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Future Policy Directions for Congress inEnsuring Equality of Opportunity: TowardImproved Incentives, Targeting, andEnforcementElizabeth DeBray a & Ann Elizabeth Blankenship aa University of GeorgiaPublished online: 31 Jan 2013.

To cite this article: Elizabeth DeBray & Ann Elizabeth Blankenship (2013) Future Policy Directionsfor Congress in Ensuring Equality of Opportunity: Toward Improved Incentives, Targeting, andEnforcement, Peabody Journal of Education, 88:1, 22-36, DOI: 10.1080/0161956X.2013.752627

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PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 88: 22–36, 2013Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0161-956X print / 1532-7930 onlineDOI: 10.1080/0161956X.2013.752627

Future Policy Directions for Congress in Ensuring Equalityof Opportunity: Toward Improved Incentives, Targeting,

and Enforcement

Elizabeth DeBray and Ann Elizabeth BlankenshipUniversity of Georgia

Congress’s role in defining and promoting equality of educational opportunity has evolved over thepast 55 years since Brown v. Board of Education. Most recently, all three branches of the federalgovernment have focused more on equality of educational opportunity for individual students ratherthan for protected classes. In this article, the authors combine two different frameworks to assessCongress’s evolving role in ensuring equality of educational opportunity for all students—particularlygiven the new political and economic realities facing the nation. The first is federalism; the second ispolicy instruments for advancing varied goals in education, which the authors use to examine specificpolicy domains where Congress might increase its impact on equality of educational opportunity.These domains are concerned with “incentivizing equity” through competitive grants designed toreduce racial and socioeconomic inequality, improving existing categorical grant programs to makethem more targeted and efficient, and strengthening enforcement of existing policies and programs.Throughout, the authors consider how recent research about equality of best be brought to bear oncongressional priorities. In conclusion, they discuss the political realities facing Congress in 2012and beyond, including partisanship and the prospect of cuts to pre-K-12 education spending.

INTRODUCTION

Although most every citizen and policymaker would agree that the concept of equality of op-portunity should be central to congressional debates about education policy, there is increasinglyless consensus, both among the broader public and within Congress itself, about the meaning ofthat concept. Over the past 55 years or so, equality of opportunity has been defined variouslyas racial desegregation, as access to more equal resources, and, increasingly, as implementa-tion of effective programs and/or equality of outcomes in student achievement. How equalityof educational opportunity has been conceptualized has varied depending upon the stakeholder,time period, and social and political context. The underlying rationale for federal involvement,however, persists: that “in a national society that prides itself on providing opportunities for all,education is a prerequisite for access to jobs and for participation in major social and political

Correspondence should be sent to Elizabeth DeBray, Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy, 325 River’sCrossing, 850 College Station Road, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: edebray@uga.edu

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CONGRESS AND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 23

institutions” (Levin, 1982, p. 444), and that too often, states have lacked either the capacity orthe willingness to address disparities in educational opportunities on their own.

Congress’s position has been in constant flux since the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision inBrown v. Board of Education, often falling subject to the ever-evolving political agendas of itsmembers and to the influence of the judicial and executive branches. From its decision in Brownuntil the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court pushed desegregation, requiring that both states andCongress take active measures to promote racial desegregation efforts. During this period, withthe strong support of the executive branch, Congress passed some of the most significant pieces ofeducation legislation in the area of equality of educational opportunity, including the Elementaryand Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the HigherEducation Act of 1965, and the Education of All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EAHCA).Congress’s role in defining and promoting equality of educational opportunity developed overtime and was reflected in its policies. The compensatory policies of the ESEA of 1965, forexample, embodied what Rosemary Salomone (1982) called a “more is equal” conception ofequality of opportunity, whereas the EAHCA, the protection of students with disabilities as agroup, embodied what she termed “a purer conception of equity” (p. 422).

More recently, all three branches have focused more on equality of educational opportunityfor individual students than for protected classes. The Supreme Court’s decision in ParentsInvolved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (PICS; 2007) and its subsequentrefusal to hear race-based school districting cases both indicate that the Court is no longerinterested in addressing the issue of racial desegregation in public schools. In his opinion forthe majority, Justice Roberts argued, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is tostop discriminating on the basis of race” (PICS, 2007, p. 748). With the Supreme Court takinga back seat on the issue of educational opportunity, particularly with regards to race, Congressand the executive branch have, since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001,focused on improving student achievement by focusing on systems of standards and tests as wellas accountability for teachers and administrators.

