A
response to the conservative attack
By Harvey Kantor
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the idea of equalizing educational opportunity
provided the rationale for an extraordinary number of federal initiatives
designed to improve education for those long neglected by the educational
system. Few of these initiatives mandated fundamental changes. More
than ever before, however, they focused national attention and resources
on the educational needs of economically disadvantaged white and minority
children, made better education for low-income children and children
of color a major national priority, and expanded the authority of the
federal government to intervene to secure such improvement. Measured
against the long history of racism and inequality in American education
and of resistance to federal involvement in education, this represented
an unprecedented accomplishment.1
Attacks by Conservatives
Many of the programs initiated during these years persist today. Over
the last two decades, however, the liberal consensus that supported
this expansion of federal policy-making in education has come under
sharp attack from conservative politicians as well as from a number
of other right-wing groups. Hostile to the idea of using the state to
combat economic and educational disadvantage, these conservative critics
argue that federal intervention in education particularly federal programs
like Title I/Chapter 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
bilingual education, and education for the handicapped has had few beneficial
results. In their view, these programs have cost too much, have done
little to improve substantially the achievement of low-income and minority
children, and have trapped teachers and administrators in a web of bureaucratic
regulations that make it impossible for them to perform their essential
educational and social functions. Instead of continuing to expand federal
involvement in education, they contend, policy makers should reduce
the rate of growth in expenditures for federal education programs, eliminate
federal programs targeted at poor children and children of color, and,
above all, return the control of education to states and local school
systems.2
Much of this conservative agenda remains unrealized. The Reagan administration
succeeded in reducing federal expenditures on education, but failed
in its efforts to consolidate the major categorical programs for low-income
and other "special needs" students. More recently, chastened by the
popular reaction to their attempt to shut down the government, the conservative
majority in the last Congress gave up on its efforts to slash federal
support for compensatory education and for education for the handicapped.
Yet, despite these defeats, the conservative attack on federal equity
policies has profoundly altered the trajectory of federal policy-making
in education. Not only has it succeeded in reducing the rate of growth
of expenditures for federal programs. Just as important, it has succeeded
in shifting the terms of debate away from an emphasis on using the state
to expand resources and equalize opportunity for low-income children
and children of color. Today, many liberals and moderates agree with
conservatives that the policies introduced in the 1960s and first half
of the 1970s led to an overconcern with low-income and other marginalized
students, that federal regulations made excessive bureaucratic demands
on local schools that eroded the quality of education, and that there
is little the federal government can do to equalize educational opportunity
for the least advantaged or to alter the distributional patterns of
American society.3
This skepticism about federal intervention in education is not entirely
misplaced. As anyone familiar with the recent history of federal education
policy knows, there are valid questions that need to be asked about
how the federal government can best help equalize educational opportunities
for those who have been denied them. But the conservative prescription
does not provide many useful answers to these questions. On the contrary,
though the conservative rhetoric about excessive federal spending and
burdensome bureaucratic regulation of local schools has populist overtones
and sounds very appealing, cutting spending, reducing federal regulations,
and simply returning the control of federal programs to state and local
educational agencies will do nothing but erode the opportunities that
economically disadvantaged white, African American, and Latino groups
have struggled to win over the last thirty years.
The Conservative Critique
The conservative critique of federal programs is based on four commonly
held assumptions about federal involvement:
1 - That federal involvement since 1960 constitutes an unprecedented
break with past practices;
2 - That federal spending on education for poor and minority children
has been excessive;
3 - That federal regulations have mired schools in a morass of bureaucratic
red tape;
4 - And that federal programs have produced little measurable improvement
in educational achievement for "disadvantaged" children.
None of these assumptions is entirely unfounded, but they vastly oversimplify
the recent history of federal education policy, overstate the impact
of federal spending and the burden of new regulations on local school
districts, and misunderstand the shortcomings of federal programs.
Break
with Tradition?
Has federal intervention since 1960 undermined the tradition of state
and local control? There is no question that federal intervention in
elementary and secondary education was one of the most significant developments
in the history of education in the 1960s. Prior to 1960, education was
a relatively minor federal policy area, federal financial support for
elementary and secondary education was minimal, and the federal role
in state and local decision-making was modest. By contrast, since 1960,
federal policy-making has intensified, federal funding has grown, and
federal intervention in local decision-making has become more frequent.
Taken together, all of this has expanded the federal government's authority
to define the nation's educational priorities. Nevertheless, this has
not marked as sharp a break with past practices as many suppose. Nor
did it change substantially established channels of decision-making
or reduce the operational independence of state and local education
agencies to a significant degree. What did change was the purpose of
federal intervention and the scope of the regulatory efforts to ensure
these purposes were fulfilled.
To begin with, although education was not a very significant federal
policy area prior to 1960, federal interest in education was hardly
unprecedented. Nor was the idea of targeting federal programs for specific
purposes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the federal government nurtured
the expansion of education through land grants and by managing the formation
of state constitutions. In the 20th century, federal programs were designed
to support vocational education, to help public schools assimilate Indian
children, to provide "impacted aid" to school districts burdened by
untaxed military installations, and to improve the quality and quantity
of education in math, science, and foreign languages. These programs
established a federal interest in education. Indeed, although efforts
to win Congressional approval for general financial aid to local school
systems had been thwarted repeatedly since the late 19th century, by
the early 1960s, periodic assertions of a federal interest in state-building
and national "manpower" problems had set a precedent for further federal
intervention in education.4
The expansion of federal policy-making in the 1960s built on these earlier
efforts. It would be wrong, however, to see these new initiatives simply
as a continuation of past practices. Not only was the commitment to
equity new. But in contrast to earlier federal efforts (such as improving
the efficiency of the labor force or upgrading teacher training in math,
science, and foreign languages) this commitment was not often part of
the state or local agenda and was much less widely embraced by state
and local educators. As a result, implementation of the new federal
programs often encountered resistance from state and local officials
and, in order to assure that federal money reached its intended recipients,
often required much more extensive federal oversight of local practices
than had earlier federal programs, which required minimal federal direction
and guidance.5
Carl Kaestle and Marshall Smith have observed that the scope of this
oversight probably would have shocked educators and most of the public
in 1950.6 As Kaestle and Smith
point out, however, despite this expansion of federal power, critics
of federal intervention have greatly exaggerated the extent of federal
influence that accompanied it. Since 1965, equal opportunity provided
the rationale for federal initiatives (often reinforced by judicial
decisions) in bilingual education, gender equity, and education for
the handicapped, as well as for school desegregation and compensatory
education. But states and localities have retained a great deal of flexibility
in responding to these initiatives. Not only has school desegregation
been difficult to implement because of local opposition and changing
residential patterns, but several studies have shown that despite the
flow of requirements that accompanied federal programs such as Title
I, bilingual education, and education for the handicapped, the federal
government's capacity to control states and local school districts remained
limited and that the implementation of these programs continued to be
shaped by the ideology and structure of local control.7
A good part of the reason for this is that in contrast to most other
western democracies, the United States has, as David Cohen has put it,
a "remarkably fragmented system of governance." In most other industrialized
nations, Cohen points out, the "relations between policy and practice
are framed by systems of central power or by a small number of state
or provincial governments." In the United States, however, "the centers
of organization and power are widely dispersed and weakly linked." Consequently,
the mobilization of federal authority in education occurred within what
by world standards is an extraordinarily decentralized system of decision-making
and did not reduce the autonomy of state and local education agencies.
