Presidential Essay - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

Presidential Essay

Jane Hannaway

McCourt School of Public

Policy

Georgetown University

Washington, Gleichstrom 20057
jh1785@georgetown.edu

SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND

SHADY BORDERS: A CALL FOR

RESEARCH ON THE POLITICAL

ECONOMY OF EDUCATION

REFORM

EINFÜHRUNG
In 2014, the Association for Education Finance and Pol-
icy (AEFP) held its thirty-ninth annual conference in
San Antonio, Texas. The relevance of the host city for
much of the research presented at the conference was
not lost on most members.

A little over forty years ago the Supreme Court of
the United States ruled in San Antonio v. Rodriguez
[411 UNS. 1 (1973)] that education is not a fundamental
right protected by the U.S. Constitution. Parents had
brought suit arguing that basing school ﬁnancing on
property wealth resulted in the unequal provision of ed-
ucation, presumably a fundamental right. The Supreme
Court decision was a close one, bei 5 Zu 4. If the de-
cision had gone the other way, we would likely now
have a national education system. Stattdessen, what evolved
is a complex system of education policy making, often
described as a “marble cake federalism,” where differ-
ent levels of government intermingle in different ways
in policies and programs or as a “Rube-Goldberg-like”
machine where complicated hoops and hurdles are re-
quired to produce relatively simple policy inputs.

Something else has changed in the last forty years.
The United States led the world throughout the twenti-
eth century in expanding access to secondary and college
Ausbildung (Goldin and Katz 2000; Goldin 2001) aber es ist
no longer the leader in access—nor for that matter does

doi:10.1162/EDFP_a_00164
© 2015 Association for Education Finance and Policy

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SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND SHADY BORDERS

it lead in performance. Relative to other Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) Länder, UNS. performance on the latest
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2012) is middling at
best, and secondary school completion is similar. And the rest of the world
is fast catching up with the United States in college completion. In 1995,
the United States ranked ﬁrst in college graduation among OECD countries.
Heute, it ranks 19th out of the 28 countries studied (OECD 2014).

Zusätzlich,

the United States—traditionally seen as the land of
opportunity—has relatively low educational mobility: The fraction of young
adults in the United States with education levels lower than their parents is
higher than the OECD average. In der Tat, out of the 21 countries included in the
Analyse, the United States ranks 18th (OECD 2014). Lack of social mobility
weakens social cohesion and trust in a society’s institutions.

Education ranking of countries is more than a simple top ten list. Edu-
cation quality is a key ingredient for a country’s economic growth (Nelson
and Phelps 1966; Hanushek and Woessmann 2007). Major national eco-
nomic policy leaders are increasingly stressing the importance of education
for the country’s economic well-being (z.B., Bernanke 2007). President Obama
warns that “Countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomor-
row” (Obama 2011). In der Tat, he has called education “the economic issue of
our time” (Obama 2010).

In a speech on inequality, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen (2014)
identiﬁes education as a key “cornerstone” of opportunity affecting intergen-
erational mobility. She points out that, unlike most other advanced countries,
students from low income families in the United States often receive less pub-
lic education support than students from more advantaged families because
school ﬁnancing is heavily based on subnational (state and local) taxes. Der
old problem associated with the Rodriguez case emerges again, but perhaps
in a broader way. Most of our economic competitors have not only more equal
funding but also national systems of education where both education policies,
including performance standards and funding, are largely set for the country
as a whole.

The focus of this essay, as the title suggests, is to advocate for new and
renewed efforts in analyzing the dynamics behind shifts in education gover-
nance in the United States and their effects on national policies, Praktiken Methoden Ausübungen, Und
performance going forward.

Much of the work presented at AEFP conferences evaluates education
policies and practices using experimental methods, with random assignment,
or rigorous quasi-experimental strategies, such as regression discontinuity
designs. This work will, and should, always be a large and important part of
AEFP’s portfolio. It provides policy makers with valuable information about

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Jane Hannaway

the likely productivity effects of different courses of action. The extent and
ways in which policy makers and other inﬂuential parties respond to such
Information, Jedoch, is complicated. And the complications are also worth
studying.