With the Obama administration’s introduction of the Race to the Top (RTTT) competitivegrant program and the provision of waivers to NCLB compliance, the executive branch hasdemonstrated its growing power. That being said, with the reauthorization of the ESEA stillpending, important questions still linger about the federal role: How does the growing powerof the executive branch affect Congress’s ability to address equality of educational opportunity?Will Congress continue its focus on test-based accountability via the ESEA as its primary toolfor tackling inequality, or should it introduce new strategies? What are the implications of theObama administration’s focus on competitive grants for other equity-based strategies?

In this article, we combine two different frameworks from policy analysis to assess Congress’sevolving role in ensuring equality of educational opportunity for all students—particularly giventhe new political and economic realities facing the nation. The first is a federalism framework,particularly as it pertains to the separation of powers between the branches of the federal gov-ernment. We attribute much of the change in Congress’s role in education reform to the evolvinginfluences of the Supreme Court and the executive branch, particularly in issues involving edu-cation and equality of opportunity, as well as to dramatic shifts in the platforms of both politicalparties with regards to education policy (DeBray & Houck, 2011).

In the second half of this article we draw on frameworks from political science about pol-icy instruments for advancing varied goals in education (Manna & Wallner, 2011; McDonnell

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24 E. DEBRAY AND A. E. BLANKENSHIP

& Elmore, 1987) to examine areas where Congress might increase its impact on equality ofeducational opportunity. Some such examples include incentivizing equity, improving existingcategorical grant programs to make them more targeted and efficient, and strengthening en-forcement of existing policies. Throughout, we consider how recent research about equality ofopportunity might best be brought to bear on congressional decision making in education. In theconcluding section, we discuss the political realities facing Congress in 2012 and beyond.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF CONGRESS: FROM GROUP-ORIENTEDEQUITY POLICIES TO STANDARDS-BASED REFORM

As acknowledged by the Court in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973),the U.S. Constitution makes no provision for education. Therefore, under the Tenth Amendment,the power to control public education historically has been reserved for the states. Since thefirst public schools began operating in the mid-19th century, education has been regarded as alocal responsibility. It was not until 1954, with the Court’s decision in Brown, that the federalgovernment’s involvement in public education became significant. Since then, local control overeducation has slowly eroded, usurped by greater federal and state power (Boyce, 2012).

In the 1960s and 1970s, federal education policy focused predominantly on nationwide ed-ucation problems that states either could not or would not address such as the education ofstudents with disabilities through the EAHCA in 1975, the prohibition of race-based discrim-ination through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Pell Grants that expanded access to highereducation for millions of students (Barone & DeBray, 2011). In 1965, with the passage of ESEA,Congress made its first major foray into elementary and secondary schools by committing special-purpose aid to be targeted to economically disadvantaged students. For the first time, rather thanoffering schools unrestricted aid, Congress tied federal aid to specific performance. In particular,under the ESEA, federal assistance was targeted “to local educational agencies serving areas withconcentrations of children from low-income families” (ESEA, 1965).

The Reagan administration years witnessed a retreat from commitments to the categoricalprograms of the ESEA, as they were block-granted to the states via the Omnibus Budget Rec-onciliation Act of 1981. There were fiscal losses in real dollar terms to Title I (block-granted asChapter I). A Nation at Risk (1983), however, set the stage for standards-based reforms in thestates. Led at first by a group of southern governors, states subsequently led reforms in the 1980sand 1990s aimed at increasing academic requirements that were justified by equating equity withexcellence (McDermott, 2011).

With the help of a Democratic majority in Congress, President Clinton passed two piecesof education legislation—Goals 2000 and the Improving America’s Schools Act. Goals 2000promoted accountability, standards, and assessment. Clinton was able to garner strong popularsupport for school reform efforts, including charter schools, high standards, and accountability fortest results, by linking such policies to economic growth (McGuinn, 2005). Although Goals 2000and Improving America’s Schools Act did not mandate state performance like later legislativereforms, they showed a new commitment to improve the academic achievement of all studentsand schools, not just particular groups of protected students.