To the contrary, Cohen and others have argued that the growth of federal
policy-making actually increased local responsibilities, since federal
agencies were weak and had to rely on state and local authorities to
design, implement, and operate the new federal programs.8
This does not mean of course that the outpouring of federal legislation
in the 1960s and the regulatory efforts that accompanied them has had
no effect on the system of educational governance. Since 1960, the federal
government's authority to determine local priorities in certain areas
of educational policy has increased. But there is little evidence that
this has undermined state and local control or that it represents an
unprecedented usurpation of local prerogatives in education. Despite
the expansion of federal policy-making, states and local districts have
retained considerable discretion in responding to federal policies,
often at the expense of greater equity in the provision of educational
services. Indeed, further analysis of the impact of federal spending
and regulations on local education suggests that much of the variation
in the quality of education available to different groups stems not
from too much federal interference but from the federal government's
inability to assert more direct control over state and local practices.
Excessive
Spending?
Does the federal government spend too much on elementary and secondary
education, especially on special programs for low-income children? In
1995, the Department of Education allocated slightly more than $15 billion
for elementary and secondary education, over half for compensatory education,
bilingual education, education for the handicapped, and other programs
designed to equalize educational opportunity for low-income children
and children of color. Compared to 1960, when the federal government
spent less than $500 million on elementary and secondary education,
this represents a dramatic increase.9
But a closer look at the figures does not support the contention that
federal spending has been excessive or that it has done much to produce
a profound change in the political economy of school finance.
Although the dollar amounts sound impressive, federal spending on
education has never amounted to more than 2.5% of total federal budget
outlays, and the federal share of total expenditures for elementary
and secondary education is actually less now than it was in 1980. In
fact, despite the growth in federal policy-making since 1960, federal
spending has never made up more than 10% of local school budgets, peaking
at 9.8% in 1980. This decreased to 6.1% in 1989, following the Reagan
reductions, and since then has risen only slightly. Contrary to popular
perceptions, the biggest change in school finance over the last 30 years
has not been the increase in federal expenditures but the shift of responsibility
for financing education to state governments, whose share of total education
expenditures rose from 39% in 1965 to 50% in 1990 before declining slightly
today.10
In some states and localities, of course, the federal contribution
accounts for a significant part of the budget. In some poor, rural school
districts, for example, federal funds for compensatory education and
other programs often account for nearly 20% of total school expenditures.
In states that do not have their own compensatory education programs,
this provides for the bulk of additional services for low-income students.
But in most school districts, total federal spending comes to no more
than 5-10% of the budget. This is still a sizable amount, especially
in large school systems such as New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. But
in the majority of school districts federal monies constitute such a
small share of total spending that the federal government does not have
much financial leverage on local practices, even if it should exercise
its power of withholding aid (which it often threatens to do but seldom
does).11
Nor has the increase in federal aid been sufficient to offset the
fiscal inequities that characterize the current system of public school
finance. Title I/Chapter 1, by far the largest program of federal aid
for low-income students, is only mildly redistributive, partly because
it spreads funds to every state and to 90% of all school districts and
partly because it has never been funded adequately.12 In 1996, for example,
federal expenditures for Title I/Chapter 1 were slightly more than $7
billion.13 But several studies suggest that it would take
nearly twice that much to equalize spending between rich and poor states.
One RAND study by Iris Rotberg and James Harvey estimated, for example,
that in 1993-94 it have would have taken at least $12 billion to bring
per-pupil expenditures in all low-spending states up to the level in
the median state and $35 billion to raise every state to the level of
spending in Michigan, which spent more per pupil than three-quarters
of the states.14
Conservatives typically argue that increasing spending by such amounts
is not likely to be very worthwhile. To support their argument, they
usually refer to the Equality of Educational Opportunity Report (1966),
more commonly known as the Coleman Report, after its principal author,
sociologist James Coleman. Recently, however, they have also relied
on the research of Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist,
whose conclusions echo Coleman's.15 In a series of widely cited articles published
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he analyzed a large number of studies
that looked at the connection between school resources and student achievement
(what economists of education call production functions). Based on this
analysis, he concluded that even though there are large differences
in teacher quality, there is little evidence that disparities in expenditures
are consistently related to variations in educational outcomes, at least
within the current organizational structure of schools. Consequently,
he argues, school improvement policies should not be formulated on the
basis of expenditures.16
More fine-grained research that looks not at aggregate expenditures
but at how money is spent in particular contexts disputes this claim.17 Most notable is Ronald Ferguson's recent research
linking teacher quality with student achievement and school expenditures
with teacher quality. Still, Hanushek's argument is not totally unfounded.