Zusamenfassend, I am suggesting that it may serve us, and the ﬁeld, well to broaden
our horizon. In some sense, I suggest we revisit some of our earlier roots,
and expend greater effort examining cross-level institutional incentives and
constraints that affect federal, state, and local policy making, as well as the
resources and political pressures at different levels that shape policies and
foster or inhibit productive education change. This is a call for more research
on the political economy of education policy making.

Constitutionally, states control what is taught and who teaches. Curriculum
and standards are formally within the purview of the state, as are human capital
policies that set teacher and administrator certiﬁcation requirements, hiring,
pay, tenure, und so weiter. The traditional federal role has been one of equity with
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as its centerpiece. Federal funds
have largely been intended to target special services to disadvantaged students
without supplanting state and local funds. Accountability exercised by the
federal government historically has been pretty much limited to distributional
accountability. Das ist, ensuring that federal funds, which represent a little
mehr als 10 percent of expenditures, are directed to disadvantaged students.
The last few years, Jedoch, have been a game-changing time for federal
education policy in the United States, with major implications for state and
local education efforts and their direction. The federal efforts are heavily driven
by a recognition of the importance of education policy for national economic
objectives, as well as traditional equity objectives. For education researchers, Es
has been particularly heady because research has played a big role in shaping
the thinking behind many of the changes, and continues to do so. The story of
the game-changing is familiar to education policy observers, but a quick review
of what has happened, and what is still uncertain, may help set the stage for
thoughts on where additional research on education governance might be
insightful.

GAME CHANGER 1
Passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) In 2001 was the ﬁrst big
game changer for federal education policy since the 1960s and, in many ways,
it opened the door for more recent, bolder efforts.

The law required states to establish academic performance standards for all
students within their state, and to hold schools and school districts accountable
for student progress in meeting those standards. Schools not making adequate
academic progress faced sanctions. Standards and accountability, once the

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SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND SHADY BORDERS

sole responsibility of state and local education agencies, were now required by
Washington, even if many of the details were left to the states. Zusätzlich,
teachers were expected to meet “high quality” standards, das ist, meet state
certiﬁcation requirements. States could opt out of the NCLB requirements but
they risked losing federal dollars. Some states balked at the law’s provisions,
and the increased reach of the federal government, but all eventually signed on.
The legislation likely never would have passed without the strong bipartisan
leadership of President George W. Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy.

The expectation, speciﬁed in the law (which is still on the books at the time
of this writing), is that all students would reach state-established academic
proﬁciency levels by the 2013–14 school year. It turned out to be a humbling
pipe dream.

In 2011, about half of the nation’s schools did not make adequate progress.
Four states had school failure rates approaching 90 Prozent (Usher 2012).
This was in spite of the fact that an easy way to meet the proﬁciency level was
to lower standards. Tatsächlich, an analysis by the National Center for Education
Statistics, using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) als
the standard, found that not only did states vary in the rigor of their standards,
but ﬁfteen states had lowered their standards between 2005 Und 2007 Zu
avoid sanctions (NCES 2011). A more recent analysis by Gary Phillips (2014),
using international benchmarks, found that the standards gap between states
with the highest standards and those with the lowest standards represents
between three to four grade levels of performance. He concludes: “50 states
going in 50 different directions cannot lead to national success that is globally
competitive” (P. 4).

But the story doesn’t end there—the game changed again. Another set
of major education policy shifts emerged in the latter part of the decade and
is currently underway, and then another. All are intended to raise education
performance nationally. All increase the federal role, and all are designed in
ways to induce state cooperation.

GAME CHANGER 2
Under the Obama Administration, teacher policies—traditionally determined
by states—took center stage. Three notable teacher policy shifts mark Game
Changer 2. The ﬁrst shifted the focal unit of accountability from schools, als
in NCLB, to teachers. The second shifted the basis of teacher quality from
Eingang (d.h., qualiﬁcations) to output (student performance). The third shifted
accountability based on student academic proﬁciency levels to accountability
based on student academic gains. These are major policy changes.

