Educational Accountability and American Federalism
Educational Accountability and American Federalism

Author: John Portz

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-10

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1000833747

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This book offers important insights into the complex nature of educational accountability and its role in supporting school improvement. By developing two key concepts – educational accountability and American federalism – the book highlights various types of accountability that take place in different institutional settings. By moving beyond the long-standing, test-based, administrative approach to accountability, the author demonstrates how professional, market, and political accountability affect teaching, learning, and educational policymaking. The book examines four accountability types: administrative accountability, professional accountability, market accountability, and political accountability. The volume questions why these accountability types vary in their development and use across the country, and considers how American federalism – national, state, and local – provides different political arenas with variation in ideas, interests, and institutions that prompt different policymaking approaches. The book concludes with a two-tier proposal for internal accountability organized around teacher professionalism and external accountability combining elements of school choice and public deliberation. This volume will be important reading for scholars and researchers in Federalism, Education Policy, and Public Administration. It will also be beneficial reading for policymakers, think tanks, and community organizations.

Federalism and Education
Federalism and Education

Author: Kenneth K. Wong

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2018-04-01

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1641131748

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Federalism has played a central role in charting educational progress in many countries. With an evolving balance between centralization and decentralization, federalism is designed to promote accountability standards without tempering regional and local preferences. Federalism facilitates negotiations both vertically between the central authority and local entities as well as horizontally among diverse interests. Innovative educational practices are often validated by a few local entities prior to scaling up to the national level. Because of the division of revenue sources between central authority and decentralized entities, federalism encourages a certain degree of fiscal competition at the local and regional level. The balance of centralization and decentralization also varies across institutional and policy domains, such as the legislative framework for education, drafting of curricula, benchmarking for accountability, accreditation, teacher training, and administrative responsibilities at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Given these critical issues in federalism and education, this volume examines ongoing challenges and policy strategies in ten countries, namely Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. These chapters and the introductory overview aim to examine how countries with federal systems of government design, govern, finance, and assure quality in their educational systems spanning from early childhood to secondary school graduation. Particular attention is given to functional division between governmental layers of the federal system as well as mechanisms of intergovernmental cooperation both vertically and horizontally. The chapters aim to draw out comparative lessons and experiences in an area of great importance to not only federal countries but also countries that are emerging toward a federal system.

American Federalism in Practice
American Federalism in Practice

Author: Michael Doonan

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2013-08-30

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0815724837

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American Federalism in Practice is an original and important contribution to our understanding of contemporary health policy. It also illustrates how contentious public policy is debated, formulated, and implemented in today’s overheated political environment. Health care reform is perhaps the most divisive public policy issue facing the United States today. Michael Doonan provides a unique perspective on health policy in explaining how intergovernmental relations shape public policy. He tracks federal-state relations through the creation, formulation, and implementation of three of the most important health policy initiatives since the Great Society: the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), both passed by the U.S. Congress, and the Massachusetts health care reform program as it was developed and implemented under federal government waiver authority. He applies lessons learned from these cases to implementation of the Affordable Care Act. “Health policymaking is entangled in a complex web of shared, overlapping, and/or competing power relationships among different levels of government,” the author notes. Understanding federal-state interactions, the ways in which they vary, and the reasons for such variation is essential to grasping the ultimate impact of federalism on programs and policy. Doonan reveals how federalism can shift as the sausage of public policy is made while providing a new framework for comprehending one of the most polarizing debates of our time.

No Child Left Behind?
No Child Left Behind?

Author: Paul E. Peterson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2003-11-18

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780815796206

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The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act is the most important legislation in American education since the 1960s. The law requires states to put into place a set of standards together with a comprehensive testing plan designed to ensure these standards are met. Students at schools that fail to meet those standards may leave for other schools, and schools not progressing adequately become subject to reorganization. The significance of the law lies less with federal dollar contributions than with the direction it gives to federal, state, and local school spending. It helps codify the movement toward common standards and school accountability. Yet NCLB will not transform American schools overnight. The first scholarly assessment of the new legislation, No Child Left Behind? breaks new ground in the ongoing debate over accountability. Contributors examine the law's origins, the political and social forces that gave it shape, the potential issues that will surface with its implementation, and finally, the law's likely consequences for American education.

American Federalism Today
American Federalism Today

Author: Michael J. Boskin

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2024-09-01

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0817926364

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What are federalism's challenges and opportunities today? The framers of the US Constitution enumerated specific powers for the federal government, leaving all else under the purview of states or the people. Over time, the federal government has expanded its role, yet the American people have more trust in state and local governments that are closer to them—and where co-partisanship is often a matter of necessity. Scholars and practitioners in policymaking gathered at the Hoover Institution in September 2023 to discuss the ramifications of federalism for contemporary issues. American Federalism Today presents those conference proceedings. Renowned experts from a range of disciplines, including economics, political science, history, and law, lay out the key priorities in evaluating and reinvigorating America's federal system of governance. Among the topics they examine are infrastructure, education and healthcare financing, trust in government, and intergovernmental relations in an era of rising federal debt and unfunded state and local liabilities. Three influential governors—Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, and Jerry Brown—describe navigating the federalist system as they led their states through many challenges. This unique compilation draws on the remarkable expertise and experience of its contributors to probe federalism's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges in the nation's political and economic governance.

Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism
Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism

Author: Frank J. Thompson

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2020-09-29

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 081573820X

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How Trump has used the federal government to promote conservative policies The presidency of Donald Trump has been unique in many respects—most obviously his flamboyant personal style and disregard for conventional niceties and factual information. But one area hasn't received as much attention as it deserves: Trump's use of the “administrative presidency,” including executive orders and regulatory changes, to reverse the policies of his predecessor and advance positions that lack widespread support in Congress. This book analyzes the dynamics and unique qualities of Trump's administrative presidency in the important policy areas of health care, education, and climate change. In each of these spheres, the arrival of the Trump administration represented a hostile takeover in which White House policy goals departed sharply from the more “liberal” ideologies and objectives of key agencies, which had been embraced by the Obama administration. Three expert authors show how Trump has continued, and even expanded, the rise of executive branch power since the Reagan years. The authors intertwine this focus with an in-depth examination of how the Trump administration's hostile takeover has drastically changed key federal policies—and reshaped who gets what from government—in the areas of health care, education, and climate change. Readers interested in the institutions of American democracy and the nation's progress (or lack thereof) in dealing with pressing policy problems will find deep insights in this book. Of particular interest is the book's examination of how the Trump administration's actions have long-term implications for American democracy.

The Price of Federalism
The Price of Federalism

Author: Paul E. Peterson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780815791645

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What is the price of federalism? Does it result in governmental interconnections that are too complex? Does it create overlapping responsibilities? Does it perpetuate social inequalities? Does it stifle economic growth? To answer these questions, Paul Peterson sets forth two theories of federalism: functional and legislative. Functional theory is optimistic. It says that each level of the federal system is well designed to carry out the tasks for which it is mainly responsible. State and local governments assume responsibility for their area's physical and social development; the national government cares for the needy and reduces economic inequities. Legislative theory, in contrast, is pessimistic: it says that national political leaders, responding to electoral pressures, misuse their power. They shift unpopular burdens to lower levels of government while spending national dollars on popular government programs for which they can claim credit. Both theories are used to explain different aspects of American federalism. Legislative theory explains why federal grants have never been used to equalize public services. Elected officials cannot easily justify to their constituents a vote to shift funds away from the geographic area they represent. The overall direction that American federalism has taken in recent years is better explained by functional theory. As the costs of transportation and communication have declined, labor and capital have become increasingly mobile, placing states and localities in greater competition with one another. State and local governments are responding to these changes by overlooking the needs of the poor, focusing instead on economic development. As a further consequence, older, big cities of the Rust Belt, inefficient in their operations and burdened by social responsibilities, are losing jobs and population to the suburban communities that surround them. Peterson recommends that the national government adopt p

Higher Education Accountability
Higher Education Accountability

Author: Robert Kelchen

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2018-02-27

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1421424746

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The first comprehensive overview charting the accountability of higher education. As the price tag of higher education continues to rise, colleges and universities across the country are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their value. Graded on numerous metrics, including cost and ability to prepare students for the job market, colleges must satisfy requirements from multiple stakeholders. State and federal governments demand greater accountability. Foundations and private donors, as well as today's parents and students, approach education with a consumer sensibility. How can colleges navigate these pressures while trying to stay true to their missions and values? In Higher Education Accountability, Robert Kelchen delivers the first comprehensive overview of how colleges in the United States came to face such overwhelming scrutiny. Beginning with the earliest efforts to regulate schools, Kelchen reveals the rationale behind accountability and outlines the historical development of how federal and state policies, accreditation practices, private-sector interests, and internal requirements have become so important to institutional success and survival. With so many diverse and conflicting entities holding colleges responsible for their performance, the variety of accountability systems in play can have both intended and unintended consequences. Immersed as they are in current debates about how best to respond to these pressures, faculty and administrators will welcome this up-to-date and timely account, which offers not only a look at current practices but also an examination of the future of accountability in American higher education.

Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century
Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century

Author: Paul Manna

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2013-01-03

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0815723954

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A Brookings Institution Press with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Center for American Progress publication America's fragmented, decentralized, politicized, and bureaucratic system of education governance is a major impediment to school reform. In this important new book, a number of leading education scholars, analysts, and practitioners show that understanding the impact of specific policy changes in areas such as standards, testing, teachers, or school choice requires careful analysis of the broader governing arrangements that influence their content, implementation, and impact. Education Governance for the Twenty-First Century comprehensively assesses the strengths and weaknesses of what remains of the old in education governance, scrutinizes how traditional governance forms are changing, and suggests how governing arrangements might be further altered to produce better educational outcomes for children. Paul Manna, Patrick McGuinn, and their colleagues provide the analysis and alternatives that will inform attempts to adapt nineteenth and twentieth century governance structures to the new demands and opportunities of today. Contents: Education Governance in America: Who Leads When Everyone Is in Charge?, Patrick McGuinn and Paul Manna The Failures of U.S. Education Governance Today, Chester E. Finn Jr. and Michael J. Petrilli How Current Education Governance Distorts Financial Decisionmaking, Marguerite Roza Governance Challenges to Innovators within the System, Michelle R. Davis Governance Challenges to Innovators outside the System, Steven F. Wilson Rethinking District Governance, Frederick M. Hess and Olivia M. Meeks Interstate Governance of Standards and Testing, Kathryn A. McDermott Education Governance in Performance-Based Federalism, Kenneth K. Wong The Rise of Education Executives in the White House, State House, and Mayor’s Office, Jeffrey R. Henig English Perspectives on Education Governance and Delivery, Michael Barber Education Governance in Canada and the United States, Sandra Vergari Education Governance in Comparative Perspective, Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley Governance Lessons from the Health Care and Environment Sectors, Barry G. Rabe Toward a Coherent and Fair Funding System, Cynthia G. Brown Picturing a Different Governance Structure for Public Education, Paul T. Hill From Theory to Results in Governance Reform, Kenneth J. Meier The Tall Task of Education Governance Reform, Paul Manna and Patrick McGuinn