We all know some well-funded schools that do poorly and some less well-funded
schools where students excel, though this hardly means that the level
of funding is irrelevant or that attempts to increase funding would
be wasteful. As Ferguson's research suggests, it means only that additional
funds be well spent. Indeed, given what R.W. Connell calls the "educationally
relevant inequalities of resources around schools," the issue is not
that money makes no difference, only that to make a significant difference
it must be spent on those administrative and classroom practices and
processes that "translate school resources such as teachers and instructional
materials into effective teaching and learning."18
Burdensome Regulations?
Are federal regulations too burdensome? There is no question that as
the number of federal programs has increased and new mandates have been
passed, the regulatory responsibilities of the federal government have
grown. The passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965, the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, and the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act of 1975 have all entailed an increase in federal
monitoring and oversight. In addition, the passage and enforcement of
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial discrimination
in federally assisted programs, Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments
barring discrimination on the basis of sex, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
Act of 1973 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of handicap, and
Supreme Court decisions such as Lau v. Nichols, which guaranteed
the educational rights of limited-English-speaking students, all expanded
the regulatory obligations of the federal government.
Overzealous enforcement of these regulations has at times threatened
to make a "mockery" of them, as their critics point out.19 Yet, except for school desegregation, they
have not interfered substantially with the regular activities of the
schools. Nor have they been overly burdensome to most school districts.
Conservative rhetoric about too much paperwork and red tape to the contrary,
over time, local educators have accommodated themselves to these programs
and learned to live with the mandates and regulations that have come
with them. In addition, many educators who once complained loudly about
excessive bureaucratic regulation now agree that the federal presence
has been necessary to address inequities long ignored by states and
local school districts and to insure that the purposes of the federal
legislation have been carried out.20
A case in point is the history of Title I/Chapter 1 of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act passed in 1965. Little thought was initially
given to how it might be implemented. Although some questioned whether
local districts would follow the intent of the legislation, most assumed
that the program would be self-executing. Yet implementation fell well
short of these expectations. Local districts with little commitment
to educating low-income children used the new funds for a variety of
purposes, many of which had little to do with equalizing opportunity.
In some cases, they even used funds to perpetuate the inequities they
were intended to address, as in the Louisiana parish that used federal
funds to build segregated swimming pools.21 In response to
these abuses and to pressure from civil rights groups, federal officials
stepped up their oversight of local programs, and they increased audits
of local districts. This resulted in much more elaborate and specific
guidelines and regulations governing the use of federal funds. But it
reduced abuses in local practices. Although many eligible children were
still unable to participate in the program because of inadequate funding,
by the early 1980s funds were reaching the most needy students and the
number of those participating who were neither low-income nor low-achievers
had been substantially reduced.22
This
regulatory effort was resisted initially by many state and local school
officials. Among other things, they argued that federal regulations
limited their flexibility to meet pressing local needs. But most studies
of the implementation of Title I indicate that by the early 1980s local
districts had worked out agreements with federal officials that gave
them more flexibility in administering the program but preserved the
intent of the program to deliver additional services to low-income students.
Indeed, one of the chief ironies in the recent history of federal policy
is that just at the moment that Reagan and other conservatives were
bewailing the effects of government regulation on the schools and proposing
to reduce federal involvement, most school officials had become accustomed
to the federal presence. They fought against Reagan's efforts to consolidate
the major categorical programs for low-income, limited English-speaking,
and handicapped children, and told researchers that federal money provided
services to low-income and other needy students that states and localities
would not have provided on their own.23
Some researchers have praised this accommodation as an example of
creative federalism. The reasons for it are not necessarily ones that
should be applauded, however. In most places, it did not come about
because local districts had fully embraced the federal commitment to
equity or substantially altered their regular practices. On the contrary,
local districts became less resistant to Title I/Chapter 1 because they
succeeded in marginalizing it. They created a separate administrative
structure to administer it, hired a separate staff to teach in it, and
pulled students out of their regular classes to receive its services.
As a result, even though people in local districts came to accept accountability
to federal guidelines as the condition for receiving federal funds,
the program remained peripheral to the main workings of the school and
had a difficult time building a base of support for further program
development if federal dollars should ever be withdrawn.24
There are, of course, valid complaints about federal regulation, not
just in Title I but also in the federal bilingual education program
and in the program for handicapped education. Many school districts
have focused most of their energy simply on complying with federal guidelines.
Sometimes this has come at the expense of program quality.25
One observer commented, for example, that he knew of a lot of Title
I programs that were in compliance with federal regulations yet were
bad programs. Others have made the same observation about bilingual
education and P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children
Act.26
But it is not self-evident that these problems have resulted principally
from overzealous federal regulation or that they can be resolved simply
by returning the control of education to the states and localities,
as conservatives as well as many liberals argue they can.
First, neither Title I/Chapter 1 nor P. L. 94-142 prescribe specific
curriculum or particular pedagogical practices. In both programs, decisions
about the conduct of the programs, the content of the curriculum, and
pedagogy are left up to local districts. If instruction in them has
been uninspired, it is not therefore just because of excessive federal
regulation but because of the presence or absence of other factors that
inhibit change and encourage experimentation. Of these, the most often
cited are lack of local knowledge about alternative practices and the
local district stance toward flexibility and innovation.27
But equally important are deeply embedded assumptions about economically
disadvantaged students and the kinds of practices appropriate for them,
particularly that they suffer from cultural deprivation and that what
will help them most is continual drill and repetition of basic skills
rather than the opportunity to engage in more challenging conceptual
tasks.28
Second, although compliance concerns may have inhibited efforts to
improve the quality of instruction, recent experience with the block
grant created under Chapter 2 of the Educational Consolidation and Improvement
Act suggests that reducing federal involvement and simply returning
control to states and localities is more likely to exacerbate inequities
in resources than reduce them. The block grant, passed in 1981, consolidated
28 categorical programs (including the Emergency School Aid Act [ESAA]
which provided support for school desegregation) and shifted responsibility
for making decisions about how to allocate resources to the states.
The result has been a pronounced decrease in attention to equity concerns.
In their fifty state analysis of state Chapter 2 allocation formulas,
Martin Orland and Staffan Tillander found that 80% of the states distributed
the largest share of Chapter 2 formula funds without reference to any
criteria of need, while only two states distributed over half of their
block grant funds to local districts according to high needs factors.