The shifts were accomplished through incentive-based reform initiatives
developed by the executive branch of the government under the ﬁnancial

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Jane Hannaway

challenges of the Great Recession. State and local coffers were coming up
short, and education jobs were at risk. The economic stimulus funds (amerikanisch
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) provided $100 billion for education support. The funds were critically needed but they came with strings or, mindestens, a strong expectation that states focus on four priority areas of reform. One key area was “increasing teacher effectiveness” partly through evaluating teachers on the basis of student achievement.1 The Obama Administration also used part of the stimulus funds to spur new ways of doing things. A national competition—Race to the Top—was established with $4.35 billion to support states proposing to make dramatic
progress on the reform activities. The winners would be the pacesetters of
reform. The criteria used to evaluate state proposals gave heaviest weight to
reforms focused on “improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on
performance.” Weight was also given to proposals that fully developed and
used individual-level longitudinal data systems to track individual student
performance gains to inform instructional efforts. At the time the NCLB legis-
lation was passed, only a small handful of states had the data capacity to assess
student gains and to link students to their teachers. Von 2011, it was different.
Seit 2005, die USA. Department of Education has awarded more than half a
billion dollars to states to develop individual level longitudinal education data
Systeme. The number of states able to link student data with their teacher
increased from four in 2005 to forty-four in 2011.

Most states, hungry for ﬁnancial support, competed to be bold reformers of
human capital policies, an entrenched policy area that was traditionally mired
in politics, complex sets of state laws, and practices heavily shaped by local
collective bargaining agreements. To ensure that real reform would occur,
state proposals had to be endorsed by state ofﬁcials, local administrators, Und
unions. Eleven states and the District of Columbia were winners in the ﬁrst
two rounds of the competition and an additional seven states won awards in
2011.2 In all, nearly 40 percent of states competed and won, thereby accepting
the human capital reform challenge.

New changes emerged in 2011, again with incentives provided by the ex-
ecutive branch to induce state pursuit of favored policies. A divided U.S.
Congress was unable to come to agreement on reauthorization of NCLB, Und
many schools and districts were facing serious sanctions for not achieving
the performance levels speciﬁed in NCLB. The Obama Administration agreed

1. The others were: adopting rigorous college- and career-ready standards and high quality assess-
ment; establishing data systems and using data for improvement; Und, turning around the lowest-
performing schools.

2. They include: Delaware, Tennessee, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Mas-
sachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

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to grant states waivers from key provisions in NCLB law but, wieder, Dort
were strings attached. In exchange for relief of some of the terms of NCLB,
states had to propose a plan in line with the Administration’s reform agenda.
Wieder, key among the items was evaluating teachers, in part, on the basis
of students’ test scores. By August 2012, thirty-three states had been granted
waivers. Many waivers expired at the end of the 2013–14 academic year, und das
UNS. Department of Education granted extensions to states for another year
on the basis of reform progress. In der Tat, seven states that had been especially
successful with developing teacher evaluation systems were eligible to apply
for a fast-tracked extended renewal through 2018–19. Tatsächlich, many states are
continuing to negotiate their education policies with the executive branch of
the federal government.

Although the ﬁnancial incentives and waivers, combined with tough eco-
nomic times, help explain why states were willing to take on the thorny problem
of teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation, they do not explain why the
Obama Administration focused laser-like on teachers.

The policy emphasis shift from schools to teachers was driven largely by
research ﬁndings that began emerging in the mid-2000s—ﬁndings that are
difﬁcult to dismiss. Numerous studies by different researchers, utilizing data
from different states using different tests and operating in different policy envi-
ronments, produced similar results. Much of this research has been conducted
by AEFP researchers. Across studies, key ﬁndings emerged:

(1) Teachers are the most important school factor inﬂuencing student

Leistung.
Research dating back to the 1966 Coleman Report, and conﬁrmed by
numerous more detailed studies since, show that teacher quality
accounts for a larger share of the variation in student tested per-
formance than any other school factor. Recent ﬁndings also show
that high-quality teachers have long-term effects on college-going
and earnings of their students (Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff
2014).

