Educational Policy and the American Presidency

Historical Review

Beginning in the 1960s, presidents grew more involved in educational policy making, although interest varied across administrations. President John F. Kennedy spoke often about educational policy and proposed several bills, but it was not until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that significant educational policy saw realization at the federal level. With the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act, both of 1965, President Johnson substantially changed the federal role in education.

While Johnson established a new model for presidential involvement in educational policy making, his next three successors did not follow suit. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter largely ignored education throughout the 1970s. Even that decade's most significant educational milestone, the creation of the federal department of education in 1979, resulted not from President Carter's leadership but from heavy pressure from the National Education Association.

It was not until the 1980s that education again played a significant role in the American presidency, but the policy ideas differed from Johnson's. Ronald Reagan entered office vowing to reduce the federal role in education. He called for greater state responsibility and the dismantling of the Department of Education. His proposed policies included school choice, an amendment for voluntary school prayer (eventually the Equal Access Act), and block grants to states. With the 1983 release of A Nation at Risk, a report commissioned by Secretary of Education Terrel Bell, Reagan also called for educational excellence and reform in the form of a core curriculum, stronger school discipline, greater parental influence, and higher academic standards for teachers and students.

George H. W. Bush continued the momentum of these policies, particularly educational reform through school choice, greater state oversight of education, and academic standards. Through his educational summit with all fifty state governors in 1989, the latter policy received the most attention and eventually resulted in academic standards and assessments in nearly every state and a set of national educational standards.

These same standards became the centerpiece of President Bill Clinton's Goals 2000, which became law in 1994. Clinton's other major education policy, also approved in 1994, was School to Work, a program to provide high school students the opportunity to gain job-related skills. Although Clinton continued to focus on education throughout his terms, an opposition Congress elected in 1994 limited his ability to pass policies of any substance.

It was not until the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 that another major educational [Page 305]policy (other than reauthorization bills) passed through Congress. In NCLB George W. Bush pressed for increased accountability, the closing of the achievement gap, a greater emphasis on reading and math, expanded school choice, and increased flexibility for state education agencies working under federal law; only the first three of these remained in the bill's final version in significant form.

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