1. Gender Exercises: Final project: 100 points.
1. Start by selecting one of the topics below and answer the
questions or complete the exercises required.
2. You will need to have a few things integrated into your
findings based on your research. 1) Find at least TWO
concepts from the text as to how they relate to your findings.
These should be CITED from the text. 2) Find TWO outside
research articles that relate to your findings/topic, as well.
These should be research articles from peer-reviewed journals,
if possible.
3. So, the structure of your paper should be the following:
· An introduction of your topic
· Your findings/analysis
· How your findings relate to TWO concepts from the text
· How your findings relate to TWO research journals
4. Make sure you use proper citation format in your paper –
APA, ASA preferred. By now, for an upper division course,
you should be able to cite correctly, RIGHT?
5. Due date: Check the syllabus. These papers can be submitted
online, we can discuss that.
6. FINALLY, ENJOY DOING THIS. TRY NOT TO SEE IT AS
A BURDEN OR JUST ONE MORE THING YOU HAVE TO
DO.
7. FINALLY, Finally, please proofread!
8. Paper length: 4 to 5 pages maximum
Possible topics:
Topic: Gender and our Bodies: Investigate the gender of
current products designed to help people alter their bodies in
some way. You might begin by making a list of all the products
that fall into this category (if you are creative, this could be a
fairly long list). Then think about which of these products seem
to be aimed primarily at men, which at men, and which at both
sexes. Look at the advertisements for these products in

2. magazines, television ads, or on the internet. What gender
messages are begin sent in these advertisements? What does
your investigation suggest about men’s and women’s feelings
about their bodies? (as an alternative, you can do research on
how we manipulate our body to meet the gender binary goal e.g.
cosmetic surgery)
Topic: Culture and Menstruation Taboos: Many cultures have
menstruation taboos, dictating behaviors women can and cannot
engage in when they are menstruating. Use online resources
and your library to do some research on how different cultures
think about menstruation and the norms they have regarding this
biological process. How do these practices compare with those
in your own culture?
Topic: Division of Labor in your Household: Write an essay in
which you describe what the division of household labor was
like in your own house growing up. Who did what, and how did
everyone seem to feel about it? Were there tensions over who
did what tasks? What would be your ideal division of
household labor if you were to form your own household?
Topic: Couples and Household Labor: Interview some couple
about their division of household labor. You might interview
both together or each separately. Come up with an extensive
list of all the tasks that are involved in maintaining a household,
and ask your respondents who does each of these tasks on a
regular basis. You might also ask them what they feel the ideal
division of household labor is and how close their own situation
comes to that. How does your interview line up with the
research?
Topic: Gender and Work: Do your own investigation on the
gender wage gap and sex segregation. Information for the
United States is available at the following website?
www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf. Pick some occupations you are
interested in and look up the percentage of females in that
occupation, and then calculate the gender wage gap. What’s
surprising about this information? Can you find an occupation
in which women make more than men? What theories might

3. you develop about which occupations tend to be more
segregated than others and which lave large gender wage gaps?
(Note on the website, I had to copy and paste in my browser).
Topic: Men and Video Games: Research by Michael Kimmel
(2008) suggests that many college-age men play video games as
a means of relaxation, revenge, and restoration. Find some
people who play videos games and interview them about their
experiences with playing video games. You might ask them
what kind of games they like, what they enjoy about playing,
and what they think the effects of playing videos games might
be, as well as what gender messages they believe are contained
in the video games they play. How do your findings compare to
research?
Topic: Gender and Music: Explore the ways in which the
gender of the artist or creator of various media genres does or
does not impact the ways in which gender is depicted in their
creations. You might pick music produced by female and male
musicians and then analyze the gender content of their music
and lyrics. Do women and men seem to sing about different
things, or is their gender unimportant to their music?
Topic: Gender and History: Test your friend’s knowledge of
women’s history and women’s role in history. Ask them to
name 10 famous historical men and 10 famous historical women
in the United States. Entertainers (actresses and musicians)
don’t count. How many women on average can people name?
Try to explain your findings. You can try to do this with
various ages and races. What differences, if any, do you find?
Topic: Gender and Fear: Investigate the idea of the geography
of fear as it connects to gender. Interview men and women
about whether they have very felt unsafe in a public space. As
them about specific places in your community or neighborhood
and how safe they assume those places to be. As them for
stories about specific times when they felt unsafe or were
harassed in a public space. If they had these experiences, how
did they deal with them/ Do gender differences emerge in your
interview? What kind of things lead women and men to feel

4. unsafe in public spaces? Do women seem to have a geography
of fear?
Topic: Is our society changing from the binary? Do a scavenger
hunt. Find SIX (6) artifacts in our surroundings (malls,
schools, billboards, etc.) that reflect changing gender norms,
views, roles, and/or attitudes. For example, one place to start
would be TARGET that started to undifferentiated product areas
for boys and girls. What is your conclusion?
Topic: Men and Masculinity. Reviewing Tony Porter’s The
Man Box, Michael Kimmel’s Ted Talk and for this one you
would have to go to the lecture by Jonathan Katz (he’s going to
be on campus) OR review the video, Tough Guise. Write a
summary of the key themes presented in each of these
talks/videos. Relate your findings to the concepts in Ch. 6 on
Men and Masculinity and some of the research done in this area.
Topic: Self Reflection on Gender Socialization. Using a
childhood picture as the start, consider the ways in which you
were socialized into your gender (or not). Who influenced you
and in what ways? Parents, siblings, peers, your school. Reflect
upon the concepts in our text on this topic and link them to your
essay.
Venn Diagram of Historical Events (Early America – 1776)
Input Historical Event 1

5. Input Historical Event2
List Unique Elements of
Historical Event 1
List Unique Elements of
Historical Event 2
List Shared Elements of
Historical Events 1 and 2
See the attached example. Please list five significant historical
events/leaders from this era (Chapters Nine and Ten) and
choose two to compare and contrast. Your Discussion Forum
response will satisfy the following requirements:
a. Five events and the date each event occurred is listed
b. Two events are chosen and a Venn Diagram is completed
showing (at least three in each category) the similarities and
differences of each chosen event.
c. Three of the following five questions have been answered
· These events are still significant today because____.
· If I could change the outcome of one of my listed events I
would change___ because____.
· If only one of these events/individuals could have taken place;
I would chose ___ because____.
· If I could change the outcome of one of my chosen events I
would choose___ because____.
· What would you say is the most important result of each of
your chosen events?
9.1 Conservatism Takes Center Stage
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 brought a resurgence of
conservatism in both politics and education. Reagan's new
federalism philosophy called for reduced taxes and reduced
federal spending for social programs, including education, as
well as decentralization of responsibility for, and control over,

6. domestic issues to state and local governments. It also proposed
greater involvement of the business community in supporting
schools and setting educational goals and standards. The
conservative position was articulated by members of the so-
called New Right, who were associated with the Washington-
based think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and centrist
conservatives with ties to another conservative think tank, The
American Enterprise Institute.
Both groups expressed concern about the expanded involvement
of the federal government in education. Both attributed the
"rising tide of mediocrity" in American education to the "failed
social experiments" of the 1960s and to excessive federal
intervention in schools. However, although the New Right
would have eliminated almost all federal involvement in
education, abolished the Department of Education, and
downgraded civil rights regulations, the centrist conservatives
saw some federal involvement as necessary to identify the
national interest in education and promote its accomplishment,
to ensure the perpetuation of a common culture, and to promote
educational equity, albeit on a limited basis (Pincus, 1985).
Driving the conservative agenda was the fact that many
conservatives blamed the schools for the social unrest of the
1960s and early 1970s, and for many of the social problems that
they saw as undermining the moral fabric of the country. "The
popular opinion of this period suggested that poor education
was contributing to the difficulties facing America in
unemployment and job loss" (Good, 2010, p. 368).
Both the New Right and centrist conservatives favored greater
accountability, higher standards, tuition tax credits, increased
parental choice, and an expanded role for private schools. The
New Right advocated for prayer in schools and the elimination
of all things deemed to be associated with so-called secular
humanism, while the centrist conservatives were more

7. concerned that the schools teach the basic values of the
American capitalist society (Pincus, 1985). Initially, the Reagan
administration's education agenda, as well as its rhetoric,
closely followed that of the New Right, though throughout much
of his time in office, Reagan's actions, if not his words, seemed
more in keeping with the centrist position.
One of the major items on Reagan's education agenda was to
reduce the number, complexity, and confusion of federal
education programs. As discussed in Chapter 8, the 1960s and
1970s had witnessed a proliferation of these programs, and by
1980 their number had risen to over 500 (Rosmiller, 1990).
Most of them were directed at children not in the mainstream of
the education system and were intended to supplement, not
supplant, state and local funds. In an effort to ensure that both
of these directives were met, a plethora of often confusing and
sometimes conflicting rules and regulations were promulgated.
As time went on and the number of programs increased, so did
disenchantment with the red tape, duplication, and bureaucracy
that accompanied federal aid.
President Ronald Reagan.
Photri Images/SuperStock
While simplifying the large number of educational programs to
eliminate red tape, Reagan also cut funding across the board for
those same educational programs.
In keeping with his own agenda and the 1980 Republican Party
platform to "replace the crazy quilt of wasteful programs with a
system of block grants that will restore decision making to local
officials," one of Reagan's first major proposals was to
consolidate Title I of the ESEA, the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act, the Emergency School Aid Act, and
the Adult Education Act into one block grant (called Chapter 1),
and most of the other elementary and secondary programs into a
second block (called Chapter 2).

