A Framework Toward Understanding the Every Student Succeeds Act's Impacts on State Policies for Disadvantaged Students

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum and Instruction at Multiple Policy Levels in the Era of the Every Student Succeeds Act

Abstract

The Every Child Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) grants states unprecedented discretion in implementing many of the federal law’s requirements concerning the needs of the nation’s educationally disadvantaged students. This theoretical paper addresses a void in the political science literature on why ESEA reform efforts have not been more effectively sustained. It synthesizes previous research on ESEA by proposing the use of multiple frames to guide new empirical research on ESSA’s impacts. These alternative models—ESSA’s Legal Framework, Institutional Actors, and Stakeholder Bargaining—can inform the law’s national impacts on equity for disadvantaged students and the key conditions affecting differences in state responses to the equity challenge ESSA presents.

Authors

• James G. Cibulka, Researcher

• Martin E. Orland, Manhattan Strategy Group

• Kenneth K. Wong, Brown University