Not surprisingly, the biggest losers were urban districts that received
large grants from ESAA funds prior to consolidation.29
Political scientists have suggested two reasons for this lack of commitment
to equity at the state and local level. One is that groups representing
the poor and other needy students, with the notable exception of advocacy
groups for handicapped children, are much weaker politically in states
and localities than they are at the national level; thus, in most states
and localities, it is more difficult for them to put equity concerns
on the political agenda.30 The other reason is that states and localities
must keep tax rates low in order to attract investment and to reduce
the flight of middle-class residents who would rather move than pay
higher taxes for services that do not directly benefit them. Thus, states
and localities are not only under less political pressure than the federal
government to provide additional funding to improve education for poor
children, they have less fiscal capacity to respond to their educational
needs as well.31
None of this means that states and localities have no role to play
in improving education for low-income children. Because schools are
organized locally, reform must be owned by states and local school districts
if it is to be successful. Moreover, a generation of implementation
studies has confirmed that reforms imposed from above, while increasing
access to services, have not done much to alter local instructional
practices. But the history of the last thirty years suggests that absent
federal pressure, the commitment of states and localities to equalizing
educational opportunity remains uncertain. Although federal equity policies
may need to be reformed, simply reducing or ending federal involvement
will, as Lorraine McDonnell and Milbrey McLaughlin have put it, do nothing
but "harm a largely powerless constituency."32
Ineffective
Programs?
Are federal programs ineffective? There is no single answer to this
question. Conservatives argue that federal programs should be eliminated,
or at least cut back drastically, because they have had no sustaining
effects on student achievement. In a recent article on Chapter 1, for
example, Brian Jendryka of the Heritage Foundation wrote that "If Chapter
1 were a business, it would be in Chapter 11." Over the past 30 years,
he argues, Title I/Chapter 1 has spent $135 billion (in 1992-1993 dollars)
but has done little to boost the academic performance of low-income
children. To support his argument, he pointed to several studies which
found not only that Chapter 1 participants failed to catch up with their
middle-class peers but that the achievement level of the average Chapter
1 student in both math and reading actually declined while they were
in the program.33
Most liberals contest these claims. They acknowledge that the results
of early evaluations on the effects of federal programs like Title I
and Head Start were disappointing, but they attribute these results
to poor program implementation or inadequate research design. Once implementation
problems were resolved and outcome measures were designed better, they
say, evaluation results have been more positive. Moreover, they argue,
these programs have had a variety of positive effects beyond their influence
on school achievement. Edward Zigler, former Director of the Office
of Child Development, has argued, for example, that whatever its effects
on achievement, Head Start has improved the nutrition and health of
thousands of low-income children.34 Likewise, Mary
Jean LeTendre, Director of the Office of Compensatory Education, has
argued that while Chapter 1 may have failed to produce great gains in
academic skills, it has nonetheless been a success in other ways, helping
to make kindergarten universal, highlighting the importance of parent
involvement, and bringing national attention to the obstacles facing
low-income and other needy students.35
While this argument is persuasive, it is difficult to dispute that
these programs have failed to produce the kinds of gains in achievement
that proponents initially anticipated. Later evaluations of Title I/Chapter
1, for example, have documented gains in achievement, especially when
funds have been sufficiently concentrated. But even these more optimistic
studies generally conclude that the gains are modest, are confined to
the early grades, and generally "wash-out" in junior and senior high
school.36
The most recent evaluations of Head Start have also documented short-term
gains in cognitive achievement as well as long-term gains in special
education placement and progress through the grades. Some also indicate
gains for model preschool programs (not Head Start) on measures of life
success such as teenage pregnancy and delinquency. But they too conclude
that the gains in intellectual performance disappear within a few years,
that the effects on retention and placement are modest, and that, despite
improvement compared to other similar students, program participants
continue to lag well behind middle-class students on measures of life
success.37 Indeed, if recent
evaluations have reached more positive conclusions than those done 25
years ago, it is not just because the programs may have become somewhat
more successful. Rather, as Christopher Jencks has observed, it is because
our criteria for success have become much more modest than they were
in 1965, when policymakers hoped that these programs would not just
improve the academic performance of children from low-income families
but actually equalize differences in achievement between economically
disadvantaged students and those who were better off.38
The more interesting and much more important question is why these
programs have not been more effective in raising achievement. Defenders
of federal programs offer several explanations. One is that they were
often poorly implemented, especially when they were first started. In
addition, it is argued, there is great variation in the quality of the
programs because they are locally designed and run. As Milbrey McLaughlin
has put it, there is no single Title I/Chapter 1 program; rather, there
are 30,000 individual Title I/Chapter 1 programs, some good ones, some
bad ones, and lots of mediocre ones.39
Likewise, Edward Zigler has pointed to variation in the quality of local
programs as one of Head Start's chief problems. Finally, defenders of
these programs also point out that they have not been funded sufficiently
to provide enough additional services to make a difference in school
achievement. Title I/Chapter 1, for example, spends about $1,100 per
pupil, but this only provides about an hour and a half of additional
instruction in math and an hour and a half of additional instruction
in reading each week, while Head Start only has enough funding to run
for half a day, must limit enrollment for each participant to one year,
and still cannot enroll all those who are eligible.40
All of these explanations make sense, but they tell only part of the
story. Two other explanations are equally, if not more, compelling.
First, studies of these programs point out that most of them simply
do not do much that is different from what is already going on in the
regular classroom; they just provide more of it, usually in smaller
size groups. The majority of Title I/ Chapter 1 programs focus almost
exclusively on providing additional instruction in reading and math,
most of which is generally the same kind of desultory, decontextualized
skill training that goes on in many regular classrooms. Qualitative
studies suggest that much of the instruction in Head Start falls into
the same pattern. Local administrators often argue that this is necessary
because students need so much work in basic skills and because their
staff is not well enough trained to do anything else. Whatever the reason,
however, giving students the same kinds of instruction that they failed
at or rebelled against in the first place is unlikely to do much to
improve their performance, at least not in more than a transitory way.41
Many researchers argue that these instructional problems are compounded
by the way compensatory services have been delivered. The primary model
for instruction in Title I/Chapter 1, for example, has been to pull
students out of the regular classroom for supplemental instruction.