8. The legislation that Congress enacted, the Education
Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) of 1981 in the end
did not combine Title I with the other acts, but it did
consolidate 33 elementary and secondary categorical programs
into one single block grant. But Chapter 2 was the most visible
indicator of the attempt to shift power from the federal
government to the states and local school districts. Chapter 2
made a lump sum distribution of funds to each state based on a
formula that considered the number and kinds of students in
each state, and it allowed states to reallocate funds to local
schools on whatever basis they deemed appropriate.
The ECIA thus incorporated Reagan's new federalism—
"decentralization, simplification, and increased flexibility—in
an attempt to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of
educational programs at the local level" (Darling-Hammond &
Marks, 1983, p. ix).
However, Reagan's funding proposal for the entire block was
less than what had formerly been spent for the ESEA alone. In
fact, in every budget request made while he was in office,
Reagan proposed reductions in federal spending for education.
From fiscal years 1980 to 1989, federal funds for elementary
and secondary education declined by 17% and for higher
education by 27% in constant dollars (Snyder & Dillow, 2013).
So, although the ECIA did deliver less red tape, it also
delivered fewer services. After years of increased federal
funding, the effect of ECIA was dramatic.
9.2 The School Reform Movement
Another major concern of the Reagan administration was to
respond to concerns about school quality. In the 1950s, Sputnik
and technological competition with the Soviet Union had
focused attention on the education system. In the 1980s,
economic competition with the Japanese and a deteriorating
domestic economy brought the education system into the
forefront of public debate once again, and with it a return to the

9. belief that education is directly linked to the economic well-
being of the nation (Horn, 2002).
Although some historians question the economic justification
for school reform in the 1980s, the very fact that schools were
seen as tools for solving the nation's economic problems
overwhelmed their other popular and historic purposes (Cuban
& Shipp, 2000). For almost two centuries, public schools had
been expected to promote citizenship, cultivate the moral and
social development of students, and unite diverse groups into
one nation. In the 1980s, as public schools were asked to build
the human capital believed to be necessary for the nation to
maintain its place as the world's economic leader, these other
purposes appeared to be distractions (Cuban & Shipp, 2000).
With the shift to a business purpose came an increased
prominence of the business community and business principles
in planning school reform. The public schools, as well as
colleges and universities, struggled to find ways to apply such
business beliefs as total quality management (TQM) to their
operations, and business leaders became the heads of
prestigious reform commissions.
In response to the concerns about the quality of the schools, as
well as to their newly stated importance in arresting the nation's
declining economic and intellectual competitiveness, Reagan's
Secretary of Education, Terrel H. Bell, appointed a National
Commission on Excellence in Education. Its report, A Nation at
Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (1983), used
strong and stirring language to describe a "rising tide of
mediocrity in education" and an educational system that was
failing America's youth. Commissioners declared that it would
have been seen as "an act of war" if any unfriendly power had
imposed the nation's education system on it.
The report was particularly critical of four things: (1) the

10. curriculum, which it said had been "homogenized, diluted, and
diffused"; (2) lowered expectations in terms of grades, testing,
and graduation and college entry requirements; (3) decreased
time spent on academic subjects; and (4) the teaching force and
its training. A Nation at Risk called for a nationwide (but not
federally supported or administered) system of standardized
tests of achievement:
This call for a nationwide system of tests marked a new era of
federal education policy, an era in which educational
opportunities would be measured not so much in terms of
financial aid, special programs, or even racial desegregation
but, rather, in terms of standardized tests. (New York Education
Department, 2009, p. 49)
A Nation at Risk has been described by some as a "bombshell"
on the American education scene, by others as a "call to action,"
and by still others as a "conservative call to arms" (Horn, 2002).
Whereas Sputnik had focused the nation's attention on the fears
attendant to the Cold War, A Nation at Risk focused attention
on the fears attendant to competition in the global economy
(Johanningmeier, 2010). Once again education critics and
reformers called for public schools to provide more and better
science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction
(Johanningmeier, 2010).
There is no question that the report was a landmark in the
history of education reform in the United States, one that has
lasted more than 40 years and spanned both Democratic and
Republican administrations (Johanningmeier, 2010). Its
recommendations (see the From the Archives feature box)
became the blueprint for widespread reform at both the state
and local levels and for the entire K–12 system, even though the
Commission focused only on the high school and its criticisms
were addressed only at this level (Good, 2010).
Throughout the 1980s, numerous other reports on the status of

11. education, both nationally and in many states, from various
institutions, foundations, educational organizations, government
agencies, political associations, and academic researchers
followed A Nation at Risk. A number of these were sponsored
by the business community.
The reports were motivated by the confluence of two different
public concerns. One was America's seeming economic decline
and loss of international power, which had been based on the
nation's scientific and technological preeminence. A second
concern was certain negative trends in American education: low
test scores, lower enrollments in math and science, a weakening
teaching staff in many schools, and low math and science scores
on international tests (American Association for the
Advancement of Science, 1990). Collectively, the reports were
responsible for what has been referred to as the educational
reform movement, or the excellence movement.
Although few educators would have questioned the need for
some school reform in the 1980s—indeed one could hardly cite
any time in history when the schools or any other institution
could not benefit from some reform—many members of the
education community expressed skepticism that a "crisis" in
education existed or that the schools had failed. Perhaps the
most cited challenge to the reformers was Berliner and Biddle's
(1995) The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack
on America's Public Schools, an excerpt from which is included
as a Primary Source Reading for this chapter.
Berliner and Biddle contended that the reform reports used
questionable techniques to analyze data, distorted findings, and
suppressed contradictory evidence that refuted their major
conclusions. Berliner and Biddle's own research showed that
there had in fact been no decline in achievement test scores,
students were outperforming their parents, and they performed
well on international exams. In other words, the so-called crisis

12. in American education did not exist.
Despite their critics, though, the various reform reports painted
a picture of an education system in crisis, and politicians, the
business community, and educators turned their attention to
reforming the schools. The school reform movement that
followed has been characterized as having three waves
(Murphy, 1990).
Reform: The First Wave
The first wave of the school reform movement, dating from
1982 to 1985, responded to the recommendations of A Nation at
Risk and similar reports and acted on the assumption that the
schools could be fixed by top-down state actions directed at
improving achievement and accountability. These reforms
reflected, in part, the corporate formula for success:
Set clear goals and high standards for employees. Restructure
operations so that managers and employees who actually make
the product decide how it is to be done efficiently and
effectively. Then hold those managers and employees
responsible for the quality of the product by rewarding those
who meet or exceed their goals and punishing those who fail.
(Cuban, 2001, p. 178)
States enacted higher graduation requirements, standardized
curriculum mandates, raised certification requirements for
teachers, and increased the testing of both teachers and
students. School districts increased their emphasis on computer
literacy, homework, and basic skills; established minimum
standards for participation in athletics; and privatized selected
school operations. A more detailed listing of the initiatives from
the first wave of reforms is provided in the From the Archives
feature box. These early policy initiatives, with their focus on
accountability, put tremendous pressure on local schools, in
most cases providing little help while increasing the overload

13. and fragmentation of reform efforts (Fullan, 2007).
Reform: The Second Wave
No sooner had the ink dried on the first wave of reform
measures than they came under attack for being inadequate and
misdirected. According to second wave reformers (1986–1989),
the first wave was wrong to try to prop up the existing system
because the system itself was the problem and needed
fundamental change. As articulated by the Carnegie Forum on
Education and the Economy (1986), "We do not believe the
educational system needs repairing; we believe it must be
rebuilt to match the drastic change in our economy if we are to
prepare our children for productive lives in the 21st century" (p.
14).
A Closer Look: A Nation at Risk
At the closing of the Cold War and the years immediately
following, the U.S. shifts from military and scientific
competition to economic competition internationally.
The second wave shifted the focus of reform from state-level
mandates to local-level school structures and processes. A
major theme was the redistribution of power among the schools'
critical stakeholders. The belief was that the most effective
reforms were those that emanated from those closest to the
students—namely, educators and parents. Recommendations
from such noted educators as John Goodlad, Theodore Sizer,
and Ernest Boyer called for change from the bottom up, not
from the top down, and dealt with such issues as
decentralization, site-based management, teacher empowerment,
parental involvement, and school choice.
Restructuring, the buzzword of the second wave of reform, was
associated with a number of prescriptions: year-round schools,
longer school days and years, recast modes of governance,
alternative funding patterns, all-out commitments to technology,

14. and various combinations of these and other proposals (Kaplan,
1990). The second wave of reform also sought to balance the
first wave's concern over the impact of education on the
economy and the push for excellence with a concern for equity
and the disadvantaged students who might become further
disadvantaged by the "new standards of excellence."
The second wave reform reports also stressed increased
professionalism among educators. Proposals included not only
teacher empowerment but also the reform of teacher training.
One of the major proposals was presented in A Nation Prepared:
Teachers for the 21st Century (1986) by the Carnegie Forum on
Education and the Economy. The report called for teacher
preparation to be transferred from the undergraduate to the
graduate level and for "lead teachers" to be appointed in every
school to assist in supervising and mentoring new teachers and
in curriculum development.
It also recommended the establishment of a system of national
certification for teachers based on standards established by the
profession, not by state departments of education. Out of this
recommendation grew the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards (NBPTS). Since it began work in 1987, the
NBPTS has not only developed standards for teaching but also
created certification in 25 fields.
The certification fields are structured around student
development levels (early childhood, middle childhood, early
adolescence, adolescence, and young adulthood) and subject
areas (art, career and technical education, English as new
language, English language arts, exceptional needs, health,
library media, literacy, mathematics, music, physical education,
school counseling, science, social studies–history, and world
languages). The attainment of national board certification came
to be associated with teacher competency; in 2014 the majority
of states and hundreds of school districts offered financial or