Despite a history of disagreement between the Democrats and Republicans over the appropriatelevel of federal control in education—including strong opposition to many categorical programs

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CONGRESS AND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 25

from the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations—the parties were able to engage in bipartisannegotiations over education reform from the 1970s through the 1990s. The positions of bothparties moved toward the center on educational reform, meeting in the middle at standards andaccountability. This spirit of negotiation and federal activism led to a rather seamless passageof NCLB, the 2001 reauthorization of the ESEA. Many conservative Republicans violated theircore ideologies to support the bill—that is, voted for NCLB despite its expansion of control overthe affairs of local schools; it may thus be viewed as an example of these same Republicans’partisan loyalty to President Bush during a period of national turbulence in the aftermath of 9/11(DeBray, 2006).

The parties have become more ideologically cohesive in the area of education policy as bothDemocrats and Republicans have moved away from their traditional values. The DemocraticParty, as its membership became more centrist, moved away from more traditional “equity”policies toward a more general governance of student achievement, specifically via testing andaccountability. Similarly, Republicans’ values have been challenged by what might be called a“federalist dilemma” (Kincaid, 2001, p. 32): to pursue federal educational reform, Republicanshave had to abandon in part their traditional ideological principles of local control and smallfederal government. With regards to education policy, Congress is stronger than ever becausethe two parties have been working toward similar goals, what some have called “the Washingtonconsensus” on education policy, which holds that poverty “is no excuse” and that only externalaccountability can push states and districts to narrow racial and socioeconomic achievementgaps (Hess & Petrilli, 2004). The consensus has enabled large-scale federal funding attached toheightened conditions for the receipt of aid, such as NCLB’s testing mandates (McDermott &Jensen, 2005).

With both parties recently supporting expansive federal education policymaking, Congress’spower will thus continue to grow unless either the consensus dissolves, or the president, the Court,or the states decide to check congressional power. Until this happens, Congress has an even greaterpotential (though not a mandate) to be a guardian of equality of educational opportunity. However,that power should be guided less by ideology, as it has in recent debates, and more by a carefulconsideration of evidence about equality of educational opportunity in light of how economicand institutional realities have changed over the past generation. We next examine areas whereCongress might increase its impact on equality of educational opportunity.

STRENGTHENING CATEGORICAL PROGRAMSAND “INCENTIVIZING” OPPORTUNITY

As we have seen, the role of the federal courts in mandating racial desegregation slowly wanedfrom the mid-1970s, culminating in PICS in 2007. Over the same period, Congress increasinglyfocused on policies that mandated greater school-level accountability measures, as well as testingrequirements, as part of the conditions for receiving Title I funds. We posit that Congress needs toconsider curtailing its expansion of such school-level conditions for receiving categorical funding,while playing a more active role by incentivizing equality of opportunity for states and districts.Congress can do so through policies aimed at ameliorating some of the worst effects of racialand socioeconomic segregation. In the section that follows, we draw on examples of researchand policy proposals of scholars who have suggested how this might be done. Not intended as a

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26 E. DEBRAY AND A. E. BLANKENSHIP

comprehensive synthesis, we present it more to expand the parameters of current policy debates.We recognize that our focus on pre-K-12 education is a limitation, as improving postsecondaryeducation is an absolutely vital component of expanded opportunity and is equally worthy of theattention of Congress.

We are emphatic that categorical programs should not be eliminated, nor reduced. We contendthat while categorical programs’ design can be streamlined and improved, to which we turn inthe next section on Title I, they have, in fact, been vital to educational equality of opportunity.As Wong (2008, p. 21), noted, federal aid’s focus on redistributive programs in education grewbetween 1970 and 2002 from 36% to 63%, and much of that has been through targeted, categoricalprograms. Targeting in Title I has substantially improved; since 2011, funding to the poorest 20%of schools has increased by $6 billion (Barone & DeBray, 2011, p. 64). Economists of educationhave noted that categorical programs are by far the most efficient means of reaching traditionallyunderserved populations (Levin, 1982).

