Students and states won a major victory last month
when President Clinton signed "Ed-Flex," the lead item in Congress'
education agenda, into federal law.
Ed-Flex lets states and local educators tailor their
federally-funded education programs to their students' specific needs -
provided they prove later that they're getting results. It's a sensible
trade-off: educators get greater freedom, but only if they assume some
additional responsibility for improving student performance.
Ed-Flex won bipartisan support in the end - and if
you liked Ed-Flex, you'll really like what's coming next. Congress will
soon move forward with reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA), a major law that steers federal policy on almost
every aspect of public education from kindergarten through high school.
Renewal of ESEA will be a key step in defining and redefining
Washington's role in the education of our youth.
ESEA was created in 1965 to ensure that
disadvantaged students receive a high-quality education. It's come a
long way since then. As House Education Committee Chairman Bill Goodling
(R-PA) puts it, ESEA has evolved into "the Grand Central Station of K-12
federal education programs." A twisting maze of complex initiatives and
regulations, ESEA now prescribes solutions for virtually every
conceivable issue facing America's schools, from drugs and teacher
training to bilingual education and testing.
All of the issues addressed under the ESEA umbrella
are important. But across the country, different schools have different
needs. Many question whether ESEA's current structure is flexible enough
to ensure federal education dollars are being put to their most
effective use.
Since 1965, the federal government has spent about
$100 billion on ESEA, with this year's share totaling about $13.9
billion. The question isn't whether that's too much money to spend;
rather, it's whether the bulk of this money is actually reaching the
classroom and being used to help students. Are American kids getting the
most bang for our education bucks? Or are many of our "bucks" just
getting gobbled up by bureaucracy?
ESEA reauthorization really couldn't have come at a
better time. Fresh on the heels of the bipartisan success of Ed-Flex,
Congress now has the chance to do a "Super" Ed-Flex bill - applying the
common-sense lessons of Ed-Flex to the multitude of rigid programs in
ESEA. This flexibility-based approach, which emphasizes the role of
parents, teachers, and communities, could be the key to making ESEA work
for students in the next century.