15. other incentives to teachers who received national board
certification.
The same year the Carnegie report was published, the Holmes
Group, a consortium of deans of colleges of education and chief
academic officers from major research universities, also
released a plan for the reforming of teacher education.
Tomorrow's Teachers, as it was called, also proposed that the
preparation of teachers take place at the graduate level, a
proposal that generated significant controversy. However,
although a number of Holmes Group institutions did move to a
5-year teacher education program, the costs to students, as well
as to school districts, when all beginning teachers entered with
master's degrees, limited wide-scale adoption of the proposal.
In the years immediately following the release of Tomorrow's
Teachers, there was considerable debate and activity concerning
the reform of teacher education, but within a decade, by the
time the Holmes Group released Tomorrow's Schools of
Education (1995), the initial momentum for reform had become
more diffuse (Fullan, 2007).
At the same time that these attempts were made to reform
teacher education, a growing shortage of teachers plagued the
American education system. Over the objection of teachers'
unions, the latter part of the 1980s saw an increase in states
allowing alternative routes to certification. These programs
were aimed at noneducation college graduates who had an
academic major in a subject matter taught in the schools.
Unions saw the practice of alternative certification as a threat to
teacher professionalism by allowing what they considered
underprepared individuals to enter the classroom. Nonetheless,
with the continued demand for teachers, the number of states
offering alternative certification grew from 8 in 1986 to 47 in
2010.

16. Reform: The Third Wave
The third wave of reform began in 1988, and, like its
predecessor, it started with a critique of the previous wave
(Murphy, 1990). This group of reformers proposed a more
comprehensive model of change than did the two previous
waves. Instead of focusing on the education system, as did the
first wave, or the adults in it, as did the second wave, the third
wave reformers focused on children and looked beyond the
school to seek a comprehensive system for delivering services
to them. Third wave reformers spoke in terms of children's
policies rather than school policies. They envisioned a major
redesign of programs, with both the family and the school at the
center of the service wheel (Murphy, 1990). Other comparisons
between the third wave and the first two waves are presented in
Table 9.1.
The Schools' Response
The response of state and local education systems to the various
reform agendas suggests that they did not concern themselves
with "waves" marked by changing directions. Rather, they
looked at them as a broad set of policy recommendations, which
they considered in timeframes that reflected their own needs
(Firestone, Furhman, & Kirst, 1990). In the final analysis, the
recommendations that involved the least redistribution of
money, status, or authority and those that were the least
expensive and the least complex (for example, increasing
graduation requirements) most often were adopted, whereas
those with the opposite characteristics (such as lengthening the
school year) were under adopted or not adopted at all (Firestone
et al., 1990).
Thus, first wave strategies were more widely adopted than were
the proposals of the second and third waves. For instance,
immediately following the release of A Nation at Risk,
California enacted omnibus education legislation that among
other things increased graduation requirements, expanded
student testing, and increased school funding (Adams, n.d.).

17. Other states followed. As discussed at the conclusion of this
chapter, the reform movement brought policy changes at all
levels of government, changes in governance structures, and
shifts in control among key actors and among levels of
government.
9.3 Essentialism, Perennialism, and Progressivism Revisited
In addition to the numerous reports issued by various
commissions, foundations, and organizations, education
scholars from across the ideological spectrum lent their voices
to the chorus of reform recommendations.
The Essentialists
Among the most influential and public were a group of
essentialist scholars associated with the back-to-basics
movement, which had begun in the late 1970s as a response to a
perceived lack of rigor in the curriculum and the decline in
standardized test scores (scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test
fell almost 60 points in the 1970s). With its emphasis on
academic subjects and the transmission of a core body of
knowledge, the back-to-basics movement was a revisitation of
the essentialist positions of the 1940s and the back-to-basics
push by Bestor, Rickover, and others.
One of the individuals most identified with this neo-essentialist
movement was E. D. Hirsch, Jr. In his 1987 best-seller, Cultural
Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which became
a manifesto for the back-to-basics movement, Hirsch identified
5,000 names, dates, facts, and concepts from the fields of art,
religion, science, and culture that he maintained an individual
must know in order to be considered educated. Cultural literacy,
he claimed, had become the "common currency for social and
economic exchange in our democracy" and was therefore "the
only available ticket to citizenship" and "the only sure avenue
of opportunity for disadvantaged children" (p. xiii).
Cultural Literacy was such a success in the popular press that

18. Hirsch followed it with a dictionary of cultural literacy and
books about what children should know at various grade levels.
He also developed a core knowledge curriculum that is still
promoted by the Core Knowledge Foundation, founded in 1986.
Hirsch's critics charge him with elitism and with promoting a
Eurocentric view of the world that ignores the contributions of
minorities to American culture. He has also been criticized for
elevating rote memorization over critical thinking and higher-
order reasoning, and for producing lists that fail to promote
understanding of content and context. Still, the Core Knowledge
Curriculum has been adopted by hundreds of schools
nationwide, and volumes in Hirsch's Core Knowledge series,
which began with What Your Preschooler Needs to Know, have
been national bestsellers and remain popular with
homeschooling parents.
In a similar vein to Hirsch's work was Diane Ravitch and
Chester Finn's What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (1987). After
analyzing the results of the history and literature sections of the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Ravitch
and Finn concluded that the students had failed in both subjects.
They then advanced the essentialist position that there is a body
of knowledge that is so important it should be possessed by all
Americans.
Another very visible essentialist was the secretary of education
during much of Reagan's second term, William Bennett. While
secretary, Bennett designed the curriculum for the model
essentialist high school, James Madison High School (1987) and
the model elementary school, James Madison Elementary
School (1988). According to Bennett's design, all students
except those in vocational programs would have the same
curriculum of high academic standards. Bennett also used his
position as a "bully pulpit" to advance the administration's (and
his) moral crusade against abortion and for the "Just Say No"

19. drug policy, abstinence, and prayer in the schools.
The Neo-Perennialists
Separate from the neo-essentialists, but also supportive of a
more traditional curriculum, were the neo-perennialists,
represented by Mortimer Adler and Allan Bloom. In The Paideia
Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982), Adler presented a
plan for K–12 educational reform. Adler, like Robert Hutchins
(see Chapter 7), his former colleague at the University of
Chicago, opposed a differentiated curriculum (that is,
vocational, technical, academic) and maintained that all
students in a democratic society should be exposed to the same
high-quality education, one that included language, literature,
mathematics, natural sciences, fine arts, history, geography, and
social studies. Also similar to Hutchins, Adler maintained that
by studying the Great Books, one could learn the enduring
lessons of life.
In 1988 Adlter established the National Paideia Center at the
University of North Carolina to develop and promote programs
that focus on pedagogy and school reform. The center continues
to disseminate information and research and train educators in
Paideia principles and methods to this day.
Bloom delivered a similar message regarding the higher
education curriculum. In The Closing of the American Mind
(1987), he stressed the importance of teaching and learning
from the Great Books and the responsibility of education to
transmit our cultural heritage to our children. Bloom argued that
universities no longer taught students how to think or the
lessons that could be learned from studying the past, and he
maintained that technology, cultural diversity, and other
popularized courses had been introduced into the curriculum at
the expense of the classics. Bloom's indictment of academia
sold more than a million copies and is still quoted by those who
see the universities as "beds of liberalism."

20. The Progressives
Another call for change and another philosophical position was
represented by Theodore Sizer, the former dean of the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, described by Ravitch (2000) as
"the leading voice of contemporary American progressivism" (p.
418). Published shortly after A Nation at Risk, Sizer's Horace's
Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (1984)
did not offer a set of top-down reform recommendations but
proposed a set of nine principles that could be individualized to
guide reform in any community. Among them were that teaching
and learning be personalized to the maximum extent possible
and that school staffs be empowered to make the majority of
educational decisions.
According to Sizer, the goal of the school should be simple: to
ensure that each student masters a limited number of essential
intellectual, emotional, and social skills and areas of
knowledge. He was not concerned with the quantity of learning
(in fact, he proposed that the curriculum consist of only three
areas: math/sciences, history/philosophy, and the arts), but
rather with its quality and that it be personalized to the
maximum extent feasible. He maintained that the central focus
of the schools should be the intellect and helping students to
use their minds well.
Sizer established an organization called the Coalition of
Essential Schools to promote his reform ideas. Beginning with
12 schools in 1984, 30 years later hundreds of schools
nationally and internationally have become members of the
coalition.
Also associated with the new progressivism was the pedagogical
theory of constructivism. As noted in Chapter 7, constructivism
builds on the theoretical framework of Bruner and Piaget and is
based on the premise that learning is an active process by which