Among other things, it was believed, this arrangement was the best way
to address the needs of low-income students since it allowed them to
concentrate on learning basic skills in smaller classes without having
to compete with their more advantaged classmates. Sometimes this has
worked, but more often, according to many observers, pull-outs have
had negative effects. They cause Title I/Chapter 1 students to lose
time in class, fragment their educational experience, and, perhaps most
importantly, lower expectations for achievement by treating them as
a separate group. Instead of separating them from other students, it
is argued, Title I/Chapter 1 should place greater reliance on in-class
programs or other mechanisms that reduce fragmentation, end the isolation
of Chapter 1 students from their classmates, and increase expectations
for achievement of the students in them.42
At first glance, this argument makes sense. As a general rule, removing
students from the classroom is more likely to stigmatize them and lead
to lowered expectations for achievement than instructional strategies
that deliver services as part of the regular classroom routine. On closer
inspection, however, there does not appear to be any readily apparent
reason to prefer one organizational model of service delivery (pull-out,
in-class, or any other) over another, since, as Erwin Flaxman and his
colleagues have put it, they all "can be effective or ineffective in
different settings."43
In fact, there is little evidence that instructional quality and program
features, such as how students are grouped or whether they are taught
by aides or by the regular teacher, are related in any systematic way.
Rather, recent research suggests that program quality has less to do
with the particular model of instructional delivery that is used than
with the overall quality of the district and the school that students
attend.44
Indeed,
probably the biggest reason why Title I/Chapter 1, Head Start, and other
federal programs have not done more to boost achievement is that the
children they serve go to low-quality schools. According to a recent
study by Valerie Lee and her colleague Susannah Loeb, for example, one
reason Head Start gains wash-out once students enter school is that
Head Start students go to schools with lower average achievement, poorer
student-teacher relations, and a worse academic climate than their more
advantaged peers. Consequently, whatever gains they might have made
in preschool are not reinforced by their subsequent educational experiences.45 Likewise, Title I/Chapter 1 students are more
likely than other students to go to schools with high drop-out rates,
rigid disciplinary practices, uninspiring curriculum, low expectations
for achievement, and inexperienced teachers.46
No matter how good the program might be, its benefits will be difficult
to sustain in such an environment.
What Should Be Done?
What should the federal government do? There is not much the federal
government can do directly to make these schools better and reduce the
disparities in achievement between low-income children and their more
advantaged peers. The federal programs begun in the 1960s and 1970s,
together with the civil rights movement, have gone a long way toward
expanding educational services for economically disadvantaged students.
But the experience of the last three decades has also taught us to temper
our expectations about the potential effects of large-scale federal
interventions on classroom learning. Still, if the federal government
cannot mandate change in what happens in classrooms, ending federal
involvement in the name of local control will only make matters worse.
Equalizing educational opportunity for those denied it not only requires
local initiatives but federal policies to reallocate resources and protect
civil rights, provide access to the kinds of practices that make a difference
in achievement, and address more comprehensive issues, including the
distribution of economic opportunity, that cannot be dealt with effectively
at the local level.
Given the educational effects of unequal community wealth and family
income, it is difficult to see how the disparities in achievement between
rich and poor children can be overcome without spending more money to
equalize educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged students.
For reasons outlined above, however, states and localities have neither
the fiscal capacity nor the political incentive to increase spending
to aid poor children. Consequently, the federal government must provide
additional resources to improve their chances for educational success.
In particular, federal funding is needed to provide additional services
in major urban centers and rural areas that have large concentrations
of low-income and other "special needs" students.
Allocating federal resources to schools that serve large numbers of
economically disadvantaged students is especially important for three
reasons. The first is that high concentrations of poverty are associated
with lower rates of school achievement, not just for economically disadvantaged
students but for nonpoor students as well. Second, because schooling
is tied to local housing markets that are segregated by race and income,
those students with the greatest needs yet the fewest advantages, particularly
low-income students of color, are more likely than white middle-class
students to go to schools with high concentrations of poverty. Finally,
even though districts with large numbers of low-income students often
tax themselves hard, they generally have fewer resources than more advantaged
districts. This is either because they have inadequate tax bases or
because they have a disproportionately high need for noneducational
services such as police and fire protection or health and welfare services
that compete with education for funds out of the local property tax.47
Simply pouring money into these high poverty schools will not, of
course, automatically make them better. Conservatives are right about
that. At a minimum, however, additional funding would make it possible
to purchase the kinds of services that are educationally valuable but
that many schools with large numbers of poor students do not now provide
because they cannot afford them. A large body of research suggests that,
among other things, access to kindergarten, student support services,
small classes, experienced teachers, and a broad and demanding curriculum
all make a difference in achievement. But even though these are routinely
available in wealthy districts that serve more advantaged students,
they are often unavailable in high-poverty schools because they are
located in property-poor districts that do not have sufficient funds
to provide them.48
Finding political support to increase spending for such policies is
no easy task, although it may not be quite as difficult as it initially
appears. Because of Reagan's tax reforms, which indexed tax brackets,
new spending for education and other domestic programs can no longer
be financed out of inflation but requires an increase in taxes, which
is anathema in the current political climate.49 In addition, in 1994, before the Republican
victory in the fall elections, Congress turned down a proposal to concentrate
a greater proportion of Title I funds on high poverty schools. Yet,
despite popular discontent with the federal tax burden and congressional
opposition to federal programs targeted at the poor and minorities,
opinion polls show that spending for compensatory programs in education
retains considerable popular support. This does not mean that most Americans
would support a tax increase to provide more resources for education.
But it suggests that, contrary to what most politicians and pundits
commonly suppose, it would be possible to devote a greater share of
federal tax dollars to education without provoking a terrible public
outcry.50
Winning popular approval for more spending and convincing Congress
to allocate resources to high-poverty schools is not the only problem,
however. As the history of Title I/Chapter 1 suggests, an equally important
question is how to use federal funds to stimulate reform. Concerned
that schools were insensitive to the needs of low-income children, the
advocates of Title I initially hoped that, in addition to providing
more services, federal funds might help change how schools operated.
