The Role of Governance in K–12/Higher Education Convergence

• In Event: Convergence: U.S. Education Policy 50 Years After the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act of 1965

Abstract

Although they remain distinct in important ways, the K-12 and higher education sectors in the US are converging in important senses. In this paper we focus on convergences in governance. By governance we mean the processes of making and enforcing authoritative decisions about the use of public power and the institutions within which those processes take place. Despite being functionally joined at the “hip” of the high school to college transition, the U.S. K-12 and higher education systems historically have been steered within disparate governance systems. While important differences do and shall remain, several trends are blurring these governance divides and expanding the exposure of the K-12 and higher education systems to similar mandates, incentives, norms, and pressure. In this paper, we document four main forms of convergence, analyze the forces that are driving them, and note their impact on what problems are on the policy agenda, what solutions are considered, and what political actors have weight.
Objectives: To highlight the ways in which broad shifts in governance institutions may account for increasing similarities in contemporary policies affecting K-12 and higher education.
Theoretical framework: The paper draws on insights from political science literature on agenda setting, American Political Development, interest group politics, and policy feedback.
Methods: The paper uses historical narrative augmented by quantitative data on presidential state of the union speeches, Congressional hearings, and public finance to establish the existence of trends in shared oversight, centralization, the growing role of general-purpose governance institutes, and privatization.
Data sources: Major data sources include the Policy Agendas Project at the University of Texas at Austin (www.policyagendas.org), National Center for Education Statistics, National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and various media accounts of national, state, and local education politics and policy.
Conclusions: governance has affected which problems and solutions are considered and which actors carry political weight. We see this as occurring through two processes. First, the shift in governance changes the access points and policy framings that worked to the relative benefit of key actors who may have had a stake in protecting the boundaries between K-12 and higher education. Second, the shift toward institutional arenas characterized by a wider set of interests makes both K-12 and higher education policymaking more open to actors and ideas that have traction within both sectors.
Scientific or scholarly significance: The paper has import for the political science literature that considers obstacles and facilitators to political change. For the education policy community, it highlights important reform trends and their sources and supports the notion that analysts should work to bridge the gap that exists in the field between experts and studies on the K-12 and higher education sectors, suggesting that those sectors may not be as distinct as once believed.

Authors

• Jeffrey R. Henig, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Kevin J. Dougherty, Teachers College, Columbia University