21. students construct their own meaning and understanding by
reflecting on their past experiences and accumulated knowledge.
By the mid-1980s, constructivism had become the dominant
idea among education theorists, who quoted Dewey and Piaget
to argue that students would only be motivated to learn if they
were actively involved in the learning process, constructing
their own knowledge through their own experiences (Ravitch,
2000).
9.4 National Goals, National Standards, and Accountability
By the end of the 1980s, despite the adoption of myriad reform
initiatives, the reform and restructuring of education proposed
by the various commissions and individuals did not appear to
have produced any significant change in educational outputs. As
a result, the quality of education and the perceived need to "fix"
it remained major topics of public debate.
Opening the Door to Goals and Standards: The Bush
Administration
Responding to ongoing criticism of both education and his
administration's failure to offer any remedies or enact any
significant federal legislation, President George H. W. Bush co-
convened, with the National Governors Association, an
"education summit" at Charlottesville, Virginia, in the fall of
1989. It was chaired by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and
attended by business leaders, but no educators.
The summit was the first meeting of the governors and the
president since the Great Depression, a fact that alone made it a
noteworthy event (New York State Education Department,
2009). The governors agreed that the states should focus on
raising student achievement, raising academic standards, and
holding schools accountable. There was also agreement on the
need for the creation of national education goals.
Accordingly, in early 1990, the National Governors' Association
and the Bush administration announced six national education

22. goals to be accomplished by the year 2000 (see Goals 1–3 and
5–7 in From the Archives: The National Education goals) and
created a National Goals Panel to monitor and report on
progress toward meeting the goals (but without any means to
support or enforce implementation).
President George H.W. Bush talks education reform at his
Education Summit in 1989 while Iowa Governor Terry Branstad,
left, and Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos, right, look on.
Associated Press/Doug Mills
Despite his efforts to restructure the American educational
system, President George H. W. Bush did not make any
significant impact on fixing U.S. schools.
Bush's plan to implement the goals, America 2000: An
Education Strategy, presented to Congress in April of 1991,
called for the creation of "world class" national standards and
voluntary national standardized tests for assessing their
attainment. Bush was unable to gain congressional support for
his plan, largely because of controversy surrounding one of its
key features—vouchers to promote school choice (discussed in
Section 9.5)—but also because of concern from liberals over the
testing provisions and from conservatives over usurpation of
state power and how it would be funded.
Ultimately Bush decided not to continue to push passage of the
bill. However, in the last 2 years of his administration, he was
able to provide grants to the professional organizations in the
major subject areas of the arts, civics and government, foreign
languages, geography, history, and science to develop voluntary
national standards. The math standards already developed by the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in response to A
Nation at Risk served as a model for the other groups.
"The Education President": The Clinton Administration
The election of 1992 saw education assume a place of
prominence on the political agenda that it had never held

23. before. As observed by Terrel H. Bell, the secretary of
education under President Reagan:
George Bush proclaimed himself to be the "Education
President" during his successful 1988 campaign. President Bill
Clinton brought the less-than-spectacular Bush record in
education to the attention of the voters during the campaign of
1992 and promised to be a more effective "Education
President." This has never happened in the nation's history.
Education is now a major, high priority national concern, as
well as a state and local responsibility. (1993, p. 595)
Known as an "education governor," Clinton came to the
presidency talking excellence and accountability, the
catchwords of state school reform during the 1980s (Newman,
1998). The Clinton administration did, in fact, attempt to honor
its commitment to education. Its first 2 years have been said to
be the most productive in terms of major education legislation
since 1965– 1966, and included increasing Head Start funding,
reforming the student loan program, funding violence
prevention programs, and supporting programs that link
education and the workplace (the School to Work Opportunities
Act), to name a few.
Clinton's first major education initiative, the Goals 2000:
Educate America Act, adopted the six goals articulated by the
National Governors' Association and added two new goals
related to parent participation and teacher education and
professional development (see the From the Archives feature
box, Goals 4 and 8). Goals 2000 was essentially a grant program
that supported standards-based systemic state reform. It was
different from other federal programs in that it did not target a
particular category of students or subjects; rather, it supported a
generic reform strategy that emphasized the development of
state standards and state assessments of progress toward
meeting them (New York State Education Department, 2009).

24. Goals 2000 served as a major source of funds to support
systemic reform efforts. By the end of Clinton's administration,
the initial funding of $94 million had grown to approximately
$500 million, and over 5,000 school districts received funds.
The adoption of Goals 2000 marked a turning point in the
direction of state and federal education policy: "Emphasis
shifted from educational inputs to educational outcomes and
from procedural accountability to educational accountability.
Equity was reconceptualized as ensuring all students access to
high-quality educational programs rather than providing
supplemental and often compensatory services" (Goertz, 2001,
p. 62). Thus, while many states had already begun standards-
based reform, Goals 2000 encouraged and accelerated the
process. The intent was that the majority of the funds from
Goals 2000 grants be spent at the local level. However, the
reliance on state-by-state initiatives meant that its impact varied
from state to state, district to district, and school to school.
The Clinton administration also reauthorized the ESEA, called
the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA). As a companion
to Goals 2000, the major purpose of this version of the ESEA
was also to encourage comprehensive reform at the state and
local levels to meet national goals. A major provision of the act
required states (with the input of local school districts) to
develop school improvement plans that established challenging
subject matter performance standards, to implement assessments
to measure progress in meeting those standards, and to adopt
measures to hold schools accountable for achievement of the
standards.
Unlike previous versions of the ESEA, it required that Title I
students be held to the same standards as non-Title I students
and that students with disabilities be included in state and local
assessment and accountability systems. Also, unlike previous
federal programs, which bypassed state education policies, these

25. initiatives were designed to be integrated with state and local
reform initiatives.
Opposition and Ongoing Calls for Reform
Although the standards movement received strong support from
the business community and the majority of the education
community, it did have its critics. Many conservatives, for
instance, remained concerned that national testing would result
in federal control of education. Still other critics were
concerned that the standards were being "dumbed down" and
that they focused too much on minorities and women or, more
generally, that they reflected a liberal bias.
Objections to the standards also came from religious groups
such as the Christian Coalition, which directed its criticism to
what was called outcome-based education. Some of the
standards included in student learning outcomes involved values
and attitudes (such as "give examples of your own positive and
negative impact on the environment and assess your personal
commitment to the environment"), which religious
conservatives challenged as potentially penalizing students who
gave the "wrong" answer or who gave an answer that reflected
so-called family values (Newman, 1998).
Still other religious groups and creationist organizations
challenged the science standards and sought to block the
teaching of evolution or at least promote the teaching of
intelligent design alongside evolution.
Controversy also arose over the history standards, in particular
how much attention should be given to non-Western
civilizations. So vocal were figures such as William Bennett in
promoting the study of Western culture and its intellectual
tradition, and waging war against world history and
international studies, that in 1995 the U.S. Senate passed a
resolution to reject the national history standards and require

26. that any recipient of federal money "have a decent respect for
the contributions of the Western civilization." As Lockard
(2000) asserts, "The resolution had no legal force, but the
ultimate effect on history education was chilly nonetheless" (p.
21).
Nevertheless, throughout the remainder of the 1990s, the calls
for school reform continued, and standards and accountability
became the key words in reform proposals. However, states and
school districts faced a number of difficulties in their efforts to
establish challenging academic standards and assessment
systems. And, in the absence of any federal review or approval
mechanism, states varied widely in the scope and rigor of their
standards, in what they measured, and in how they measured it.
In addition, in state after state, standards became battlegrounds
for ongoing "curriculum wars," as educators and policymakers
faced off over such issues as whole language versus phonics or
whose history to teach (Campbell, 2000).
Despite the challenges, and in no small part as a result of the
work of the various curriculum organizations, by the end of the
decade, content standards were in place in 47 states, along with
statewide assessments in 30 of them. Local school districts were
expected to align their curricula with the standards, and
colleges of education were expected to incorporate the
standards into their curricula and instruction.
This push for standards and standards-based assessment was
accompanied by the enactment in most states of so-called high-
stakes testing to determine who would be promoted and who
would graduate from high school. However, from the beginning
several states experienced serious problems with test
construction and, more importantly, with the high numbers of
students who failed the tests. In most states those who
performed the poorest on the exams were low-income and
minority students, especially those with limited English-

27. speaking ability and those from low-income, mostly urban
districts—the victims described in Jonathan Kozol's Savage
Inequalities (1991).
In response, states and school districts sought to ensure tests
contained no gender bias, ethnic or racial prejudice, or
socioeconomic favoritism, and they looked at alternative forms
of assessment. However, as discussed in Chapter 10, the No
Child Left Behind Act continued the use of standardized tests
that have important outcomes for students.
Simultaneous with the standards and assessment movement was
the accountability movement. States and school districts began
to issue "report cards" to parents and the general public, grading
schools on one or more quality or performance indicators.
Although the indicators varied somewhat, student performance
was always included.
States also differed widely in how they graded the schools, how
they measured improvement, the assistance they provided low-
performing schools, the penalties they enacted for continued
low performance, and the rewards they bestowed on high-
performing schools. Twenty states enacted legislation
authorizing the state to initiate takeover action when a school
was chronically underperforming and showed inadequate
improvement, but in only a limited number of cases did state
officials have the political will to take such action.
9.5 School Choice
Although some indicators, such as SAT scores, did show
improvement in the wake of the reform movement, an increasing
number of parents demanded the right to send their children to
the school of their choice.
Support for school choice came from parents across the
socioeconomic and ideological spectrum. Low-income and
minority parents saw choice as a way to extend educational

