(Interestingly, CBE’s last leader, the late A. Graham Down, was my neighbor and was the teacher of Christopher DeMuth, who led the American Enterprise Institute from 1986 to 2008.)
It was one of many reports of the day that argued for rigorous education standards.
While in graduate school in the late 1990s, I was tipped off by one of my dissertation advisers that MetLife insurance company produced thick annual surveys of teachers and former teachers on all sorts of interesting questions. This was pre-World Wide Web, so to get copies I wrote a letter to MetLife to ask if they could sell me any copies.
To my delight, a few weeks later a box showed up at my Brooklyn apartment, and inside was a colection of reports covering many of the years between 1985 and 1990. I was astonished at this largesse, and generally amazed that Metropolitan Life thought it worthwhile to drop dollars every year to produce these surveys, which had no direct connection to their line of business. Three cheers for corporate responsibility and good citizenship!
This report was published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan thinktank inside the Library of Congress. I worked at the agency for 11 years, and I can attest that Congress relies on CRS as a source for institutional memory. Why? Because policy history is complex and often long, and elected officials —who comes and go from Congress— rarely know that history.
This report was published shortly after Congress recreated the Department of Education in 1979. (You can see the law here.) I say recreated as Congress first established a department of education in 1867, a topic I essayed upon in Politico and which this CRS report also discusses.
The full title of this important 1993 Department of Education study is: Reinventing Chapter 1: The current Chapter 1 Program and New Directions: Final Report of the National Assessment of the Chapter 1 Program.
This report examines the Chapter 1 program’s impact at school and classroom levels, strategic directions for Chapter 1 reauthorization, the larger context of school poverty as it influences Chapter 1 delivery, the operation and effectiveness of Chapter 1, and new directions for improving Chapter 1 in line with national reforms. How well Chapter 1 responds to Congress’s intent in 1988 and adds to the educational progress of disadvantaged students is measured against the six National Education Goals. Part 1 compares high- and low-poverty schools in terms of their students’ needs, school service delivery, and school outcomes to establish the context for how Chapter 1 is affected by the degree of school poverty. Part 2 describes current program funding and targeting, student participation and performance, instructional services, schoolwide projects, staff development, family involvement and Even Start, special service arrangements for students in religious schools and migrant children, student assessment and program improvement, and assistance for improved performance. Part 3 describes new policy directions as a framework for reinventing the program. Included are: 53 exhibits; 4 appendixes which contain a list of supplementary volumes to the first report of National Assessment of Chapter 1 Program, a list of studies conducted for the National Assessment, the statute requiring a national assessment of Chapter 1 and a list of independent review panel presenters.
Chapter 1 (now Title 1) is THE major federal grant program for K-12, and this report shows how the thinking was evolving towards performance-based ed policy.
Federal Education Policy History 