Things did not out work that way, however. As we have seen, not only
has Title 1/Chapter 1 instruction been rather perfunctory, it has not
done much to alter general educational practices either. For the most
part, it has remained on the margins where it has had little impact
on the regular workings of the school.
In 1988, when Congress re-authorized Chapter 1, it tried to address
this problem by making four changes in the law. The most important of
these changes eased the targeting provisions in the law so that schools
with high proportions of low-income students could use federal funds
as part of a schoolwide approach to educational improvement. But the
results so far have been mixed. By 1992, 40% of all districts with more
than 25,000 students had at least one schoolwide project. Some of these
schools used the increased flexibility that these projects provided
to introduce progressive changes such as more heterogeneous grouping
and a greater emphasis on accelerated learning and teaching higher-order
thinking. But the majority did not substantially alter their main patterns
of teaching and learning; instead, they introduced vital but traditional
reforms such as reducing class size, increasing support services, and
offering more parent education.51
No Simple Solution
There is no simple solution to this problem. It is much more difficult
for the government to stimulate innovation than to mandate access to
services or to impose sanctions for fiscal mismanagment, though policy
analysts have suggested three things that might help. One is to tie
federal funding to the development of school improvement plans that
not only stipulate high minimum levels of performance for student achievement
but that specify the changes that will be implemented to accomplish
that goal. The second is to use federal resources to build the organizational
capacity of schools so that they can change their practices. Among other
things, this includes technical assistance for teacher enrichment and
support for parent education and involvement. The third thing is to
monitor progress toward these goals, not chiefly with an eye toward
sanctioning schools that fail to reach them, but for the purpose of
encouraging further change and experimentation when and where it is
needed.52
I am not very optimistic that this will alter regular school practices
in a dramatic way. In the past, local educators have generally treated
mandates for things like school improvement plans and performance assessments
as bureaucratic regulations to be complied with rather than as a stimulus
to reform. Building the capacity of schools to change makes much more
sense, though this must include more than the typical kinds of technical
assistance and teacher training that most policy analysts have in mind.
To be effective, it must also involve working with teachers to deepen
their understanding of students from different classes and races, providing
extra staff so that teachers and other school people have the time to
design an intellectually challenging curriculum that will involve students
in learning, and empowering parents not just so they can help with homework
but so they can act with political and economic understanding to help
reform the schools.53
In the end, however, whatever the federal government might do to reform
education can hardly be as effective as what it might do to address
"the conditions of schooling and society directly."54
This is an old refrain but it cannot be repeated enough. As important
as any changes to the educational system itself, improving the quality
and equality of education available to economically disadvantaged children
and other marginalized students requires more affordable housing, improved
health services and child care, and a public commitment to the eradication
of poverty, economic inequality, and racial discrimination. Absent policies
that address these issues, no matter what the federal government does
specifically about the schools, it will be difficult to improve the
quality of education in high-poverty schools and to reduce the gap in
achievement between rich and poor children. This is not because poor
children are culturally deprived or lack educational aspirations but
because poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination in the labor
market "influence students' sense of whether schools provide access
to greater opportunity and consequently whether serious effort" will
be rewarded.55
None of this means, as Robert Kuttner has put it, that we should rely
solely "on the power of the federal government to address national problems
programmatically."56
Recent history has not only taught us the limits of federal policy but
also to be suspicious of excessive concentrations of federal power.
But if there are good reasons to question the federal government's capacity
to solve social problems as well as to worry about the potential abuses
of federal authority, the solution is not simply to discredit state
action. This may please conservatives, but it will not do very much
to make schools more equal or to improve the life chances of low-income
and other marginalized students. Rather, we must use federal policy
to equip schools in poor communities with the kinds of economic and
social resources they need to change their own circumstances. Otherwise,
the obstacles facing low-income students will only get larger and the
gap between rich and poor children will continue to grow.
Harvey Kantor is Professor of Education at the
University of Utah.
FOOTNOTES
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1.For an overview of
the history of these programs, see Harold and Pamela Silver, An Educational
War on Poverty: American and British Policy-Making, 1960-1980
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
2. See, for example,
Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Diane Ravitch, Education Reform 1994-1995
(Indianapolis: Hudson Institute, 1995), part IV; and Nathan Glazer,
The Limits of Social Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1988)
3. For an overview of
the conservative attack on government equal opportunity policies, see
Michael Apple, "Redefining Equality: Authoritarian Populism and the
Conservative Restoration," Teachers College Record 90 (Winter
1988): 167-184.
4. On this point, see
Hugh Davis Graham, The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy
in the Kennedy and Johnson Years (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1984), pp. xviii-xix; Sidney Tiedt, The Role of the
Federal Government in Education (New York: Oxford University Press,
1966); and, especially, Carl Kaestle and Michael Smith, "The Federal
Role in Elementary and Secondary Education, 1940-1980," Harvard Educational
Review 52 (November 1982): 384-408.
5. Henry Levin, "Federal
Grants and Educational Equity," Harvard Educational Review 52
(November 1982): 444-459; Paul Peterson, "Background Paper," in Twentieth
Century Fund Task Force on Federal and Elementary and Secondary Education
Policy, Making the Grade (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund,
1983), pp. 69, 80; and Kaestle and Smith, "Federal Role," p. 402.
6. Kaestle and Smith,
"Federal Role," p. 389.
7. Richard F. Elmore
and Susan Fuhrman, "The National Interest and the Federal Role in Education,"
Publius: The Journal of Federalism 20 (Summer 1990): 149-163;
David Cohen, "Governance and Instruction: The Promise of Decentralization
and Choice," in William H. Clune and John F. Witte, eds., Choice
and Control in American Education Volume 1: The Theory of Choice and
Control in Education (London: Falmer, 1990), pp. 337-386; Milbrey
McLaughlin, "Learning from Experience: Lessons from Policy Implementation,"
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 9 (Summer 1979): 171-178.
8. David Cohen and James
Spillane, "Policy and Practice: The Relations Between Governance and
Instruction," in Gerald Grant, ed., Review of Research in Education,
volume 18 (Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research Association,
1992), pp. 3-49.
9. On federal spending,
see National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education
Statistics 1995 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education,
1995), p. 380; National Center for Education Statistics, Federal
Support for Education, Fiscal Years 1980-1995 (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Education, 1995).
10. Paul M. Irwin,
Federal Education Funding: A 1995 Perspective (Washington, D.C.:
Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 1995), pp. 6, 17;
National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics,
p. 151.
11. Richard Elmore
and Milbrey McLaughlin, "The Federal Role in Education: Learning from
Experience," Education and Urban Society 15 (May 1983): 309-330.
12. Bea Birman et
al., The Current Operation of the Chapter 1 Program (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1987), p. 6.
13. Education Week
16, October 16, 1996, p. 20.
14. Iris C. Rotberg
and James C. Harvey, Federal Policy Options for Improving the Education
of Low-Income Students (Santa Monica, California: RAND Institute
on Education and Training, 1993), p. 42.
15. For a review of
these studies, see Richard L. Colvin, "School Finance: Equity Concerns
in an Age of Reforms," Educational Researcher 18 (January-February
1989): 11-15.
16. Erik Hanushek,
"The Impact of Differential Expenditures on School Performance," Educational
Researcher 18 (May 1989): 45-51, 62; Erik Hanushek, "Money Might
Matter Somewhere: A Response to Hedges, Laine and Greenwald," Educational
Researcher 23 (May 1994): 5-8; Erik Hanushek, Making Schools
Work: Improving Performance and Controlling Costs (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings, 1994).
17. See especially,
Ronald F. Ferguson, "Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How
and Why Money Matters," Harvard Journal on Legislation 28 (1991):
465-498; Larry Hedges, Richard Laine, and Rob Greenwald, "Does Money
Matter? A Meta-Analysis of Studies of the Effects of Differential School
Inputs on Student Outcomes," Educational Researcher 23 (April
1994): 5-14; Arthur MacEwan, "Making Conservative Ideology Work," Rethinking
Schools 9 (Summer 1995): 8-9.
18. R. W. Connell,
"Poverty and Education," Harvard Educational Review 64 (Summer
1994): 142; and, Lorraine M. McDonnell, "Opportunity to Learn as a Research
Concept and a Policy Instrument," Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis 17 (Fall 1995): 312. On inequities in expenditures, also
see Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities (New York: Crown Publishers,
1992).
19. Joseph A. Califano,
Jr., Governing America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981),
p. 262.
20. Michael S. Knapp
et al., "Cumulative Effects at the Local Level," Education and Urban
Society 15 (August 1983): 479-499; Richard K. Jung, "The Federal
Role in Elementary and Secondary Education: Mapping a Shifting Terrain,"
in Norman J. Boyan, ed., Handbook of Research on Educational Administration
(New York: Longman, 1990), pp. 487-499; Richard K. Jung and Michael
Kirst, "Beyond Mutual Adaptation, Into the Bully Pulpit: Recent Research
on the Federal Role in Education," Educational Administration Quarterly
22 (Summer 1986): 80-109.
21. Ruby Martin and
Phyllis McClure, Title I of ESEA: Is It Helping Poor Children?
(Washington, D.C.: Washington Research Project and NAACP Legal Defense
Fund, Inc., 1969), p. 34.
22. Barry G. Rabe
and Paul E. Peterson, "The Evolution of a New Cooperative Federalism,"
in Boyan, ed., Research on Educational Administration, pp. 467-485.
For an overview of the history of Title I, see Harvey Kantor, "Education,
Social Reform, and the State: ESEA and Federal Education Policy in the
1960s," American Journal of Education 100 (November 1991): 47-83.
23. Knapp et al.,
"Cumulative Effects," pp. 490-491; Paul Peterson, Barry Rabe, and Kenneth
Wong, When Federalism Works (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1986).
24. Kaestle and Smith,
"Federal Role," pp. 399-400; Lorraine McDonnell and Milbrey McLaughlin,
Education Policy and the Role of the States (Santa Monica, California:
Rand Corporation, 1982), esp. chp. 4.
25. Peterson, "Background
Paper," chp. 4; Richard F. Elmore and Milbrey McLaughlin, Steady
Work: Policy, Practice, and the Reform of American Education (Santa
Monica, California: Rand Corporation, 1988), pp. 24-28.
26. David Neal and
David Kirp, "The Allure of Legalization Reconsidered: The Case of Special
Education," Law and Contemporary Problems 48 (1985), pp. 63-87.
27. Susan H. Fuhrman
and Richard F. Elmore, "Ruling Out Rules: The Evolution of Deregulation
in State Educational Policy," Teachers College Record 97 (Winter
1995): 279-309.
28. R. W. Connell,
"Poverty and Education," pp. 129-130.
29. Martin Orland
and Staffan Tillander, "Redistribution and the Education Block Grant:
An Analysis of State Chapter 2 Allocation Formulas," Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis 9 (Fall 1987): 245-257. On the effects
of the education block grant, also see Richard K. Jung and Robert M.
Stonehill, "Big Districts and the Block Grant: A Cross-Time Assessment
of the Fiscal Impacts," Journal of Education Finance 10 (Winter
1985): 308-326; George E. Peterson et al., The Reagan Block Grants:
What Have We Learned? (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press,
1986), pp. 20-21.
30. McDonnell and
McLaughlin, Education Policy and the Role of the States.
31.Paul Peterson,
"Federalism and the Great Society: Political Perspectives on Poverty
Research," in Vincent T. Covello, ed., Poverty and Public Policy:
An Evaluation of Social Science Research (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman,
1980), pp. 257-286.
32.McDonnell and McLaughlin,
Education Policy and the Role of the States, p. xii.
33.Brian Jendryka,
"Failing Grade for Federal Aid," Policy Review 66 (Fall 1993):
77-81.
34.Edward Zigler and
Susan Muenchow, HeadStart (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Edward
Zigler and Sally J. Styfco, HeadStart and Beyond (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993), chp. 1.