28. opportunities to students who historically had not had the
resources to choose between public and private schools, or even
among public schools. Other parents saw choice as providing
the opportunity to protect their children from violence or to
provide them with a more academically challenging or enriching
experience. Religious conservatives saw choice as a way to
support schools that promoted a particular religious ideology.
However, despite the fact that almost all parents and politicians
supported the concept that parents should be given greater
choice in the schools their children attended, how this was to be
achieved was very much in debate. The most often seriously
considered approaches were school vouchers, charter schools,
and privatization. Yet another option, homeschooling, while not
new, also grew in popularity.
Vouchers
Education vouchers are certificates issued by a state, school
district, or the federal government for a specific sum of money,
which a parent can take to a school of their choice and apply
toward the cost of tuition. As previously noted, President Bush
had unsuccessfully proposed federal vouchers as part of his
America 2000 plan. In 1996, Republican presidential candidate
Robert Dole proposed vouchers that could be used at public as
well as private schools. Supporters argued that giving financial
grants to consumers and treating education as a "consumable
item," subject to the forces of the marketplace, would force
schools to operate more efficiently.
Although not rejecting the concept of vouchers, Democrats
opposed their use at parochial schools. They argued that this
would violate the separation of church and state. Other
opponents, including teachers' unions, also opposed vouchers
because they worried that vouchers would shift money from the
chronically underfunded public schools to private ones. They
were also concerned that vouchers would exacerbate inequities

29. and stratification by race, color, or class. Since the private
school would be free to charge a tuition greater than the value
of the voucher, many low-income parents would not be able to
afford to supplement the voucher. In the end, voucher opponents
argued that the schools should be improved, not abandoned.
With the prospect of federal vouchers in gridlock, several states
considered their own voucher proposals. Only two, Wisconsin
and Ohio, ultimately adopted voucher plans, with programs
being initiated in Milwaukee in 1990 and Cleveland in 1995.
Although the Milwaukee program initially did not include
religious schools, in 1995 it was expanded to include them, as
had the Cleveland program from its inception.
Both programs were immediately challenged in the courts.
Conflicting lower court decisions regarding whether the use of
the vouchers at religious schools was an unconstitutional
support of religion paved the way for appeals to the U.S.
Supreme Court. In 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to
review the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision upholding the
Milwaukee program (Jackson v. Benson, 1998). In 2002 the
Court ruled that the Cleveland program, which was aimed at
providing students with scholarships of up to $2,250 to attend
the school of their parents' choice, was not unconstitutional as
long as parents had a choice among a range of public and
nonpublic schools (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 2002).
Following the Zelman decision, voucher supporters anticipated
their widespread adoption. However, while voucher bills have
been introduced in over half the states, this did not happen, in
large part because the increasing number of other school choice
options, in particular charter schools, led to decreased interest
in pursuing the voucher alternative. In most states where
vouchers have been approved, they are for low-income students,
special needs students, or students attending a low-performing
or failing school.

30. Charter Schools
Charter schools, publicly supported nonsectarian schools
established by the issuance of a charter (contract) from the state
department of education, local school board, public university,
or other designated entity, gained increasing favor in the 1990s.
Charter schools are intended to give greater autonomy to the
school (they are typically exempt from all state regulations
except those governing health and safety and civil rights),
encourage innovative programs and practices, promote
efficiency through competition, and most important, provide
greater choice in education programs to parents and students
within the public school system.
In 1991 Minnesota became the first state to enact legislation
providing for the establishment of charter schools. California
followed suit the next year. Arizona, the state with the most
liberal charter school legislation, came aboard in 1993. The
Arizona law, which allows any individual or group to apply for
a charter, led to many false starts and charter school closures,
many times leaving students in the lurch.
Teachers' unions have not opposed the concept of charter
schools outright (in fact, NEA affiliates in several states applied
for charters [Newman, 1998]), and the AFT has voiced support
for the freedom charter schools would provide teachers.
However, teachers' unions have opposed state charter school
laws that, like those in Arizona, do not require teachers in
charter schools to be certified.
Charter schools have received support across the political and
ideological spectrum and have been called the "all things to all
people reform":
Free-market conservatives see them as a way to enhance
competition in education and a step in the direction of vouchers.

31. Teachers union leaders such as the late Albert Shanker see them
as a way to increase the power of teachers. Cultural
conservatives hope that they will increase parental control over
the values taught in schools their children attend, while those
interested in restructuring schools see them as a way to further
their goals. Moderate Democrats hope that charter schools will
provide parental choice, competition and accountability while
avoiding actual privatization through school vouchers. (Bulkley,
2005, p. 527)
The Republican takeover of many state legislatures in 1994 lent
support to the charter school movement, as did President
Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address, when he pledged
$100 million to help create 3,000 more charter schools by the
year 2002. Charter schools received additional support from
President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which
allowed students attending underperforming schools to transfer
to a charter school and allowed failing schools to be
reorganized into charter schools. Additional support was
provided by President Obama's Race to the Top program (see
discussion in Chapter 10).
Today almost 5,300 charter schools operate in 41 states and the
District of Columbia, with Arizona, California, Florida,
Michigan, and Texas having the largest numbers (Snyder &
Dillow, 2013). As the charter school movement has grown, it
has changed from an effort to provide alternative and innovative
approaches to a small number of students into a "nationally
funded effort by foundations, investors, and educational
management companies to create a parallel, more privatized
system" (Karp, 2013, p. 3).
Private Contractors
Another favorite policy reform among choice advocates was to
allow private contractors to bid to provide various services to
the schools. The assumption was that private contractors would

32. operate more effectively and efficiently than public schools.
The practice of contracting with private companies or
individuals outside the school system for services (such as
transportation, food services, and custodial services) has been
around since the establishment of the first New England
schools. However, such contracts typically had not been for the
delivery of instructional or administrative services. In the 1990s
the push for efficiency and privatization opened the door, often
over objections of teacher groups, for an expansion of the
concept to include these professional domains.
Some districts contracted with for-profit firms to tutor students
to raise test scores or to deliver other instructional services.
Other districts contracted for leadership or instructional
services (for example, Minneapolis contracted with a private
firm for an employee to serve as superintendent of schools).
Others went so far as to contract with for-profit firms such as
Educational Alternatives Incorporated (EAI) or the Edison
Schools to operate one or more public schools.
The outcomes of these experiments varied. Many of the contract
schools were located in disadvantaged urban areas. In a number
of cases, the most public being the 2-year EAI experiment in
Baltimore, the contract was not renewed either because of
political controversy or underperformance. The most successful
of the private contractors was the Edison Schools, which by the
end of the 1990s operated over 100 schools in 20 states.
Although the move to contract with private, for-profit firms did
not expand as widely as was originally anticipated, it was given
added life by its association with the charter school movement.
That is, some charter schools hired private contractors to run
their programs. In fact, in a number of states, including Arizona
and Michigan, private contractors became major players in the
charter school movement. In Michigan 70% of the charter
schools came to be operated by education management

33. organizations (Arsen, Plank, & Sykes, 2001). The convergence
of the choice strategies has thus proven to benefit both private
contractors and charter schools.
Homeschooling
Homeschooling is, in effect, a form of private schooling.
Throughout history some parents have chosen to educate their
children at home, whether by themselves or with the help of
private tutors or a friend or family member. Homeschooling is a
legally recognized alternative to attendance at a public or
private school in all states. The major motivations of parents
who homeschool include concerns about the curriculum or
quality of public schools, concerns about safety, and the desire
to provide religious instruction to their child.
The major controversy surrounding homeschooling focuses on
how much a state can, or should, regulate the home school. In
most states home schools are legally under the supervision of
the local school district, but in practice, districts typically
provide little monitoring or supervision. Most states require
home schools to be periodically assessed for academic progress,
that periodic reports be made to local authorities, and that a
minimum number of hours of instruction per day be provided.
The number of children being homeschooled in the United
States almost doubled between 1993 and 2007, from 85,000 to
1.5 million.
9.6 Cultural and Gender Wars
The Republican takeover of the U.S. Congress and many state
legislatures in the 1994 elections put Clinton's educational goals
in conflict with a renewed conservative agenda and signaled an
escalation of what historian Joel Spring (2010) describes as the
"cultural wars." The major battles of the cultural wars were
waged over bilingual and multicultural education.
Despite the attention focused on school reform and standards
and accountability, and although some indicators, such as SAT

34. scores, had improved, large numbers of parents continued to be
dissatisfied with a school system that valued diversity over
diction and affirmative action over arithmetic. They demanded
greater control over curriculum content and materials and the
end of multicultural and bilingual education and affirmative
action.
Bilingual Education Debate
Bilingual education became a major political target during the
Reagan and Bush administrations. Some Republicans supported
a movement opposing bilingual education and promoting the
adoption of English as the official language of the United
States, insisting that it be the language used in conducting
public affairs and voting. The movement was led by such
ultraconservative groups as U.S. English, English First, and
Save Our Schools.
In 1981 Reagan's secretary of education withdrew the proposed
federal regulations for compliance with the Lau decision (see
Chapter 8) and left it up to the states to decide which bilingual
education model to support. Unlike previous administrations,
Reagan supported the English immersion programs that had
been used with earlier immigrant groups. The change
symbolized the intractable and heated controversy surrounding
bilingual education: which bilingual education program model
(transition, immersion, or maintenance) works best, whether any
work, or, more fundamentally, whether they are needed at all.
In states such as Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, where
large numbers of language minority students were
underperforming and dropping out of school, it was clear that
something needed to be done. Many believed bilingual
education was a key way to reach these students. They cited
study after study showing bilingual education's cognitive,
social, and emotional benefits.

35. However, opponents argued that the time and money bilingual
education required could be better spent elsewhere, that
providing bilingual education actually discouraged children
from using English by allowing them to function in school
without it, and that bilingual education was harmful to their
academic progress. They also argued that bilingual education,
like multicultural education, promoted cultural separatism, not
cultural unity. This argument was especially common among
those who saw the primary goal of the school as transmitting a
core body of knowledge and the cultural values of the dominant
society.
Opposition was particularly strong to bilingual maintenance
programs, which deliver instruction in both English and the
native language and seek to promote fluency in both. Critics
charged that such programs produced students who spoke
neither language well and were not prepared to succeed in an
English-dominated society. Supporters counterclaimed that the
programs were not a threat to the core academic program, but
that they served a vital role in reform of the education system
and in the attainment of equal educational opportunity for not
only language minority students, but all students.
The 1988 amendments to the Bilingual Education Act reflected
the success of the opposition to the bilingual maintenance
model. These amendments provided additional funding for
English-only instructional programs and decreased funding for
bilingual ones. The act also limited student participation in
bilingual programs to 3 years.
Opposition to native language teaching continued in the 1990s
and grew to include many immigrant parents, who became
concerned that their children routinely remained segregated in
bilingual programs for at least 3 years, and in some cases more
than 6 years. Nowhere was the opposition more heated than in
California. In 1994 California voters passed Proposition 187,

36. banning undocumented immigrants from public education as
well as from receiving other social services. Supporters
believed that the denial of services would decrease illegal
immigration. (The proposition was later declared
unconstitutional.)
Jose Antonio Gonzales, left, applauds the passing of
California's Proposition 227. Author Ron Unz, middle, and
other children, right, look out toward the media gathering.
Associated Press/Chris Pizzello
Opposition to bilingual education grew during the 1980s and
1990s. This opposition culminated in the passing of California's
Proposition 227 in 1998, which called for the end of bilingual
classes in California public schools.
Another volley in the cultural wars in California came in July
1995, when the regents of the University of California adopted a
policy eliminating the consideration of race and gender from
admission decisions.
Then, in 1998, California voters approved another referendum,
Proposition 227, the so-called English for the Children
initiative, which mandated that limited-English-proficiency
(LEP) students be taught in a special English immersion
program for no more than 1 year before being mainstreamed
into the regular classroom.
Two years later a similar initiative, Proposition 203, was
overwhelmingly approved in Arizona. Several other states have
also considered English-only initiatives. Concerns and debate,
far from fading, have continued into the next century.
Pioneers in Education: Jaime Escalante
The Teacher Who Stood and Delivered
Jaime Escalante was born in La Paz, Bolivia, the son of two

37. teachers. He began his teaching career in Bolivia, where he
taught math and physics for 12 years before immigrating to the
United States in 1963. Once in Los Angeles he worked odd jobs,
learned English, and earned a college degree before deciding to
return to teaching. In 1974 he began teaching basic math at
Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, a barrio school
facing the loss of its accreditation. Initially discouraged by the
undereducated and unruly students, Escalante decided to teach
up rather than teach down, and without the support or
encouragement of his colleagues he began to teach more
advanced math classes.
He demanded a lot of his students and himself. In his fifth year
he decided to offer an Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus class.
The first year five students completed the class and two passed
the AP test. Two years later seven of nine passed the test and in
1981 14 of 15 students took and passed the AP calculus test.
Escalante's students studied before school, after school, and on
weekends with "Kimo," their nickname for Escalante inspired
by Tonto's nickname for the Lone Ranger, "Kemo Sabe," acting
as their coach and cheerleader (Woo, 2010).
Escalante gained national attention in 1982, when all 18 of his
Advanced Placement students passed the AP calculus exam but
14 had their scores invalidated by the Educational Testing
Service when they found similarities in the mistakes they made
on the exam. When asked to retake the exam, 12 agreed, and all
12 did well enough to have their scores reinstated. Escalante
and others contended that the actions were racially motivated.
True or not, they were vindicated when the next year the
number of Escalante's students passing the AP test doubled.
By 1987 Garfield and Escalante were attracting national
attention for their impressive success: "Those students—kids
from the barrios, kids not necessarily expected to graduate from
high school—went on to universities like MIT, Princeton, and

38. the University of California, Berkeley" (Lanier, 2010, p. 32).
The remarkable success of Escalante's students brought national
recognition, and in 1988 the Oscar nominated film Stand and
Deliver detailed the events of 1982 and Escalante's battle to
raise standards and aspirations at this largely Mexican
American school.
The attention given to Escalante generated jealousy among some
of the faculty at Garfield, and in 1991 Escalante left to take a
position at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento,
California. However, while the student AP pass rate at Hiram
Johnson was a very respectable 75%, he was never able to the
duplicate the AP pass rate at Garfield, a fact he attributed to
cultural differences and administrative turnover (Gardner,
2010).
When the debate over Proposition 227, the ballot measure to
dismantle bilingual education, erupted in California in 1998,
Escalante campaigned for its passage. The hate mail he received
for taking this position contributed to his decision to resign
from Hiram Johnson and return to Bolivia in 2001. However, it
was not to retire. In Bolivia he once again returned to teaching
(at a local university) but returned often to the United States to
visit his family and to lecture. Escalante died in Sacramento in
2010 after a long battle with cancer.
Jaime Escalante was a passionate teacher who sought to instill
that same passion in his students. Escalante touted ganas, the
desire to succeed, as the most important factor in the success of
his students.
The president of the College Board, the company that sponsors
the Advanced Placement exam and the very company that
challenged his students almost two decades earlier, paid this
tribute to Escalante:

39. Jaime Escalante has left a deep and enduring legacy in the
struggle for academic equity in American education. . . . His
passionate belief [was] that all students, when properly prepared
and motivated, can succeed at academically demanding course
work, no matter what their racial, social, or economic
background. Because of him, educators everywhere have been
forced to revise long-held notions of who can succeed. (Woo,
2010, p. 1)
Multicultural Education Under Fire
The civil rights movement brought an increase in ethnic pride
and increased pressure to recognize and respect the history and
contributions of each racial and ethnic group as well as women.
Schools began to offer such courses as cultural awareness,
African American history, Native American history, and ethnic
and gender studies.
In the 1980s and 1990s, as the reform movement and back-to-
basics movement sought to bring more "rigor" to the curriculum
and increase graduation requirements, opposition to the place of
such courses in the curriculum grew. Supporters of a basic
curriculum considered these courses "frills" and argued that
they undermined cultural unity and family values while
promoting radical feminism and gay rights. Perhaps equally
damning, they suggested that efforts to gain equal access and
equal educational opportunities undermined the pursuit of
excellence.
A Closer Look: Multicultural Education
In this video, the notion of multiculturalism is presented as a
valued-added aspect of schools and society.
In fact, beginning with the Reagan administration, excellence
was counterpoised as effectively the opposite of equity, and
many questioned whether the nation could have both (Bernard &
Mondale, 2001c); support for programs designed to promote

40. equity and multiculturalism declined. In response, proponents of
multicultural education argued that an excellent education is
multicultural and that those who seek equal educational
opportunities seek, in fact, an excellent education, not a lesser
one.
Many groups and individuals also expressed grave concerns
over the impact of the standards, testing, and accountability
movements on poor and minority children and the schools they
attended (for instance, the National Coalition of Advocates for
Students in Barriers to Excellence: Our Children at Risk [1988]
and Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities [1991]). Educators
and policy analysts noted growing economic segregation, as
well as the racial and ethnic resegregation discussed later in this
chapter, and documented their negative consequences. However,
the continued attention given to the perceived deficits in the
quality of American education ensured continued debate about
the place of multiculturalism in the curriculum.
According to Spring (2010), the cultural wars of the late 20th
century reflected "yet another battle in the centuries old effort
to make English and Anglo-American Protestant culture the
unifying language and culture of the United States" (p. 411).
The perceived threats coming from the civil rights movement
and the new waves of immigration from Mexico and Asia were
different, but the war was the same.
Gender Wars
As discussed in Chapter 8, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s,
feminist activism brought attention to the issue of gender equity
in the schools and resulted in significant gains in female
representation in the curriculum, athletics, scholarships, and the
professions. Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the
attention to gender issues in school continued to focus on the
barriers and the sexism females faced in achieving equal
educational opportunity. (See, for example, Shortchanging

41. Girls, Shortchanging America [AAUW, 1991]; How Schools
Shortchange Girls [AAUW, 1992]; Hostile Hallways [AAUW,
1993; AAUW, 2001b]; and Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still
Fail Our Children [AAUW, 1998].)
At the same time, the New Right unleashed what has come to be
understood as a backlash against feminism, an attempt to undo
the social and legal gains made by women and the acceptance of
feminist thought in the popular culture.
The backlash was a response to what feminists and their
supporters saw as myths created by the media, popular culture,
psychology, and right-wing conservatives about the mental,
physical, and emotional problems and sacrifices of career
women and their families; the dangers and costs of child care; a
"crisis of masculinity"; reverse discrimination; and other related
ills. According to Faludi (1991),
Just as Reaganism . . . shifted political discourse far to the right
and demonized liberalism, so the backlash convinced the public
that women's liberation was the true contemporary scourge—the
source of an endless laundry list of personal, social, and
economic problems. (p. 26)
Others consider the backlash to be an example of the "backlash
politics" that occurs when individuals or groups in society feel
they are declining in their perceived social, economic, and
political power and influence, while others are gaining power
and influence in these areas.
The backlash against feminism has not been as visible in
education as it has been in the larger society. However, it has
been reflected in charges of discrimination against males and in
claims that boys experience the most gender bias in the schools
(see, for example, Sommers [2000], The War Against Boys).

