Rethinking the Federal Role in Elementary and Secondary Education

The long held assumption is that the federal government has no business meddling with education due to the Constitution's reserve clause - which reserves to the states issues not mentioned in the constitution. Education is one such issue.

So the feds should stay out - unless they bring money to buy the state's affection.

Others have more recently opined that federal intrusions into education are perhaps permissible in order to promote the general welfare of Americans.

The Center on Education Policy has undertaken a project to rethink the federal role in elementary and secondary education.

As a first step, CEP has commissioned a series of papers on key issues, requiring the authors to provide evidence of the effects of various programs and initiatives, and to provide recommendations. Each paper is peer-reviewed by individuals with diverse points of view on the issue. Also, CEP convened a series of public forums to discuss several of the papers.

The result of these efforts will be a set of recommendations for President Obama and the new Congress for shaping the federal role in elementary and secondary education. The papers that have been issued to date are posted on the CEP Web site under “What’s New.” They are as follows:

• Federal Aid to Elementary and Secondary Education: Premises, Effects, and Major Lessons Learned. By Paul Manna, College of William and Mary
• Standards-Based Reform in the United States: History, Research, and Future Directions. By Laura S. Hamilton, Brian M. Stecher, and Kun Yuan, RAND Corporation
• The Role of Assessment in Federal Education Programs. By W. James Popham, University of California, Los Angeles
• Demographic Trends and the Federal Role in Education. By Harold Hodgkinson
• The Federal Role in Education: Lessons from Australia, Germany, and Canada. By Chad R. Lykins and Stephen P. Heyneman, Vanderbilt University