The second term: K-12 and the Obama administration by Bryan Mann

This is the first part of a three-part series that discusses educational policy issues that the Obama Administration encountered in its first term. The series will also predict some of the policy conversations that will occur during the final four years of Obama’s presidency. This part of the series will discuss K-12 education. Part two of the series, a breakdown of the Obama Administration’s higher education policy and emphasis areas, can be found here[1]. Part three of the series, which makes predictions about Obama’s next term, can be found here[2].

 U.S. Federal K-12 Policy Since 2008

In September of 2008 during the United States presidential campaign, Barack Obama delivered a speech in Ohio that highlighted some of his viewpoints about public education[3]. He explained to the enthusiastic audience that he hoped for a nation of inspired teachers and students, and he highlighted fears that a testing culture created by the policies of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) had caused poor teaching and learning practices throughout the United States. In the speech, Obama said he agreed with NCLB’s intent of raising standards, but said he felt the testing practices and lack of federal resources caused NCLB to stumble. He offered solutions that included more educational funding, teacher recruiting, and raising standards. He also, subtly and conveniently, mentioned Arne Duncan, whom he hailed as a man responsible for drastically improving the Chicago public school system. While only a general overview of Obama’s campaign as a whole, the speech displayed some of the major educational issues Obama recognized as he ran for President.

Politically, the speech underscored the major K-12 challenges of his administration: to increase national student performance while sidestepping the difficulties the NCLB-era caused. Procedurally, the speech referenced Duncan, the man who had success with raising standards in Chicago and would later become Obama’s Secretary of Education. Obama’s initial educational intentions were to implement initiatives related to the unpopular standards ideology, while still placating teachers whose unions were typically among core constituents of his Democratic party. With this in consideration, the upcoming sections of this article will look back at which K-12 educational issues Obama attempted to address and how his administration actually addressed them.

Major Election Issues: NCLB/ESEA, the Fiscal Crisis, and More

The most blatant educational issues Obama discussed during his campaign were the negative consequences of NCLB. At its most basic level, NCLB was (and still is) an updated version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965[4], which began with the intent to close the educational achievement gap between students of different demographic groups in the United States. As a new version of ESEA, NCLB[5] came during the presidency of George W. Bush and called for accountability through state assessments on all students from 3rd to 8th grade, requiring schools to meet “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) so that the government could monitor and measure the testing performance of every public school in the country. There were additional mandates that included items that related to the process of teacher qualification and development.

The main contentions to NCLB were that it included unrealistic expectations and inadequate funding. Furthermore, opponents felt it caused teachers to, as Obama stated in the aforementioned speech, spend the whole year teaching students “to fill in a few bubbles on a standardized test.” At the onset of NCLB, failing to meet the demands of the law would result in funding penalties and even closures. The law also stipulated that every student needed to be proficient in math and reading by 2014[6]. While disagreements with the law have evolved over time, current contentions are still relevant, especially in teacher unions, as the National Education Association (NEA) continually expresses disapproval[7].

The second issue that culminated prior to Obama’s election in 2008 was the major financial crisis. Late in 2008, the economic meltdown initially affected the private sector and eventually impacted public funding. Since public funding declined, educational budgets throughout the country took a major hit. Some of the impacts of these threats have persisted, as school districts and municipalities are still experiencing many funding shortfalls[8]. While the nation’s political actors continue to argue issues like tax increases and debt ceilings, it has become clear that the financial issues with education are not going away soon.

Finally, there were several additional issues that came into play as Obama was inaugurated in 2009. These include, but are not limited to: the expansion of charter schools and other schools of choice, continual discrepancies between school districts and local unions, concern about international educational rankings[9], and changes in population demographics. Overall, it was clear that President Obama, as well as newly appointed Secretary of Education Duncan, had a slew of complex issues to navigate. Their response, as shown in the next section, was at times to innovate, at times to sidestep, and at times to ignore.

 First Term Responses

As stated earlier, the Obama administration hoped to accomplish its goal of enacting standards-based educational reform, while doing so with limited federal resources and the general disdain of national standards that NCLB caused.  To accomplish this goal, the Department of Education implemented an early policy initiative entitled “Race to the Top[10].” The competitive grant program came from federal stimulus money and asked states to submit an application that showed their educational reform efforts. This meant that while the federal government had specific reform goals that included changing standard and assessment procedures, using more data, and creating and sustaining successful charter schools, it pushed the onus on the states to meet the goals[11]. The federal government did not impose directives; rather, it expressed its general educational and organizational goals and burdened states to create their own plans to meet these goals. Additionally, the Race to the Top process made the reform cheaper for the federal government because it only paid the winners of the grant. Not every state won the money, but the initiative induced all but five states to adopt common core national standards[12] and the majority of the states enacted some version of the federal educational reform agenda.

In addition to funding educational reform through a variety of competitive grant programs, Duncan’s department had to combat the leftover legal effects that NCLB left behind. As stated earlier, original NCLB policy called for a great deal of testing and accountability, as well as a massive national goal of universal proficiency in math and reading by 2014. Based on the NCLB measures, teachers unions and school districts feared the consequences of not realizing its goals, looking for the federal government to respond. However, instead of going through the messy process of changing the entire law, the Obama administration has created “ESEA Flexibility[13].” In a letter[14] to school leaders, Duncan justified the power of the flexibility waiver, citing the success of Race to the Top and a legal loophole that allowed him to essentially grant states amnesty from NCLB regulations for at least 2013-2014.

While reform, standards, and grants seemed to be the main concern about K-12 education in the Obama administration’s first term, there were interesting, non-traditional stances the White House took (or did not take) in other areas of educational policy. For example, Duncan did not take any notable stances[15] in the Chicago teacher’s strike, even though, as mentioned earlier, teacher unions are typically a stronghold in the Democratic base. Additionally, the Obama administration has been favorable of charter school reform, which the Clinton presidency also supported, but teacher unions have not. Thus, there has been some strain to the once strong alliance[16].  Overall, the two examples show that the Democrats new stances on educational policy are shifting and their constituency may be changing.