42. The response of the American Association of University
Women, Beyond the Gender Wars (2001a), acknowledged that
both boys and girls experience sexism. Other researchers, such
as David Sadker in the Primary Source Reading for this chapter,
however, refuted the charge that in the gender wars boys are the
victims and "girls rule." The disinterest of the first Bush
administration in supporting women's equity programs and
affirmative action were also reflections of, if not the backlash,
the mood of the times.
Resegregation
Also as discussed in Chapter 8, during the 1970s a number of
urban districts came under court orders to desegregate their
schools. Many of these districts were home to poor and minority
students and had tried in good faith for years to integrate their
schools. However, they were often frustrated in their efforts by
changing economic and community demographics that resulted
in many urban areas becoming increasingly populated by
minority students and the subsequent resegregation of the
schools.
In a series of decisions in the 1990s, a more conservative
Supreme Court responded to the plight of these districts. In
1991, in Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools
v. Dowell and in 1992 in Freeman v. Pitts, the Supreme Court
ruled that court-ordered desegregation can be terminated when
the school board had in good faith made efforts to comply with
the court order and had, to the extent practical, given history
and current conditions, eliminated the vestiges of past
discrimination. The decisions ended judicial oversight of
desegregation plans for a number of school districts and
provided them the opportunity to fashion new remedies that
appeared more likely to succeed given their circumstances.
In a landmark case in 1995, Missouri v. Jenkins, the Supreme
Court more specifically addressed what must be done and spent

43. in attempting to desegregate. The Kansas City school system
and the state of Missouri had reportedly spent $1.7 million
between 1986 and 1995 on a massive desegregation plan. The
Supreme Court ruled that desegregation plans should be limited
in time and scope and that their goals need not be to achieve
racial balance but to restore control to state and local
authorities as soon as possible. The Court ruled that once the
district had eliminated the effects of legally imposed
segregation, the schools could revert to their "natural" pattern
of segregation. According to the Court, "The Constitution does
not prevent individuals from choosing to live together, to work
together, or to send their children to school together, as long as
the state does not interfere with their choice on the basis of
race" (p. 2063).
The decisions in Dowell, Pitts, and Jenkins were viewed by
some as necessary corrections to judicial excesses. But many
others saw them as the Court turning its back on Brown (see
Chapter 8). Lower courts following the lead of the Supreme
Court declared districts to have achieved unitary status and
removed their judicial oversight.
The effect of these decisions has been a steady unraveling of 25
years of progress in integration, as school districts to bring an
end to busing and other desegregation strategies in favor of
neighborhood schools. Over 500 court-ordered and voluntary
desegregation plans were eliminated. Today, most major plans
have been eliminated despite powerful evidence of the harms of
school segregation: Separate remains unequal (Orfield, Kuscera,
& Siegel-Hawley, 2012).
The resegregation that has taken place affects both African
American and Hispanic students. In fact, for a number of years,
Hispanic American students have been more segregated than
African Americans, not only by ethnicity but also increasingly
by language (Orfield, 2001; Orfield, Frankenberg, & Lee,

44. 2003).
Segregation by race and ethnicity is also highly correlated to
segregation by class. The typical African American or Latina
student today attends a school with almost twice the percentage
of low-income students as the typical White or Asian American
student (Orfield et. al, 2012). And resegregation has increased.
In 2009, 80% of Latino and 74% of African American students
attended predominately minority schools, and 43% of Latinos
and 38% of African Americans attended schools that are 90% to
100% minority (Orfield et. al, 2012). In effect, although overall
school enrollment has become increasingly diverse, the nation's
schools are becoming increasingly segregated.
9.7 The End of a Presidency, a Decade, a Century
During President Clinton's second term, debate continued at the
federal level over whether there should be a Department of
Education, voluntary national testing, and private school choice.
The influence of the business community on education and the
emphasis on the importance of an educated workforce to
international competition begun during the Reagan
administration also continued. In fact, both were reinforced by a
second education summit sponsored by the National Governors
Association and held in 1996 at IBM's Executive Conference
Center in Palisades, New York. The summit included executives
of major national businesses but again, no educators.
Although faced with a larger Republican majority in Congress,
and weakened by personal scandals and threats of impeachment,
Clinton was able to increase federal spending for education. But
he was unable to advance any of his major education proposals.
Still overall,
The Clinton legacy—including IASA, Goals 2000, and
standards-based systemic reform changed the face of federal
education policy. The fundamental ideas informed the
reauthorization of not only the ESEA but also the Higher

45. Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act. All of these now require that schools and teachers serve in
a standards-based environment with challenging standards and
curricula for all students. If this shift did not immediately
achieve Clinton's goal of equalizing opportunity and raising
achievement for all, it would most certainly impact the
educational efforts of his successor. (New York State Education
Department, 2009, p. 73)
As the century closed and the nation looked back on almost two
decades of education reform efforts, the results were visible on
several levels. First, reform brought policy changes at all levels
of government: (a) At the national level, political and business
leaders articulated national education goals; (b) at the state
level, states developed tests to measure student performance and
academic standards, as well as measures to hold schools
accountable for results; (c) at the local level, schools and school
districts adopted, adapted, or created improvement initiatives.
Second, reform brought new additions to the institutional and
governance structures of public education, including charter
schools, vouchers, service contracts, and school site councils.
Third, reform brought a shift in authority and control from
educators and education interest groups to state policymakers,
business leaders, and parents (through site councils and charter
schools). At the same time, authority shifted simultaneously
upward from school districts to state agencies and downward to
the schools (Adams, n.d.).
Despite all the efforts, reforms did not produce what they
sought: a meaningful increase in academic performance. From
the beginning of the reform movement to the end of the century,
average reading scores for all age groups on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress remained essentially flat,
and mathematics scores on the same test showed only a modest

46. improvement (see the data reported in the Digest of Education
Statistics. Chapter 10 covers continued reform efforts in the
21st century.
10.1 An Education President, Again
Education was again a major political issue during the 2000
elections. George W. Bush took credit for education reform in
Texas that had resulted in improved test scores, especially
among minorities, during his governorship. (Those results were
later revealed to have been exaggerated.) The Democratic
presidential candidate, Al Gore, never really found his voice on
education during the campaign, and the Republicans were able
to take the education issue from the Democrats (Lemann, 2002).
The Republican platform supported private school vouchers,
promoted phonics-based reading instruction, and, unlike the
platforms of the previous 2 decades, did not call for the
abolishment of the Department of Education. To appease the
religious right, a moving force in the Republican Party, Bush
did support character education and abstinence-based sex
education. However, over the objections of the conservative
wing of the party, Bush pushed for mandated state standards and
testing. The effect of Bush's proposals was to create "the
greatest intrusion into local control of the school curriculum in
the history of the federal government" (Spring, 2002, p. 11).
10.2 No Child Left Behind and the New Educational Federalism
The cornerstone of George W. Bush's education program was
the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, entitled the No Child Left Behind Act.
The law, more than 1,100 pages in length, was passed with wide
bipartisan support. In the decade leading up to NCLB, polls had
made it clear that the general public was dissatisfied with public
schools and also did not support Republican proposals to cut
education spending. As it became an important electoral issue,
Republicans in Congress began to put more money into
education, and Democrats were forced move away from their

47. traditional focus on inputs and equity and toward standards,
accountability, and public school choice (McGuinn, 2005).
By the 2000 election, when both Bush and Gore declared
education reform to be a high priority, the Republicans and
Democrats had come to an agreement about the need for a more
active federal role focused on standards, accountability, and
public school choice (McGuinn, 2005). As a bipartisan bill,
"NCLB was a defeat for liberals on the left and conservatives on
the right—it was a bill that was designed to run right down the
middle" (Wilkens, cited in McGuinn, 2005, p. 57).
President George Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act into
legislation on January 8, 2002.
Associated Press/Ron Edmonds
The No Child Left Behind Act was signed by President George
Bush on January 8, 2002. The Act set the education agenda for
most of the first decade of the 21st century.
NCLB marked a major expansion and change in the direction of
federal involvement in education. It also created a vastly
expanded regulatory role for states and local school districts.
The goal of NCLB was to have all students achieving at grade-
level proficiency by 2014. Its funding was directed at promoting
higher achievement of low-income and minority students and
holding schools accountable for the progress of all students.
The law was also intended to increase parental choice and
increase the flexibility of school districts in directing federal
dollars to areas of need.
NCLB continued the strategy begun by the Clinton
administration's Goal 2000: attempting to improve student
achievement by providing support for standards, assessment,
and accountability. The key provisions of the law concerned the
development and implementation of "challenging" academic
standards, student assessment against these standards,
accountability, and teacher quality.

