Every Student Succeeds Act and Educational Civil Rights During the Obama and Trump Administrations

• In Event: Addressing Equity Through Federal Education Policy During the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines how enactment of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), incorporated civil-rights issues, and how ESSA implementation interacted with the Trump administration’s rollbacks of race-conscious civil-rights policies.

Theoretical Framework

The analysis is grounded in research on the general connections between federalism and equity and on intergovernmental relations in ESSA (Duff & Wohlstetter, 2020; Wong, 2020). Scholars of federalism generally agree that equity goals require a strong federal presence (Michener, 2019; Orfield, 2019). ESEA has historically been the major source of federal leverage for equity in state and local policy, initially defined as racial integration and more recently defined as improved scores and equal subgroup passing rates on state tests (Gamson et al., 2015). ESSA paradoxically continued some federal accountability requirements while also increasing limits on what the federal government can require from states and districts.

Methods

This paper is based on data from 26 interviews, documents, media accounts, government documents, and webinars assembled as part of a larger project on federal civil rights policy in education. Through qualitative and historical analysis, we analyze how civil rights and equity issues were contested during ESSA enactment and implementation from the end of the Obama administration through Trump’s first term (2015-2020).

Findings

ESSA passed Congress with bipartisan support, and its supporters praised it for limiting federal authority while still ensuring equity. Congressional debate framed civil rights mostly in terms of monitoring student subgroups’ test scores and holding districts and schools accountable for performance. A network of civil rights groups worked with Democrats in Congress to keep the accountability provisions that they believed were essential. ESSA also includes more subtle provisions that supported civil-rights data reporting and school diversity.

During ESSA implementation, its bipartisan support weakened. In the first year of implementation, the Obama administration used the regulatory process to maximize federal authority within the new statutory limits. After the Trump administration took office, polarization intensified. Congress rescinded the ESSA accountability regulations on essentially party-line votes. Civil rights groups continued to support NCLB and ESSA’s model of test-driven accountability while opposing the Trump administration’s rollbacks of Obama-administration civil rights policies. Although many education interest groups drew closer together during the Trump administration, the centrist and bipartisan consensus on accountability policy weakened.

Significance

Overall, we find that ESSA’s impact on civil rights is limited in three ways. First, by the time ESSA passed, many states had already scaled back their subgroup-reporting policies using NCLB waivers and there was little interest in enacting new requirements. Second, by reining in the federal role, ESSA privileged state autonomy over federal equity intervention. Finally, the NCLB-era performance accountability paradigm is inherently limited by its focus on results as measured by standardized tests. ESSA’s limits for advancing civil rights and equity have become more problematic in the face of the Covid pandemic and renewed demands for racial justice. We conclude with recommendations for a re-envisioning the federal role to meet post-2020 challenges.

Authors

• Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia

• Kathryn A. McDermott, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Sarah McCollum, University of Georgia

• Erica Frankenberg, The Pennsylvania State University

• Genevieve P. Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley