The Law to Fix Learning is 57 Years Old Today!

57 years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law. The ESEA extended our federal government’s influence into public education, which was previously reserved mostly to the individual states. The act approved federal funding to improve professional development for teachers, equip America’s classrooms with improved instructional materials, provided resources to support educational programs, and promoted parental involvement. Today’s Every Student Succeeds Act is a descendant of the 1965 ESEA.

Although the ESEA and subsequent laws have impacted public education, it would be fair to say the state of American public education today does not match the results Johnson and America’s leadership had in mind when they passed and signed the bill into law back in ’65. Most current education authorities give our country’s schools an overall “C” at best when it comes to efficiency and effectiveness. Urban school districts usually receive a poorer grade. Our Nation’s Report Card, or the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has basically flat-lined over the past 40 years.

What happened? Why haven’t we been able to achieve equal access to education by eliminating the achievement gaps that plague black, brown, and poor children across America? Why have promises been broken to our most fragile group of Americans? There are five good reasons we never saw the improvements laid out as goals back in 1965. Here they are:

1. Goals became politicized. All the ESEA goals, and others associated with subsequent legislation, became fodder for Republican and Democrat election banter. Education has become a partisan issue over the past 60 years, something that can win an election for a Congress person or Senator or Governor.
2. School budgets began to be driven by federal title appropriations instead of learner needs. Instead of building budgets around the needs of our young learners, we tried and succeeded to smash our learners into federal appropriation categories established by decision-makers living thousands of miles away from the neediest young American learners and their families.
3. Learner equity was never achieved due to racist and classist decision-making. Promises made to our black, brown, and poor kids back in the 1950’s and 60’s have not been honored or realized. Our public education system has worked for just enough of our kids to convince us that it’s ok. But it hasn’t been ok for our poorest or most fragile youngster.
4. Conflicts between federal and state priorities. Teachers, principals, superintendents, and school boards have become more and more confused by conflicting mandates (many unfunded) coming from Washington and our state capitals. We suffer from a lack of unified strategy when it comes to our public education system, and I daresay other seeming national priorities.
5. And finally, America’s inability to practice what an old education professor of mine called “stickwithitness.” Even if we had a unified strategy to help all our young people learn at deep levels, our inability to “stick with” anything these days is a challenge we seem to fail in accomplishing.

So where do we go from here? That’s the question we will explore in future columns. There’s a reason why I launched “A Better Path to Learning” on the 57^th anniversary of ESEA’s passage – a federal promise so full of potential but yet such a huge disappointment. We can do better. We can give our kids a different learning system, a system that will provide equity and opportunity to our neediest kids and their families. What this new system looks like will be a major focus of my upcoming columns. But there will be more. We will also explore current affairs associated with our present public education system, and why the current system continues to struggle.

Finally, a few comments on myself and what readers can expect from “A Better Path to Learning.” I worked 35 years in the public education world, 25 years inside the Houston Independent School District as a teacher, principal, and region superintendent, and 10 years as the executive director of a Houston-based non-profit committed to working with partner school districts on improved leadership and classroom practice. I’ve seen the best and the worst of public education, and I’ve concluded we need to create a new system for learning for our kids. Inside this website, I’ll share what I think that new system could look like, as well as commenting on the current system.

Columns will post on the website Monday through Friday around 3 P.M. Central time. At this point, there are no plans to provide a space for dialogue, but hopefully my columns will cause you and your friends to begin a conversation about the contents of the website. Very soon, I’ll start posting links to other news and viewpoints pertaining to whatever I’m discussing that day.

The goal of this work is to explain how a new learning system can be created for our kids, with or without schools! I hope you find the conversation worthy of your reading and thinking time.

Until tomorrow. SVB