Q&A on Education with U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley
What’s the federal government’s role in K-12 education?
Under the Constitution, the federal government is not granted a direct role in education. Nevertheless, Congress has carved out an increasing role in K-12 education over the years through various spending programs. In 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The law was focused on providing extra funds to schools with a large number of children in poverty on the assumption that reducing funding inequalities would result in higher student achievement for disadvantaged children. Unfortunately, despite about $600 billion of federal tax dollars spent every year, there is not much evidence that this spending has had a significant effect on student achievement. The law was most recently updated with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Senate committee action on a new bill to reauthorize the ESEA is scheduled for next week.
What changes do you think Congress should make to the federal education law?
States have been calling for relief as we approach the goal in No Child Left Behind of all students in every school meeting proficiency targets by 2014, with increasingly strict consequences for schools not meeting annual goals. Until Congress is able to pass a new version of ESEA, President Obama has announced that his administration will begin granting waivers to allow states to ignore the targets in current law in return for implementing a series of new federal requirements based on his proposal for the ESEA reauthorization. I support allowing states to propose alternatives to the requirements in No Child Left Behind, but I don’t believe the President should be allowed to attach strings like requiring states to adopt his policy agenda without congressional authorization.
In anticipation of the reauthorization debate, I cosponsored the State Innovation Pilot Act (S.1568). It would authorize state educational agencies and local school districts to submit a request to the Secretary of Education to waive any statutory or regulatory requirement of the law, who either could approve the request as submitted or submit it for peer review, but could not attach strings of his own as a condition of approval. The legislation encourages state and local education leadership in developing and implementing innovative strategies to improve the achievement of all students because innovation comes from the ground up and cannot be imposed from the top down.
Ultimately, control needs to be returned to states and local school districts. States should be able to develop their own accountability system to inform parents about their child’s school and focus on teaching instead of complying with federal rules and paperwork. That’s why I am a cosponsor of another bill called A-PLUS, which stands for Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success. It would allow states and school districts to enter into partnership agreements with the U.S. Department of Education to cut federal red tape and take back responsibility for K-12 education, allowing them to focus on doing what works in their communities instead of worrying about complying with federal rules and filling out paperwork. States would still be required to retain an accountability system so that parents and policymakers know how our schools are doing in educating all our children, but states could design it to fit the state rather than to fit a specific federal model. The A-PLUS legislation would return the full responsibility for educating our kids to the states and communities where it belongs.
Separately, I have introduced the TALENT Act, or the To Aid Gifted and High-Ability Learners by Empowering the Nation’s Teachers Act (S.857). This legislation would reform current federal programs to correct the lack of focus on high-ability students in federal education policy and raise the expectation that teachers have the necessary skills to teach gifted and high-ability learners. America needs to challenge our brightest students in order to maintain and strengthen its leadership place in the world.
What role should parents play in education decisions?
I support efforts to restore more state and local decision-making because of my belief that decisions should be made as close as possible to the parents and students who are affected but, ultimately, it is the parents who have the primary responsibility for the child’s education and the ultimate right to decide what is best for their children. So, I support maximum parental choice in education. Efforts such as opportunity scholarships or Iowa’s tuition tax credit, as well as Iowa’s open enrollment law, are ways to empower parents to choose and access the best education for their children. These kinds of initiatives are largely the prerogative of states and local governments since most of the funding comes from states.
