Skip to main content

Mobile Navigation

  • National
    • Policy
      • High Expectations
      • Quality Choices
      • Personalized Pathways
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Gadfly Newsletter
      • Flypaper Blog
      • Events
    • Scholars Program
  • Ohio
    • Policy
      • Priorities
      • Media & Testimony
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Ohio Education Gadfly Biweekly
      • Ohio Gadfly Daily
  • Charter Authorizing
    • Application
    • Sponsored Schools
    • Resources
    • Our Work in Dayton
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board
    • Staff
    • Career
Home
Home
Advancing Educational Excellence

Main Navigation

  • National
  • Ohio
  • Charter Authorizing
  • About

National Menu

  • Topics
    • Accountability & Testing
    • Career & Technical Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Curriculum & Instruction
    • ESSA
    • Evidence-Based Learning
    • Facilities
    • Governance
    • High Achievers
    • Personalized Learning
    • Private School Choice
    • School Finance
    • Standards
    • Teachers & School Leaders
  • Research
  • Commentary
    • Gadfly Newsletter
    • Flypaper Blog
    • Gadfly Podcast
    • Events
  • Scholars Program
Flypaper

To my friends on the Left and Right: Please stop polarizing the ESEA debate

Michael J. Petrilli
7.7.2015

It’s finally here: Our best chance to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act since its passage shortly after 9/11.  A whole generation of students has come and gone, yet our nation’s key education law remains the same. There’s absolutely no good reason to delay reauthorization any longer. To the contrary; it’s sorely overdue. And despite the heated rhetoric—from the civil rights groups on the Left to Heritage Action on the Right—the remaining areas of disagreement are small and mostly symbolic. It’s time for all of us to act like grownups and help get a recognizable version of the Alexander-Murray bill across the finish line. (At least into conference with the House!)

Why should conservatives support a bipartisan compromise bill like this? That’s easy: It’s sharply to the right of current law (ESEA circa 2001) and current policy (Arne Duncan’s “waivers”). It hands significant authority back to the states on all the issues that matter: the content of academic standards and related assessments, the design of school accountability systems, and interventions in low-performing schools. It scraps ESEA’s misguided “highly qualified teachers” provision and Duncan’s teacher evaluation mandate. And it holds the line on spending.

How about the Left? Civil rights groups and others should welcome its maintenance of annual testing; its continuing emphasis on the collection and dissemination of student achievement data disaggregated by key subgroups; and its requirement that states and districts take action to deal with chronically failing schools.

The issues now animating advocates, dreamers, and disrupters on both sides are more symbolic than substantive. Some conservatives want more school choice in the bill, yet most choice advocates themselves want to keep Uncle Sam at bay, understanding that he has a tendency to hug favored reforms to death. (See: teacher evaluations.) Some liberals want a fight to the death over accountability for high-performing schools that aren’t doing right by some demographics, yet a Fordham Institute analysis demonstrated that such schools are few and far between.

Above all: Do either conservatives or liberals have a realistic pathway to an ESEA bill that’s more to their liking? Do conservatives want to continue to live under a waiver policy that grants the U.S. Department of Education the authority to micromanage states’ annual tests, accountability systems, and teacher evaluation approaches? Do liberals want to continue to live with a law that is creating significant backlash to education reform, especially on the Left and particularly when it comes to testing?

To my friends on the Left and Right: If not this bill, then which? If not now, then when? Let’s turn the page on the No Child Left Behind era.

Policy Priority:
High Expectations
Topics:
ESSA

President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, a Distinguished Senior Fellow for…

View Full Bio

Sign Up to Receive Fordham Updates

We'll send you quality research, commentary, analysis, and news on the education issues you care about.
Thank you for signing up!
Please check your email to confirm the subscription.

Related Content

view
High Expectations

How much education is a public responsibility?

Chester E. Finn, Jr. 2.2.2023
NationalFlypaper
view
High Expectations

Will ESAs change America’s definition of “public education?”: An interview with Ashley Berner

Robert Pondiscio 2.2.2023
NationalFlypaper
view
High Expectations

Schools have been adding teachers and student support staff, even as they serve fewer students

Chad Aldeman 2.2.2023
NationalFlypaper
Fordham Logo

© 2020 The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Privacy Policy
Usage Agreement

National

1015 18th St NW, Suite 902 
Washington, DC 20036

202.223.5452

[email protected]

  • <
Ohio

P.O. Box 82291
Columbus, OH 43202

614.223.1580

[email protected]

Sponsorship

130 West Second Street, Suite 410
Dayton, Ohio 45402

937.227.3368

[email protected]