However, it is clear that the categorical programs of the ESEA are limited as the sole policytool for building the capacity for equality of opportunity. Paul Manna and Jennifer Wallner(2011), in a recent political analysis of NCLB accountability, developed what they termed thethree “stepping stones” of accountability: policy changes (such as state or local-level policyadoptions, as spurred by RTTT), expanded opportunity, and enhanced quality (p. 156). Theauthors make the case that these outcomes of education policy are successively harder to achieve;to draw on a clear example, NCLB is aimed at enhancing quality, and that is the hardest aim toachieve with the policy instruments available from the federal level. If Congress were to focusrenewed attention on the second “stepping stone” of accountability for opportunity, a promisingpolicy instrument for doing so would be through federal incentives (or inducements) that weredeliberately designed to build the capacity of state and local governments to focus on the mostdisadvantaged student populations. According to McDonnell and Elmore (1987), policymakerswho design an inducement are assuming that “one would not expect certain valued things tobe produced, or to be produced with the frequency or consistency prescribed by the policy,”that “preferences and priorities [of targets] support the production of these things,” and that“individuals and agencies vary in their ability to produce things of value, and that the transfer ofmoney is one way to elicit performance” (p. 142). This is the basic public policy theory underlyingthe use of incentives to drive a focus on equality of opportunity: that beyond mandates, which arealso necessary in the area of civil rights, they can drive local and state commitments that mightotherwise be neglected—particularly in a context of dramatic cuts to pre-K-12 schools.

Strengthening Categorical Programs

Title I of ESEA. Compensatory education is more important than ever. Sean Reardon (2012),in his recent analysis of the widening academic achievement gap between children in high- andlow-income families, found that “the income achievement gap is large when children enterkindergarten and does not appear to grow (or narrow) appreciably as children progress throughschool” and that “the income achievement gap is now nearly twice as large as the black-whiteachievement gap” (p. 91).

There are still fairly strong criticisms of compensatory education from across the politicalspectrum. These range from the contention that it is inefficient and inequitable to distribute

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CONGRESS AND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 27

funds to districts, rather than to individual students, and that the number of set-asides in TitleI has grown enormous and burdensome. On the other hand, many civil rights advocates andsome scholars have supported NCLB’s accountability model because of its focus on closing the“achievement gap” (Rebell & Wolff, 2008). This is why recent draft legislation—for instance,the Harkin-Enzi ESEA reauthorization bill introduced in the Senate Health, Education, Laborand Pensions committee in 2011—met with opposition from civil rights and disability advocacygroups (Henderson, 2011). The proposed bill’s focus on accountability for the lowest 5% ofschools in a state on absolute performance measures, as opposed to achievement-gap narrowingmeasures, was viewed by some civil rights advocates as an abdication of federal protection fordisadvantaged students.

In terms of equality of opportunity, we think that there are at least several ways in whichTitle I could be strengthened. Here, we focus on four broad areas, which include improving theinterstate and within-state targeting of funds, removing perverse incentives in NCLB that haveencouraged a narrowing of curriculum and teaching to the test, providing subgrants within Title Ifor middle and high schools, and front-loading preschool and preventative early interventions inTitle I, including expansion of high-quality preschool to substantially greater numbers of 3- and4-year-olds.

Goodwin Liu (2008) wrote that it is critical to improve interstate provisions in Title I byeliminating the state expenditure factor. He found that, overall, Title I aid per poor child decreasesas state poverty increases. “By allocating aid to states in proportion to state per-pupil expenditures,Title I reinforces vast spending inequalities between states to the detriment of children in high-poverty districts” (Liu, 2008, p. 973). There should also be better within-state targeting of fundsto the poorest schools and districts.

There has been a political consensus in Congress that “turning around high-poverty schools”should be a central focus under Title I. The School Improvement Grants (SIG) within Title I werefunded at $3 billion under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009; the effects ofSIG are still being researched and debated. The turnaround approach in SIG has been criticized fora range of reasons: for being too prescriptive with the four interventions it names (McNeil, 2012),for its aims not being well suited to federally mandated accountability and oversight (Barone &DeBray, 2011) and for not addressing the socioeconomic segregation of the schools themselves(Kahlenberg, 2012). Kahlenberg (2012) has written that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’sstrategy of turning schools around via a change in governance or school staff is “too timid” anintervention to be successful; that only a change in the composition of the student bodies ofhigh-poverty schools can bring about the needed achievement gains (p. 283). On the other hand,recent research by the Center on Education Policy indicates that most states implementing theSIG have reported success with the “transformation” school model, which involves replacing theprincipal, enhancing teachers’ pay for performance, and increasing time for learning (McMurrer& McIntosh, 2012). Although the research on turnaround schools still remains inconclusive, weagree with Kahlenberg’s premise that Title I policy needs to address the increasing segregationof students in high-poverty schools.