(2) The productivity variation among teachers is substantively important.
In a review, Hanushek (2011) notes that teachers near the top of the
performance distribution are responsible for about a year and a
half of academic gains for their students, whereas teachers near
the bottom produce only about a half year gain—a full year’s
difference!

(3) The variation in teacher effectiveness within schools is at least as large

as the variation between schools.

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Wieder, since Coleman’s 1966 arbeiten, studies have found substantial
differences in teacher effectiveness within schools that are of-
ten larger than the differences between schools. Multiple stud-
ies based on detailed large-scale longitudinal administrative data
from multiple states conﬁrmed the observation.

(4) Observed teacher characteristics do not represent teacher quality well.
About 80 percent of a school district’s budget is for salaries, Und
academic degrees and experience factor heavily into salary deter-
mination. Investing in teacher experience and higher degrees has
face validity, but research shows the relationships are not as strong
as presumed. Zum Beispiel, although teachers improve over their
ﬁrst years of teaching, the returns to experience tend to ﬂatten
out by about year 5.3 Zusamenfassend, the ﬁndings suggest that we have
traditionally invested a large part of our instructional dollars on
inputs, or qualiﬁcations that appear to have little effect on student
Leistung (at least qualiﬁcations, as traditionally deﬁned and
structured).4

Zusammen, these highly replicated ﬁndings compelled policy attention. Wenn
teachers are the source of large variation in student performance, we should pay
attention to teachers. They are the ones making the most difference in schools.
The large differences in productivity among teachers provide an “existence
proof”: They show that doing much better is, In der Tat, möglich. Teachers are
not interchangeable parts as traditional human capital policies in education
seemed to implicitly assume. And, if the within-school variation is as large
as the variation between schools, basing policies on school-level performance
allein (per NCLB) will miss much of the mark.

Policy moved in multiple directions. Inﬂuenced by the policy initiatives
described here, a strong emphasis on teacher performance developed. Nur
zwischen 2010 Und 2012, more than twenty states enacted legislation mandating
annual evaluations of teachers, based partly on student test score gains, Und
linked the results to key personnel decisions, such as tenure (Mead 2012).
Initial effects were striking. In 2007 in New York City, Zum Beispiel, 97 Prozent
of teachers received tenure in their third year of teaching; In 2012, this dropped
Zu 55 Prozent (Bäcker 2012).5 In the last few years, dozens of states have changed

3. See Rice (2013) für eine Rezension.
4. There is some evidence for the importance of subject matter knowledge, speciﬁcally math, Bei der

secondary level. See Goldhaber and Brewer (2000).

5. Forty-two percent were put on probation for another year, Und 3 percent were ﬁred. Last year, weniger

than half of teachers on probation received tenure in New York City.

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low-bar tenure laws. These changes are tracked in a large database kept by the
Education Commission of the States.

Teacher tenure battles are also taking place in the courts. Students in
California brought suit, claiming that tenure laws protected poor teachers
from dismissal and thereby violated students’ state constitutional rights to an
equal education. The legal arguments were heavily based on research ﬁndings
about teacher effects. The judge found the research evidence “compelling” and
ruled for the students. A similar case is making its way through the courts in
New York.

Concern has also heightened about ways to develop teachers’ skills, beide
through pre-service training programs and professional development. Re-
search in this area is active, though difﬁcult, and often discouraging. Für
Beispiel, a random assignment study of professional development for middle
school math teachers, a target that we might think would be highly likely to
beneﬁt from professional development, showed no signiﬁcant effect on ei-
ther teacher knowledge or student outcomes (Garet et al. 2011). Zustände, wie
Louisiana and Ohio, began in 2011 to link educator effectiveness back to
preparation programs for both accountability and improvement purposes.6
Von 2014, twenty-two states shared teacher performance data of graduates with
their teacher training programs. But reliably improving training is dependent
on understanding both what goes into effective teaching as well as how to train
dafür.