35.Mary Jean LeTendre,
"The Continuing Evolution of a Federal Role in Compensatory Education,"
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 13 (Winter 1991):
328-334; Benjamin D. Stickney and Laurence R. Marcus, "Education and
the Disadvantaged Twenty Years Later," Phi Delta Kappan (April
1985): 559-564.
36.Henry Levin, "A
Decade of Policy Developments in Improving Education and Training for
Low-Income Populations," in Robert Haveman, ed., A Decade of Antipoverty
Programs: Achievements, Lessons, Failures (New York: Academic Press,
1977), pp. 153-158; Nathan Glazer, "Education and Training Programs
and Poverty," in Sheldon Danziger and Daniel H. Weinberg, eds., Fighting
Poverty: What Works and What Doesn't (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1986), pp. 153-179; Gary Natriello, Edward L. McDill, and Aaron
M. Pallas, Schooling Disadvantaged Children: Racing Against Catastrophe
(New York: Teachers College Press, 1990), pp. 72-78.
37.Ron Haskins, "Beyond
Metaphor: The Efficacy of Early Childhood Education," American Psychologist
44 (February 1989): 274-282.
38.Christopher Jencks,
"Comment," in Danziger and Weinberg, eds., Fighting Poverty,
pp. 173-179.
39.Milbrey McLaughlin,
Evaluation and Reform: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965, Title I (Santa Monica, California: Rand Corporation, 1974),
p. vii.
40.Birman et al.,
Current Operation, p. 68; Jeffrey Katz, "Headstart Funding Nears
Legislative Crossroad," Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report
52 (March 5, 1994): 541-547.
41.On instructional
quality in Title I/Chapter 1, see Birman, Current Operation,
pp. 53-116; on Head Start, see Sally Lubeck, "Nested Contexts," in Lois
Weis, ed., Class, Race, and Gender in American Education (Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1988), pp. 43-62; and Valerie Polakow, Lives on the
Edge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chps. 6 and 7.
42.Martin E. Orland,
"From Picket Fence to the Chain Link Fence: National Goals and Federal
Aid to the Disadvantaged," in Kenneth C. Wong and Margaret C. Wang,
eds., Rethinking Policy for At-Risk Students (Berkeley, California:
McCutchan, 1994), pp. 179-196; Marshall S. Smith, "Selecting Students
and Services for Chapter 1," in Denis P. Doyle and Bruce S. Cooper,
eds., Federal Aid to the Disadvantaged: What Future for Chapter 1?
(London: Falmer Press, 1988), pp. 119-145.
43.Erwin Flaxman,
Gary Burnett, and Carol Ascher, "The Unfulfilled Mission of Federal
Compensatory Education Programs," in Erwin Flaxman and A. Harry Passow,
eds., Changing Populations/Changing Schools, Ninety-Fourth Yearbook
of the National Society for the Study of Education (Chicago: National
Society for the Study of Education, 1995), p. 109.
44.Thomas Timar, "Program
Design and Assessment Strategies in Chapter 1," in Wang and Wong, eds.,
Rethinking Policy, pp. 65-89.
45.Valerie E. Lee
and Susanna Loeb, "Where Do Head Start Attendees End Up? One Reason
Why Preschool Effects Fade Out," Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis 17 (Spring 1995): 62-82.
46.Mary M. Kennedy,
Richard K. Jung, and Martin E. Orland, Poverty, Achievement, and
the Distribution of Compensatory Education Services: An Interim Report
from the National Assessment of Chapter 1 (Washington, D.C.: Office
of Educational Research and Improvement, 1986); Michelle Fine, Framing
Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High School (Albany
NY: SUNY Press, 1991); Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools
Structure Inequality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
47.William L. Taylor
and Dianne M. Piche, A Report on Shortchanging Children: The Impact
of Fiscal Inequity on the Education of Students at Risk, Committee
on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives, 101st Congress,
second session (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office,
1990), p. 9.
48.Taylor and Piche,
Shortchanging Children, chps. 4 and 5; Kozol, Savage Inequalities;
William Clune, "The Shift From Equity to Adequacy in School Finance,"
The World and I 8 (September, 1993): 389-405.
49.On the effect of
tax indexation on American politics more generally, see Paul Pierson,
Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics
of Retrenchment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.
151-155.
50.Lawrence Bobo and
Ryan A. Smith, "Antipoverty Policy, Affirmative Action, and Racial Attitudes,"
in Sheldon H. Danziger, Gary D. Sandfeur, and Daniel H. Weinberg, eds.,
Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 392-393.
51.Carolyn D. Herrington
and Martin E. Orland, "Politics and Federal Aid to Urban School Systems:
The Case of Chapter 1," in James Cibulka, Rodney Reed, and Kenneth Wong,
eds., The Politics of Urban Education in the United States, Politics
of Education Association Yearbook 1991 (Washington, D.C.: Falmer, 1992),
pp. 167-179; Mary Ann Millsap, The Chapter 1 Implementation Study:
Interim Report (Washington, D.C.: Department of Education, 1992).
52.See, for example,
Smith, "Selecting Students and Services," in Doyle and Cooper, eds.,
Federal Aid to the Disadvantaged, pp. 119-145; Herrington and
Orland, "Politics and Federal Aid," in Cibulka, Reed, and Wong, eds.,
Politics of Urban Education pp. 167-179.
53. Connell, "Poverty
and Education," p. 142.
54.Kenneth R. Howe,
"Standards, Assessment, and Equality of Educational Opportunity," Educational
Researcher 23 (November 1994): 31.
55.Robert Lowe and
Harvey Kantor, "Creating Educational Opportunity for African Americans
Without Upsetting the Status Quo," in Flaxman and Passow, eds., Changing
Populations/Changing Schools, p. 202.
56.Robert Kuttner,
"A Liberal Dunkirk?" The American Prospect 29 (November-December,
1996): 10.
|
CONTENTS
Vol. 11, No. 2
Equal Opportunity and the Federal Role in Education
Arranged Marriages, Rearranged Ideas
Equity, Not Abandonment, Should Drive Federal
Policy
Rethinking Our Classrooms: Writing 'Essays
with an Attitude'
|