48. The act required that by the end of the 2005–2006 school year,
95% of all students in grades 3–8 be tested annually in reading
and math using state-prescribed tests, and that the tests be
aligned with state-developed standards in these areas. It also
required that schools make adequate yearly progress (AYP)
toward reaching grade-level proficiency on the state test. NCLB
set a target of 100% of tested students meeting state-established
proficiency levels in reading and mathematics by 2014.
For Your Reflection and Analysis
Why did NCLB set such a high priority on yearly testing? How
does this requirement affect school operations?
The act also specified that by 2003 all new teachers (and
paraprofessionals) hired with Title I funds must be "highly
qualified," and that by 2005–2006 all teachers must be highly
qualified, regardless of the funding source.
In exchange for meeting these new federal requirements, NCLB
provided a significant increase in federal education funding, as
well as increased flexibility in how the funds could be spent.
Initial federal funding for education increased from $18.8
billion to $22 billion. At the same time, school districts were
permitted to reallocate up to 50% of the funds they received
among selected non-Title I programs and to shift funds from
non-Title I programs to Title I to help schools meet AYP.
Additional funding was also provided through the Reading First
program for reading programs that are "grounded in
scientifically-based reading research." NCLB refers to the
review of research by the National Reading Panel, which
identified five skills considered central to learning to read:

49. phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and
comprehension. In effect, NCLB supported phonics over whole
language in the debate about the best way to teach reading
(often described as the "reading wars") that had been going on
since the 1980s and 1990s.
NCLB's expanded role and new direction for the federal
government was evident in several important ways. First, unlike
previous federal legislation, which focused on inputs, was
directed to children with special needs, and contained few
mandates, NCLB was directed at every student and every
teacher in every public school in the country and was very
prescriptive. This major shift in emphasis marks what many
have referred to as "the new educational federalism," a change
in the distribution of power between the federal and state and
local governments.
NCLB also changed the very underlying purpose of the federal
government's involvement in education. Historically, that
involvement was based on the premise that an educated
citizenry would contribute to the national political and
economic welfare and that it was an appropriate involvement of
the federal government to promote equality of educational
opportunity. NCLB, however, made clear that the purpose of
federal support for education would no longer simply be to
support additional services, but also to promote substantive
educational outcomes. Quality, not just equity (Manna & Ryan,
2011), and ensuring that students learn worthwhile academic
content and increase academic achievement, would become
national priorities.
For Your Reflection and Analysis
What were the potential benefits and drawbacks of expecting all
students to achieve at grade-level proficiency by 2014?

50. Another way the role of the federal government changed and
expanded with the passage of NCLB could be seen in its heavy
reliance on student test scores as indicators of academic
achievement and as the determinant of AYP, as well as its
specification of sanctions against schools that did not make
AYP in improving test scores. Finally, and monumentally
important, for the first time in the nation's history, the federal
government became involved in determining the qualifications
of instructional personnel. States still issued teaching
certificates, but what it meant to be a "qualified teacher" was
now defined by the federal government and imposed on the
states.
Changing State and Local Roles
The expansion of federal power and responsibilities under
NCLB brought with it concurrent state-level shifts in power and
responsibilities. States asserted power "reactively in
implementing federal policy and proactively in the development
of new policies" (Marsh & Wohlstetter, 2013, p. 2). That is,
while NCLB required the development of standards and tests
and the hiring of only highly qualified teachers, it was states
that were responsible for the development of the standards and
tests, and for defining proficiency and what constituted a fully
certified teacher. States also had to provide technical assistance
to schools identified as being "in need of improvement" and
could even take over the operation of schools in extreme cases.
Perhaps most important, because states, not local school
districts or the federal government, have the legal responsibility
to provide education, states were ultimately responsible for
meeting the goal that all children achieve at the proficient level
by 2014. In effect, what NCLB did was to federalize actions and
to further initiatives that had been taking place state by state
since the school reform movement began in the 1980s. Broadly
speaking, these actions and initiatives were addressed at
improving student performance through the establishment of

51. standards-based curriculum reform and assessment, improving
the quality of the teaching force, and increasing accountability.
Raising the Stakes on Testing
As discussed in previous chapters, the American public as well
as the business community has increasingly sought to hold
schools accountable for student outcomes. These efforts
increased during the school reform movement of the 1980s,
when a number of states adopted standardized tests to determine
student promotion and graduation.
High-stakes testing was also given federal support by the 1994
reauthorization of the ESEA, the Improving America's Schools
Act (IASA), which required states to develop assessments in
reading and math aligned with state standards, to use the
assessment results to determine whether disadvantaged students
were making adequate yearly progress in meeting the standards,
to take corrective action against underperforming Title I
schools, and to reward high-performing schools.
However, while by 2001 all states had developed content
standards in reading and math, state compliance with other
IASA requirements was uneven and sanctions were rare. By the
time NCLB was enacted, only 19 states were in full compliance
with IASA assessment requirements.
The enactment of NCLB not only toughened the IASA testing
and accountability provisions, but it also extended and
expanded the movement through the use of a number of more
prescriptive mandates. For example, the 1994 ESEA required
states to set up assessment systems and to test students in
grades 3 and 8 in math and reading. NCLB required that,
beginning in 2005–2006, students in every grade from 3 through
8 be tested annually in reading and math and again in grades 10
through 12, and that by the 2007–2008 school year, annual
science assessments in grades 3 through 5, or 6 through 9, or 10

52. through 12 must be in place.
Moreover, NCLB required that schools, school districts, and
states document and report on the progress of the student
population as a whole, as well as the progress of each of its
subgroups (racial, ethnic, English language ability, gender) in
making AYP toward meeting the state proficiency standards.
The reports were also to identify any achievement gaps between
each student subgroup and the majority population. This
requirement was to ensure that the achievement of these groups
was not lost in an overall average for the school or district.
Although NCLB required yearly testing, it did not mandate what
these tests must be, or even that they be standardized. But the
law did say that the state tests must be aligned with state
standards. NCLB also did not mandate what the proficiency
levels should be on the state tests. What was judged to be
proficient in one state might not be in another. In addition, the
measurement of AYP differed among states: For example, some
states measured AYP by progress between the beginning and the
end of the year with the same students, while others measured
one grade-level score with the same grade-level the next year.
Because of the variation in the rigor of state tests, as well as in
the setting of state proficiency levels, states differed
dramatically in the way they viewed school performance and
categorized student proficiency, or what constituted AYP.
Students with the same skills may be considered proficient and
making AYP in one state but not in another.
As a result of these variations, the number of schools identified
as in need of improvement varied significantly from state to
state. Michigan identified over 1,500 underperforming schools
and California over 1,000, whereas Wyoming and Arkansas
identified none. In Florida, 87% of the schools, including 22%
of the "A" schools, failed to make AYP under NCLB guidelines.

53. Urban districts, districts serving high proportions of minority
and poor students, and rural districts reported the highest
percentage of schools in need of improvement.
NCLB also required that state results be compared to the results
from a small sample of fourth- and eighth-graders taking the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The
NAEP comparability
is supposed to ensure that states are not setting the bar too low
on their standards and tests. That is, if a state shows progress on
its statewide test results but does not show comparable progress
on the NAEP, it would suggest that the state's standards and
tests are not challenging enough. (PBS Frontline, 2003, p. 2)
NCLB did not, however, provide for any penalties if disparities
were found; it merely mandated that the comparative results be
made public. And, indeed, major disparities have been found
between the percentage of students reported to be proficient on
the NAEP and state tests. In Tennessee, for example, the NAEP
rated 28% of eighth graders as proficient on reading while
Tennessee itself rated over 90% to be proficient (Whitehurst,
2010).
A major challenge for states in complying with the NCLB
testing mandate was that most did not have tests developed in
reading, math, and science at every grade level from 3 through
8. Initially a few states considered not participating in the
program and forgoing its federal funds because of the expense
involved in setting up and administering a testing program that
would essentially more than double their existing one, but in the
end all states did apply for funding.
Holding Schools Accountable
Although NCLB did not specify what tests or proficiency
standards states should use, it did say that states were to set

54. annual targets for improving achievement and closing
achievement gaps among groups of students. More importantly,
it specified consequences for schools that did not achieve AYP
in the aggregate or for any of the major student subgroups on
the test the state adopted.
This provision of NCLB generated support from advocates for
poor children because of its stated goal of preventing children
from being trapped in underperforming or dangerous schools.
And, although actual sanctions detailed in NCLB applied only
to Title I schools, each state was required to have in place a
state system of accountability to address the consequences for
non-Title I schools that failed to make AYP. In practice, many
states adopted the same sanctions for non-Title I schools and
Title I schools.
Adequate yearly progress is determined for NCLB purposes by a
formula that anticipates that an additional 4%–6% of students
will become proficient each year until 2014, when all were
expected to be proficient. An entire school can be considered
not to have made AYP if even one of the subgroups in the
school fails to make the targeted progress. According to the
provisions of NCLB, any Title I school that fails to show AYP
for 2 consecutive years is considered "in need of improvement."
Schools in need of improvement are required to adopt a 2-year
school improvement plan and are eligible for financial and
technical assistance to implement it. NCLB stipulated that the
plan focus on programs for which scientifically rigorous
research has produced strong evidence of effectiveness in
improving student achievement.
Once a school has been identified as in need of improvement,
the district must inform parents that their children have school
choice. The district must also identify the schools to which
students can transfer, including charter schools. If all schools in