Elementary And Secondary Education Act: The Relation Between Politics And Education

From the beginning, politics and education have been intertwined. Beginning with the birth of America’s public school system in the mid-nineteenth century, politics has served as a cornerstone on which we have built our educational foundation. Politics has severed as a means of setting standards, formation of a uniformed curriculum, holding schools accountable, and allocating funding. This paper will focus upon the interaction of politics and education from the late 1900’s to the present. Notable federal legislation such as “No Child Left Behind”, “Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965”, and “National Assessment of Educational Progress” will be examined along with the State of Mississippi’s response to these programs. The Elementary
With the reauthorization of the “Elementary and Secondary Education Act” came funding from Title I and the federal mandates that must be meet in order to receive the funding. NCLB introduced a new federal mandate requiring all school districts receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Education to implement a standardized testing program to measure annual progress of the students (Department of Education, n.d.). The standards for the testing programs were left solely to the states. The newly developed testing program were also a part of the Adequate Yearly Progress Section. Under APY schools that did not progress with increasingly better test scores were subject to a number of steps to improve the school; these steps ranged from school being required to offer free tutoring, state takeover, staff replacement, and even closing the school(107th Congress, n.d.). The AYP clause also outlined several objectives that the adequate yearly progress standard must meet which includes all student being at the proficient level in 12 years, developing statewide measurable goals, and goals must be assessed at school level (Department of Education, "No Child Left Behind," n.d.). In addition NCLB set new standard for educators. NCLB set a mandate that all students be provided high quality teachers. The definition of high quality teachers was left to the individual states (107th Congress,
NAPE held the first nation-wide assessment of progress in education in 1969. In 1990 states had the option for voluntary assessments. In 1996 the NAPE assessment became a permeant feature of the National Assessment of Progress requiring assessments every two years. The data gathered by NAPE is compiled in to the Nations Report Card, detailing America’s academic progress and breaking down results in several categories such as: gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The subject reported on the National Report Card are: mathematics, reading, science and writing with occasional testing in: fine arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. The National Report Card does not provide dates on individual students, teachers, or schools but as a nation as a whole (Department of Education, "NAEP Report Cards,"