How Federal Education Policy Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Can Support States in School Improvement

F or years, both federal and state policymakers have enacted policies to improve the quality of low-performing public schools. At the federal level, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which has been reauthorized multiple times since its inception in 1965, supplements state and local resources to schools serving low-income and low-performing students in an effort to improve those schools’ performance.1 At the state level, education departments have undertaken a variety of efforts to improve school performance, ranging from public reporting on schools to assigning experts to help with improvement. Despite such federal and state efforts, there has not been a dramatic turnaround in most of these schools. In light of the upcoming ESEA reauthorization, the Sandler Foundation asked RAND to reexamine the roles of the federal government and the states in improving schools and boosting student achievement. To do so, RAND researchers addressed these questions: • What policy levers does the federal government have at its disposal to promote school improvement, and what factors constrain their effectiveness? • What actions are states currently taking with respect to educational improvement? • How can the federal government best support states in their school-improvement efforts?