Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)

ESEA was passed in 1965 and replaced the previous National Defense Education Act as the federal legislation that authorizes expenditures for elementary and secondary schools. This legislation was at the center of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs and was targeted specifically at providing educational opportunity to economically disadvantaged children, with Title I being the cornerstone of the legislation. It is worth noting that ESEA was passed at a time when pressure from counterculture groups was high (especially concerning the War in Vietnam), and the legislation reflected this cultural context of populist democracy. ESEA was reauthorized about every [Page 124]5 years, each time being amended and broadened in scope. Over time, ESEA was elaborated to expand target populations and topics and include bilingual education, migrant education, American Indian education, native Hawaiians, native Alaskans, neglected and delinquent youth, education in corrections facilities, technology, math and science, libraries and media, violence prevention, safe and drug-free schools, Even Start, women's equity, magnet schools, foreign language in elementary schools, the gifted and talented, arts education, charter schools, education improvement activities (from training to innovation grants to model demonstration grants to higher education), midnight basketball, gun-free schools, tobacco smoke–free environments, and provisions for everything from improving materials and textbooks to maintenance and construction of school buildings.

One of the provisions of ESEA, an amendment demanded by Senator Robert Kennedy, was evaluation of Title I programs, and with this legislation the opportunity for large-scale, well-funded educational evaluation expanded dramatically. In many cases, local educators were underprepared to conduct the evaluations demanded by ESEA, and the demand for evaluation expertise was a direct impetus for the development of many extant models of evaluation. For example, The Ohio State University Evaluation Center staff, in collaboration with the Columbus, Ohio, public school district, developed the original version of the CIPP model to meet the evaluation demands of ESEA.

In 2001, ESEA was reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and its federal reach into local education dramatically expanded.