When Uncle Sam started poking into K-12 education in the 1950s and 60s, he adopted a delivery system that made sense at the time.
In our federalist structure, with rare exceptions, education is a state responsibility and, when it comes to public education, the states (but for Hawaii) have delegated its operation to local school systems. Thus long before there was a U.S. Department of Education, back when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare unit known as the U.S. Office of Education was predominantly concerned with statistics, civil rights, and research, there were already state education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) that bore responsibility for running schools, hiring teachers, selecting curricula, raising and spending most of the money, etc.
Because most of the big new federal K-12 education programs of the day (e.g. National Defense Education Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act) amounted to financial subsidies for districts and states, it made sense to administer them through that same hierarchy. Washington would give the money (and rules for spending it) to the SEAs, which would keep some of it and give the rest to the LEAs, which would keep some and pass along the rest (with more rules) to eligible schools, kids, etc.
As a money-distribution system, this was logical, even inevitable. It was how state and local dollars flowed. It would have been nuts to create another mechanism for federal dollars. And while SEAs and LEAs weren't always diligent in following Washington's rules, it was in their interest to do so, if only because they and their schools got the money and because, for the most part, that money was provided so they could do more of what they were already doing and possibly do it better, fairer, smarter, etc.
Thus arose the now-entrenched pattern of "state plans" for spending federal dollars, whereby the SEA says what it will do, receives a check, keeps track of the money, and periodically reports back to Washington on its success. Much the same happens between LEAs and SEAs.
Rare exceptions could be found in a few realms where there was a direct federal role, such as combating discrimination or reporting how many teachers had master's degrees. But when it came to the major funding programs, the traditional hierarchy was intact.
Then came A Nation at Risk and the dawning realization that Washington's new role in K-12 education was not just sending money into the existing system but actually transforming that system.
And thus arose today's great paradox for federal education policy: Washington still relies primarily on SEAs and LEAs to do its bidding, yet now the point of those programs is not to "help" the SEAs and LEAs do more of what they always did, or do what they want, but, rather, to reform what they do, often in ways they don't much want to be reformed. Often in ways they judge contrary to their own interests. Ways that include admitting failure. And ways they may not be competent to handle.
Keep in mind that today's highest-priority reforms - closing the learning gap, converting low-performing schools into good ones, intervening with rewards and sanctions, public reporting of both success and failure, freeing children and families to opt into other schools, insisting on knowledgeable and effective teachers - wouldn't be necessary if the SEAs and LEAs had done their jobs right in the first place.
So why do we suppose they'll do it right this time? Why do federal policy makers assume that those that caused the system's problems (or, at least, those on whose watch the problems grew) now have the will, desire, and capacity to solve them?
Consider, for example, the balky, messy implementation of NCLB's public-school choice and supplemental services provisions, which expect LEAs to, in effect, compete with their own schools and services, somehow serving simultaneously as operator of existing schools and broker of alternatives to them. How could that possibly succeed?
If all that SEAs and LEAs needed was more money and encouragement to solve their schools' problems, the traditional hierarchy might work. But I don't think anyone who's looked closely at the woes of low-performing schools believes that to be the case. That's why NCLB includes a cascade of interventions: it assumes that without them the desired changes won't occur.
You know the drill: If a federally aided school fails to "make AYP" for two consecutive years, the district is to arrange for its students to be offered "public school choice." If it falters for a third straight year, the district is to provide pupils with access to "supplemental services" from diverse providers. If it fails for a fourth year running, it must write a school improvement plan and, after the fifth year, the school is to be "reconstituted." By whom? By its LEA. And if the LEA itself "needs improvement," it is to be intervened in - NCLB sets out a similar progression of steps - by its SEA.
On paper, this all proceeds in the familiar top-down sequence, with Washington telling states what to do, states telling districts, and LEAs doing most of the work. That hierarchy remains the basic architecture of federal education policy today as in LBJ's time. But its original designers never pictured it supporting a results-based accountability system, making repairs to faltering schools, or functioning in an education environment peppered with such outside-the-hierarchy creations as charter schooling, home schooling, and distance learning.
Can the old architecture support a new, expanded, and more interventionist federal role? Or is there a basic mismatch between NCLB's modern ambitions and its antique machinery?
Is an alternative thinkable? Perhaps a model is to be found in civil rights, where Washington has played a direct role that did not depend on SEAs and LEAs and where, indeed, they were sometimes the "culprits" needing to be set right (if, for example, they discriminated against children on grounds of race or handicap).
Yet short of hiring tens of thousands of federal agents to, in effect, run America's troubled schools - picture federal marshals escorting highly qualified teachers into 5th grade classrooms in Cincinnati and national guardsmen transporting youngsters to more effective schools in St. Louis - any such endeavor needs to rely on intermediaries of some kind. Maybe Uncle Sam could contract with private firms or nonprofits to "intervene" in failing schools and school systems. (There's precedent in the providing of federally-funded services via such "bypass" entities to private-school children in states such as Virginia and Missouri.) Or Washington might rely on governors and mayors, i.e., the general-purpose governments of states and municipalities, rather than the SEAs and LEAs themselves, to make the latter shape up. That would be consistent with education governance changes already occurring in some places.
In some places - where the governor is already the "chief's" boss or the mayor is in charge of the school system - there'd be no revolution. In much of America, however, there'd be a sea change, were federal education programs to begin working through the general-purpose government rather than SEA and LEA.
Would it work better? I'm not sure. But let us at least acknowledge the risks in assuming that yesterday's structures can support today's very different missions.