It is also crucial that the government targets significant federal funding for middle and highschool reform; the benefits of early interventions fade if there are not sufficient interventions forstudents in the upper grades (McPartland & Jordan, 1999). Although secondary schools served33% of all low-income students in 1997–98, they received only 16% of all Title I funds (Liu,2008, p. 1010). Educational mobility (defined as the relationship between parents’ educational

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28 E. DEBRAY AND A. E. BLANKENSHIP

attainment and their children’s) has decreased since the 1970s, with the primary cause being thelack of progress in high school and college graduation rates (Hout & Janus, 2012, p. 183). Thereis also new evidence that although many students say they aspire to attend college, they adjustthese expectations sometime after eighth grade; a high-quality middle-school education is clearlylinked to college aspirations and opportunity (Jacob & Linkow, 2012). Promising programs thatcould be expanded and replicated include the Talent Development Model, developed at JohnsHopkins University, and First Things First, operated by the nonprofit Institute for Research andReform in Education. Strong counseling and providing young adult mentors, measures that wouldsupport the odds of students graduating, could also be provided for middle and secondary schoolstudents (Smith, 2011 p. 242). Improved access to higher education should be a national policygoal, and in terms of policy outcomes, high school graduation and college completion rates shouldboth be increasingly vital measures of equality of opportunity.

Title I has also driven the practice of focusing instruction on students closest to attainingproficiency targets as well as an intensified focus on reading and math at the expense of nontestedsubjects, especially in high-poverty schools (Hout & Elliott, 2011; Jennings & Stark-Rentner,2006). Although it is not our intent here to lay out a blueprint for fixing NCLB, we agree with thosewho write that these incentives are largely driven by the law’s state-level proficiency targets, whichhave proven “game-able” (Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2007). Although the recent grantingof waivers to selected states by the Education Department may serve to lessen some of thebubble-teaching incentives, policymakers need to construct a coherent alternative in its place. Aswe argue next in the section on enforcement, the better policy may be to have tightened federalaccountability for states, rather than for individual schools and districts (Ramanathan, 2008).

Preschool investment. Jane Waldfogel and Sharan Lynn Kagan (2012), in a research syn-thesis prepared for the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (housed at the Economic PolicyInstitute), wrote that “randomized experiments of model programs have shown that high-qualitypre-school programs produce substantial cognitive gains, particularly for disadvantaged children,reduce later problems, such as crime, and enhance the future productivity of the workforce” (para.6). Although state pre-K programs serving 4-year-olds have proliferated in the past 10 years, theyare mostly targeted toward the most economically disadvantaged children (Rose, 2007). Increas-ingly, policy scholars and advocates have pointed to the importance of providing high-quality,universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds (Haskins & Sawhill, 2009; Heckman & Masterov, 2007;Kirp, 2011). The National Institute for Early Education Research (2012) at Rutgers Universityestimated the cost per year of such a universal program at just under $70 billion. However,because universal pre-K is not fiscally feasible at the federal level at present, there are moreincremental steps that could be taken toward that goal; funding such services for all economicallydisadvantaged 3- and 4-year-olds, for instance, is estimated by the Institute at $11.6 billion peryear.

Smith (2011), pointing out that the achievement gap will never be closed if the early learningand language needs of both low-income and English-learning students are unaddressed, suggesteddeveloping a new program by building on Head Start. The goal would be “to substantially augmentand extend local pre-school and Head Start programs, to give high-quality training and practicein oral language skills, vocabulary, and self-regulation using well-trained teachers, with theexpectation that the changes would be extended to other students as well” (p. 243). This is one

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CONGRESS AND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 29

way in which incentives and categorical programs could work in concert: Smith suggests thatthe program might start as a competitive priority among districts qualifying for Title I, but buildon Head Start. Over time, building on the benefit of research and evaluation findings, it mightbecome more of a permanent part of Title I.

IDEA. As written, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) aims to increaseeducational opportunities for students with disabilities. Although the IDEA has certainly improvedthe lives and educational experiences of students with disabilities, the act comes with someunintended consequences. Currently, African American students are overrepresented in specialeducation programs for two main reasons: their misidentification due to biased testing, andtheir overall lack of school preparedness as a result of inadequate early childhood education. Bymisidentifying these students, they are not provided with the appropriate educational attention andservices. The 2004 amendments to the IDEA indicate that lawmakers are aware of these problemsand are trying to address them through testing changes and early intervention programs (Carothers,2008). Further attention to the identification process and early intervention programs may provesuccessful in reducing the number of students who are misidentified as special needs students andrequire disability related services later in their academic careers. Congress could also improvecoordination between Title I and the IDEA, for instance, by clarifying that many “research-basedinterventions” for students with disabilities may be paid for with Title I supplemental educationalservices (Ramanathan, 2008, p. 310).

Incentives

Here, we briefly discuss a range of policy areas in which competitive grants might profitablybe explored for purposes of advancing equity. Many of these are designed to address structuralissues on a limited scale, such as housing and expanding interdistrict school transfers, whereasothers, such as expanding charter schools’ access provisions, are best thought of as a combinationof incentives and improved civil rights enforcement. Any incentives-based policies ought tobe combined with strong, affirmative guidance and leadership about what is constitutionallypermissible. In addition, ongoing, high-quality evaluations should be embedded in all of theseprograms.

Linking education and housing. Students living in neighborhoods of concentrated povertyexperience a negative effect on their academic outcomes, one that exceeds the effects of theirfamily’s poverty (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). RAND researcher Heather Schwartz haspublished new research about the positive effects of Montgomery County, Maryland’s housingeconomic integration policies on student achievement. Specifically, she examined the longitu-dinal school performance from 2001 to 2007 of approximately 850 students in public housingwho attended elementary schools and lived in neighborhoods that fell along a spectrum ofvery low-poverty to moderate-poverty rates (Schwartz, 2012, p. 29). She found that these stu-dents outperformed their peers in high-poverty schools in both reading and mathematics. JuliaBurdick-Will and colleagues (2012) presented their findings about both the Moving to Oppor-tunity and Gautreaux housing relocation programs, both of which provided opportunities for

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low-income, inner-city residents to move to lower poverty neighborhoods. Their review suggeststhat “moving children to a different neighborhood can improve their achievement-test scores evenif there are no changes in the level of neighborhood racial segregation or school quality” and“that even children who have already spent many years living in segregated, economically dis-tressed, and dangerous neighborhoods can experience gains in cognitive outcomes from moving”(p. 272).

Based on such research, we argue that there is room for federal policymakers to continue tolearn from targeted school and neighborhood relocation programs. For instance, metropolitanpilot programs could simultaneously use existing Section 8 dollars to support housing relocationto the suburbs and support school transfers between cities and suburbs—providing financial in-centives for suburban communities to come to the planning table (DeBray & Frankenberg, 2011).Currently, the Magnet Schools Assistance Program within the ESEA has not attempted to linkhousing policy with magnets—but through competitive incentives, Congress could accomplishthis. It could do so either through interdistrict magnets or through coordination with Hope VI orother housing measures (Smrekar & Goldring, 2011).

Voluntary integration measures/student assignment plans. In 2009, Congress autho-rized the Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plans program as part of Title IV ofthe Civil Rights Act. The appropriations language clearly stated that the program’s goal wasto prevent a return to racially isolated schools; $2.5 million was allocated among 11 awardeeschool districts. There were several explicit principles in the authorizing language. The first wasthat districts’ plans should draw on outside consultants, that is, from experts across a range ofsectors including private, nonprofit, and academic. The second was that community and civilrights groups’ support would be important at the local level. Third, local context mattered: Therewould be a range of appropriate uses for the funds, depending on local “particular needs andcomplexity of plans.” Congress has authorized such technical assistance in the past; aid wasgiven to school districts throughout the 1970s as part of the Emergency School Assistance Act,providing resources for districts that were desegregating their schools; using a similar mechanismor design, some version of that program could be reinstated (Orfield, 2011).

Interdistrict choice. The vast majority of racial segregation—84% as of 2000— now existsbetween school districts (Clotfelter, 2004). Although NCLB’s public school transfer provisionswere well intentioned, they have not succeeded in providing better learning opportunities, as theyonly permit parents to make within-district choices when selecting schools. As Holme and Wells(2008) wrote, “It is quite clear that unless NCLB choice options facilitate the student transferacross boundary lines that distinguish separate and unequal school districts, they will do little tocreate more meaningful choices” (p. 198). Although certainly the federal government cannot eas-ily mandate cross-district choice—suburban districts enter into such agreements voluntarily—thegovernment could design incentives to make these strategies more attractive. Targeted federalsubsidies could encourage metropolitan plans to encourage transfers, justified by research thathas documented the continuing demand for school choice in many communities nationally. AsRichard Kahlenberg (2011) wrote, “In an era of tight budgets, this approach may prove attractiveto middle-class school districts while also providing a highly cost-effective way of reducing theachievement gap” (para. 14).