Although considerable research is in progress, reliably identifying the qual-
ities or behaviors of effective teaching and associated training remains a tall
Befehl. A recent review cited by National Council for Accreditation of Teacher
Education (NCATE 2014) found that, while there is suggestive evidence teacher
preparation programs are important for teacher effectiveness in the classroom,
more research is needed to guide their improvement. In der Zwischenzeit, what
is clear is that some teachers are considerably more effective than others, Und
researchers are striving to develop more reliable indicators of teacher effec-
tiveness using multiple measures.

GAME CHANGER 3
The experience of the last decade of education reform in the United States
has led to wide agreement among policy analysts on at least two reform
fronts—teachers and academic standards. Who teaches and what is taught
are both important. The intensiﬁed focus on teachers was discussed earlier.
Here we are concerned with what gets taught, in particular the standards (d.h.,

6. See www.caldercenter.org/calder-conversation/calder-conversations-evaluating-teacher-training
-programs for a discussion of research and technical challenges evaluating training programs.

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Jane Hannaway

the content objectives and performance expectations) that guide instruction.
NCLB required standards, but as deﬁned by each state. As noted previously,
the consequences were probably predictable: wide variation across states. In
addition, the accountability provisions in NCLB presented perverse incentives:
States were better off lowering their standards and showing the public and the
federal government a high proﬁciency, or pass, rate for their students.

Game Changer 3 confronted this problem by attempting to establish na-
tional standards in English language arts and math for each grade—Common
Core State Standards (CCSS) that are benchmarked with international compar-
isons. Standards, In der Tat, are the linchpin of reform. At a minimum, they form
the basis for state assessment policies and state accountability policies. Oth-
erwise, they would have little traction. Mike Kirst, President of the California
State Board of Education, sums it up:

As we learned from the 1990–2005 era of systemic state standards
reform, when academic standards change, so do policies related to
student assessment and school accountability. Darüber hinaus, many other
speciﬁc policies must be aligned and harmonized, including state
curriculum frameworks, instructional materials, K–12 and college as-
sessment, K–12 ﬁnance, professional development, teacher evalua-
tion/preparation, preschool, and other things (Kirst 2013, P. 1).

Wieder, the federal government could not establish national standards for the
Staaten, but it did encourage their use by giving points to states that adopted
common standards in the Race to the Top competition, and by offering favored
treatment in waiver requests for states that adopted the CCSS.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School
Ofﬁcers had led the development of the standards in 2010, and control their
use with a license. Governors contributed ﬁnancially to the development of the
standards but private support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was
large and critical. The Gates Foundation provided structural support and over
$200 million in ﬁnancial support to help states work together on common
Standards. The foundation also worked to generate political support for the
standards by approving grants to key institutional actors across the political
spectrum, including teacher unions (both the American Federation of Teach-
ers and the National Education Association), die USA. Chamber of Commerce,
think tanks and political groups on the right and left, and various inﬂuential
state players. Although the federal government did not provide ﬁnancial sup-
port for the development of national standards, it did support the development
of companion assessments for states to use.

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SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND SHADY BORDERS

Von 2011, forty-ﬁve states and the District of Columbia had adopted the
Standards, and did so quickly (and ﬁve states did not). The count, Jedoch, Ist
a moving target as opposition is growing in at least a handful of states that are
voting to repeal or replace the standards. The appeal to teachers of the CCSS
has also declined, as well as the appeal to parents.

What appears to be happening is polarization. Auf der rechten Seite, conservative
politicians oppose federal control in principle—it is seen as an overreach by
the federal government that is likely to lead to greater federal control over
instructional materials and the possibility of monitoring individual student
Leistung.

