The Reagan Administration: A Case Study

The federal government of 1980s attempted to reverse the trend of expansion and relaxed the monetary support of education. According to Christopher Cross (2010), the era of Reagan and George H. W. Bush was marked by “grants consolidation, more decision making at the state level, and extensive use of the federal bully pulpit” (p. 71). Reagan and congressional Republicans first passed the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act in 1981 to integrate and reduce the multitude of programs recently created. It returned authority to the states by granting more flexibility in how funds were to be distributed (Cross, 2010, p. 74). Even though the Reagan administration loosened the fiscal ties on education cutting federal funding by 30%, it relentlessly

The concern with academic excellence was motivated by the threat of falling behind in “mediocrity” compared to international competitors. “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world,” the report stated (The National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). The report called on states to improve the quality of their education systems resulting in a surge of legislation on the state level (McDonnell, 2005, p. 27). The report also solidified the White House’s dedication to education policy and proved that the Department of Education was a necessary fixture against Reagan’s attempts to dismantle it (Cross, 2010, p. 79). Terrell Bell, Reagan’s secretary of education who appointed the commission that authored the report, exercised the bully pulpit again with the “Wall Chart.” He published statistics about the status of schools in each state to motivate state governments to correct for the now very visible shortcomings in their policies (Cross, 2010, p.

The Clinton, Bush, and Obama presidencies all attempted to assert a stronger federal role through standards-based policies and assessments to track progress. Clinton’s first major action pertaining to education was Goals 2000: Educate America Act in 1994. Providing relatively small grants to states that presented plans to implement eight national education goals by the year 2000, this act set the national policy agenda for the next reauthorization of the ESEA (Chopin, 2013, p. 413). In 1994, the renewal took the form of the Improving American Schools Act. In order to receive federal funding, states had to devise higher standards, assessments that tracked student progress, and report annually about student performance. It allowed for greater flexibility in spending, increased the amount of schools eligible for funding, and linked the academic achievement for educationally disabled children, the original target for Title I funding, to the standards for all other students (McDonnell, 2005, p. 30). Even though Chopin (2013) argued that this legislation was merely a “suggestion” for states and it produced inconsistent implementation plans (such as percentages of students required to reach proficiency), it asserted and