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Community schools. David Kirp (2011), in his book Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Trans-forming Children’s Lives and America’s Future, identified the Promise Neighborhoods initiativethat invested $10 million in 2010 (p. 139) as an example of a federally supported incentive pro-gram that may strengthen the community schools movement. The grant program is designed to getcommunities to identify district specific problems and develop research supported solutions thatincorporate multiple community agencies, including education, health, law, and social services.In assisting communities in the development of their own solutions and requiring interagencycollaboration, the program closes the gap between policy creation and implementation. PresidentObama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal includes $100 million to expand Promise Neighborhoods.Kirp argues that more of Title I could be designated for community schools. We agree, but we alsoconsider that separate incentive grants are a very important policy tool for inspiring broad-basedcommunity participation.

Charter school equity and access. In 2011, a bill passed the House of Representativesmaking changes to the state charter school program of ESEA. The Quality Charter Schools Actprovided for the replication of “high-quality” charter schools. During that debate, Democratspressed for and gained language that assured access protections for English Language Learnersand students with disabilities to charter schools (a slightly different version of the bill stalled in theSenate). Researchers from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA called attention to the phenomenonof charter schools’ increasing racial segregation. Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley, and Wang (2010)found, for instance, that nationally “seventy percent of black charter school students attendintensely segregated minority charter schools (which enroll 90–100% of students from under-represented minority backgrounds), or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated blackstudents in traditional public schools” (p. 4). As Gary Orfield wrote,

State and federal agencies supporting charters should learn the lessons of those charter schools thatattain diversity and turn them into requirements for other charters. Federal civil rights officials andeducation officials should work to develop minimum civil rights standards and make them part ofcharter school funding. (as cited in Frankenberg et al., 2010, p. 3)

In 2010, the National Coalition on School Diversity played an integral role in securing theinclusion of diversity as a priority for further discretionary spending by the Secretary of Education(Federal Register, 2010). Its inclusion in future federal charter school funding program prioritieswould represent an important component of equality of opportunity.

State-level finance equity. Although there may be ways that the targeting of Title I fundingcan be improved, federal incentives could also drive states to make changes to how they targetall of their education dollars. In a recent piece about federal policy, which he characterizesas a “thought experiment,” former Undersecretary of Education Marshall Smith (2011, p. 241)suggested that a competitive program, backed by approximately $4 billion a year for 5 years, couldprovide important assistance to approximately one fourth of states to devise financial formulasthat could better meet the needs of economically disadvantaged and English-language-learningstudents.

Both politically and substantively, it is critical for members of Congress to underscore thattargeted incentive programs are not tantamount to undermining Title I—although we acknowledge

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that with current federal budgetary realities, congressional opponents of new initiatives could castit that way. Rather, expanding incentives for equity should be seen as a complementary strategy,as the goals of Title I cannot be met within a framework of racial and socioeconomic isolation.

ENFORCEMENT

Congress has a very important role to play with respect to oversight of civil rights policies.Chinh Le (2011) argued that the U.S. Department of Education and the Justice Departmentcould assume a more robust role than they have for several decades in monitoring desegregationplans. The Supreme Court’s fractured opinion in PICS (2007) left policymakers and practitionersunsure of what measures were still available for school districts that wished to adopt voluntaryintegration measures. It was not until December 2011 that the Office of Civil Rights within theEducation Department issued guidance to school districts, clarifying what alternatives schooldistricts have with respect to race-based assignment (U.S. Department of Justice, Civil RightsDivision, and U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2011). Stronger and moreactive congressional oversight would ensure that school districts are receiving clear and consistentguidance from federal officials about the constitutionality of voluntary school integration efforts,for instance, through magnets, zoning decisions, and plans using regional indexes of diversitythat take economic and/or family factors into account. Similarly, the enforcement of Fair Housingprovisions directly affects equality of educational opportunity.

