may have other ideas.
Rather than “tunnel vision… evenly distributed among ideologies and political parties,” CER president Allen and her co-authors vice presidents of research and external affairs Consoletti and Kerwin call for “a reformer’s vision” to guide the discussion, one that “unites the majorities of the two camps.”