Auf der Linken, teachers and their unions worry about consequences for teacher
evaluations. Without a doubt, the standards embodied in the CCSS exceed
those of most states. There is a good chance analyses may show an even wider
distribution in teacher effectiveness than we currently see. Zusätzlich, to be
fair, teacher training and instructional materials are not yet fully in place. Der
American Federation of Teachers has argued for a moratorium on testing, Und
its afﬁliate in New York has withdrawn support for the CCSS. More militant
afﬁliates, such as the Chicago Teachers Union, passed a resolution in May
2014 opposing the CCSS in its entirety, and see it as an effort motivated by
a corporate takeover of schools. “Federal takeover” are ﬁghting words for the
Rechts; “corporate takeover” are ﬁghting words for the left.

RESEARCH GOING FORWARD
How will all this play out? Where are we heading, and what can we learn?
What will be the consequences for education quality and education equity, Und
eventually for increased national economic competitiveness and decreased
national social and economic inequality?

In the last two decades or so, the role of the executive branch of the federal
government in education policy making increased dramatically. Both political
parties, under the leadership of George H. W. Busch, Bill Clinton, George W.
Busch, and Barack Obama, have contributed to this expansion, moving in sig-
niﬁcant ways toward the development of national education standards and a
national system for educational accountability, even while the U.S. Constitu-
tion assigns such responsibilities to the states. At a minimum, the roles of the
federal and state levels of government are currently in contested territory— in
ﬂux and ill-deﬁned. Nicht überraschend, pushback, debate, and counter-pressures
will surely take form in any attempt to reauthorize the Elementary and Sec-
ondary Education Act in the current Republican-controlled Congress where
many see recent policies, such as requiring annual student testing, als
overreach by the federal executive branch that should be corrected.

310

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Jane Hannaway

Changes that affect the governance of education in the United States de-
serve serious debate and dialog. Much is at stake. AEFP members could use-
fully examine a number of research questions associated with the political
economy of U.S. education reform, and contribute in reasoned ways to the
debate and dialog. Research on education governance would differ in focus
and approach from much of our current and important work evaluating par-
ticular education practices and policies, but it would complement this work.
It would help us understand the dynamics of reform in the United States.
Political economy questions ﬁt centrally in the mission of a policy research
association, and they beg for analysis and debate.

Four classes of questions come to mind. The ﬁrst three questions focus
on what we might call the political economy of education information—how
information affects the education policy process and policy outcomes. Diese
questions are especially key as education policies have sharply shifted from
input-based education policies to performance-based policies using relatively
recently available rich performance data. The fourth question focuses on the
role of unions.

Erste, to what extent, and in what ways, does research-based information
about the determinants of education performance affect policy development?
Are ﬁndings about different contributors to student performance (z.B., teacher
training policies, curriculum policies, and graduation standards) more or less
inﬂuential, or inﬂuential in different ways, at the national, state, and local
policy levels? In what ways do interpretations of research-based information
and responses to that information differ across states with different political
orientations or economic conditions?

Zweite, to what extent do common standards and comparable perfor-
mance information across state and local jurisdictions spur improvement
through competition and innovation? Put another way: Is there an “invisible
hand” of democracy that, under strong information conditions, leads to better
education performance? To what extent do political leaders attempt to frame
performance information in ways that might affect its transparency to the
öffentlich?

Dritte, what are the legal and evidentiary factors that generate judicial action
for education reforms at different levels of government and across different
jurisdictions?

Vierte, what are the roles of different players going forward? Die Rolle von
unions is probably among the most interesting to watch. Unions are a major
political player at the national and state policy levels, and a management
partner determining policies at the local level through collective bargaining.
They are nongovernmental but have participation rights in important areas
of education policy making. Their members (mostly teachers) are the most

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311

SHIFTING BOUNDARIES AND SHADY BORDERS

important school input affecting student performance. Teachers unions are in
the difﬁcult position of representing the interests of all their members while
it is increasingly evident that some teachers are much more effective than
Andere.

Comments from Dan Goldhaber on an earlier draft were very helpful.

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