Enforcement of both the ESEA and IDEA could be improved by allowing states to determinethe consequences for districts and schools that fail to meet fixed national targets in a number ofareas. As Arun Ramanathan (2008) wrote, “Such a model would hark back to one of the initialmotivations for the passage of IDEA: a desire to provide regulatory coherence and predictabilityfor state education systems” (p. 308). He argued that IDEA’s 2004 focus on outcomes is a stepin the positive direction but that “the law should establish fixed national targets in a limitednumber of areas and set high standards for data quality” (p. 308). Similarly, federal enforcementof NCLB’s targets at the school level has resulted in a punishment-driven system; accountabilitycould be more effective if states set the consequences for schools.

CURRENT POLICY DISCOURSE AND BUDGETARY REALITIES

This is a time of great uncertainty about the federal role in education, because of the interaction ofpartisan politics and funding uncertainties. In early January 2013, Congress passed a temporaryagreement to delay automatic, across-the-board spending cuts until March. This prospective“sequestration” would “hit just about every federal education program, including Title I grantsto districts, state grants for special education, and the School Improvement Grants” with cutsup to 9.1% (Klein, 2012b). (Pell Grants, however, would not be affected.) In a context of suchoverarching threats to the survival of programs, it is extremely difficult for anyone, policymakers,policy analysts, or scholars, to weigh how the federal government can best maximize equality ofopportunity.

Current congressional debate on ESEA also shows widely varying interpretations of the con-cept of equality of opportunity. For some, it means rolling back the adequate yearly progress

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accountability model and limiting federal policy to the oversight of state interventions in onlythe lowest performing schools. Most civil rights groups, however, argue that mandating a nar-rowing of achievement gaps at the school level is a vital federal commitment that should notbe rescinded. President Obama’s core initiatives, RTTT, i3, and Promise Neighborhoods, werecompetitive grants that emphasized technology, teacher pay-for-performance, charter schools,and money to support longitudinal data. It is clear that in the second term, his administrationwill seek to incorporate many of these pieces into the ESEA reauthorization. Many congressionalRepublicans have particularly objected to Secretary Arne Duncan’s waivers granted to relievestates from selected NCLB requirements in 2011 and 2012, which they argue constitute a blow tocongressional authority (Klein, 2012a). If an ESEA reauthorization does occur in 2013 or 2014,the more bipartisan Senate is likely to be the driver and the Harkin-Enzi bill, with its more limitedspecifications for state identification of low-performing schools, the starting blueprint.

CONCLUSION

Historically, Congress has played an important role in assuring access to equality of educationalopportunity for some groups. Protections of the rights of students with disabilities, Pell Grantsto help students from low-income families attend college, enforcement of the Civil Rights Actthrough the ESEA, and the benefits of categorical programs like Head Start and Title I are all keyexamples of this role. As the federal courts’ role in enforcing racial desegregation in elementaryand secondary schools has been diminished, Congress’s power over educational policy hasexpanded, especially with the bipartisan convergence in 2001 on federally driven school-basedaccountability. Title I is far more connected now to incentives supporting “turnaround” modelsand charter schools, a transition that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act hastened withits rapid infusion of dollars.

New sociological and economic evidence about opportunity only strengthens our view thatthe discourse in Congress about equality of educational opportunity has become far too narrow.To truly narrow the achievement gap, all social policies should be considered: health, housing,affordable day care, and job training to break the poverty cycle. By making current categor-ical programs more streamlined and equitable, enforcing civil rights laws, and “incentivizingopportunity”—developing policies that encourage states and districts to rethink more structuralaspects of student assignment policies to support integration, as well as making some neededalterations in NCLB accountability—Congress can more effectively move forward in its role asguardian of disadvantaged students. For such reasoned deliberation to occur in Congress, how-ever, means that the current period of exigency related to budgetary instability, as well as extremepartisanship over the federal role in education, must abate.

AUTHOR BIOS

Elizabeth DeBray is an associate professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Admin-istration & Policy in the College of Education, University of Georgia. She received her Ed.D.from Harvard University. Her research interests are the politics of federal education policy, policy

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implementation, and interest group politics, including the role of intermediary organizations indisseminating research and information about education reforms.

Ann Elizabeth Blankenship is a doctoral student in the Department of Lifelong Education,Administration & Policy in the College of Education, University of Georgia. She received herJ.D. from the University of Tennessee College of Law. Her research focuses include diversity ineducation and personnel law in education.

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