DeBray & Houch: A Narrow Path

This article looks acts the possibility of reauthorizing ESEA, with an emphasis on traditional party politics, entrance of new players, and the stresses on the groups that normally would support education reform.

• Party politics- parties are traditionally highly polarized
• divided/unified party government-- seeing how this will affect party politics
• 2010 elections-- Republicans gained and bipartisanship with educ policy decresed.  Authors believe this will stay the same until after the 2012 election (assuming that Obama would have to win and Democrats would win the legislative branch....or vice versa)
• NCLB only passed during temporary partisanship due to 9/11 (we've talked about that in class before)
• RTTT-- says that it's fairly noncontroversial....this doesn't seem to be in line with what we heard in DC-- seems like there is more controversy  especially how this affects or has been affected by CCS
• with RTTT, creates competition and winners and losers.  The math coordinator from Isle of Wight (can't remember her name...) made some fantastic points about how this is beneficial for better for wealthier school districts and those that can hire grant writers, already have responsible incomes, etc
• graphs show that there is a growing divide between democrats and republicans, which makes a bipartisan effort even more difficult
• Mayhew-- 324-- suggests that partianship is not the only thing that matters.  For Obama, for example, other things are taking the forefront, like health care, foreign policy, financial/economy, etc.
• New players- increase in think tanks and other groups
• leadership changed in the HELP committee-- long time legislatures no longer in charge-- new people with different political ideologies have become the critical players
• More think tanks exist now-- more research, ton of more data available
• Stress on traditional coalition- policy landscape has changed
• Democrats are no longer seeing spending more money on education a safe bet, they are becoming more reform/market-oriented
• Pressure from teacher unions-- becoming more challenging

Very interesting!!!  They say that CCS aren't from the federal government, but (pg. 332) Pres Obama said that "Title I allocations to their adoption of the CCS".  This doesn't seem to fit what we heard from Margaret on Friday :(

• now talks about opposition-- Mike Enzi (Wyoming-- Kelly's old employer)

Conclusion-- educational arena more fluid and diverse!