Introduction

When we learned on December 10, 2015, that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act had finally been reauthorized, the Educational Administration Quarterly editorial team members, like so many, were filled with questions about its potential impact. How do we understand (and potentially problematize) the devolution of power back to the states, as they are entrusted to use the guiding frameworks of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to ensure educational equity? How might schools and school leaders respond to new performance indicators? What, if anything, does this change for human capital systems in education? In what ways does ESSA influence the ways in which states support and hold accountable the most challenged districts and schools? These and many other inquiries regarding the influence of ESSA on the day-to-day practices of those working and engaging with public schools guided our decision to put out a call for this special issue.

Perhaps naively, many of us thought that the ESSA would, like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, be the defining anchor of educational policy for the coming years. For example, as Smarick (2015) quickly pointed out in the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation’s Flypaper blog, whether for or against, many believed that ESSA would fundamentally shift how schools and school systems operate, creating an uncertain future for many of the Obama-era reforms and the legacy of standards-based accountability more generally. Indeed, when we created the call for this special issue, it was largely an attempt to gain insight into the possible directions of the policy and perhaps to bring forth some of the issues that administrators and others should consider as new state plans were developed in compliance with the law.

Historically, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act represents the nation’s legislative commitment to equal opportunity for all children, regardless of race, income, disability, or home language. Of course, since President Obama signed ESSA into law, we have seen a new administration with priorities often very different and counter to those of preceding administrations. However, despite a shift in educational reform priorities by the current administration, ESSA remains the law of the land and largely defines the relationship between public schools and the federal government—a relationship that continues to evolve as we go to press.

For example, states, already far more empowered to define school performance, have begun to submit, or are in the process of submitting or revising their plans or associated waivers, for federal approval. These plans lay out not only new visions for how schools, teachers, and principals are held accountable but also present priorities that reallocate how funds and other resources are expended. The result of such efforts being a shift to the scope and focus of services and opportunities many receive. At the same time, Riddell (2017) argues, and we agree, that these new policies may also fundamentally shift the ways research is framed and utilized as states grapple with which interventions to use, how to best measure their impact, and take steps to go to scale with those deemed more effective. For these reasons, we see this special issue as an opportunity to deeply investigate the early impact of this law and perhaps to find places of hope, or at least opportunity, to consider a new path forward.

We are lucky to have in this edition a number of articles that challenge our collective thinking in this way.

Setting the stage and taking a cautiously optimistic view of the legislation, Young, Winn, and Reedy directly consider the relationship between ESSA and educational leadership. They point to the fact that ESSA follows and extends national trends in research and policy of acknowledging the important role of educational leadership in school improvement and success. They then argue that, by allowing states and districts to use federal funds to support leadership development initiatives, ESSA has put educational leadership front and center as a key mechanism to achieve national goals. To illustrate these trends, the authors highlight the ESSA plans from three states, Michigan, New Mexico, and Tennessee, where the decision was made to set aside 3% of Title II funds to support school leadership.

While encouraged by the scope and nature of the ideas within these plans, the authors also highlight some issues that may influence implementation. First, they acknowledge larger federal and state forces and particularly budget constraints that could hinder the ability of state and local agencies to fulfill these plans. Second, and related to these forces, they ask important questions regarding these same entities’ capacity and corresponding educational infrastructure to ensure these plans are implemented with fidelity and in a high-quality manner. They conclude with calls to ensure the full funding and support of ESSA and its leadership initiatives moving forward. In this way, and in keeping with evolving ideas on educational improvement and change, this piece highlights the changing scope of the legislation and the need for the entire system to be responsive to such changes.

While ESSA does not dramatically reduce the press for accountability in our public education system, it does shift some of the expectations for how organizational learning might best be focused in schools. ESSA requires education systems to move beyond core academic subjects and to rely on a more comprehensive view of school performance. Marsh, Bush-Mecenas, and Hough use evidence from waiver districts in California to project findings from an “ESSA-like” accountability system onto recommendations for states and schools. ¹ The authors take up the question of whether locally determined capacity-building efforts and greater flexibility are better than sanctions and prescriptive interventions; furthermore, they move the argument away from normative assumptions toward empirical grounding for particular practices. As with many changes to policy contexts, they find tension between policy intentions and policy alignment, between buy-in and adaptation (if not outright resistance).

Fuller, Hollingworth, and Pendola also consider the relationships between ESSA and leadership, with an analysis of state responses to demands to address long-standing inequitable access to effective educators. The authors examine state plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education under the Excellent Educators for All initiative, specifically focusing on the extent to which states account for the influence of leaders and leadership behaviors in the mechanisms proposed to redistribute access to effective teachers more equitably within the state. Trends in the plans reveal several areas where additional support is likely warranted, in light of ESSA’s funding focus. For example, two thirds of states mentioned human capital management systems as a lever for improving the recruitment and retention of effective teachers. However, the authors also found a lack of state infrastructure for monitoring the principal pipeline. Emerging work from the Wallace Foundation (2016, 2017) and partnering researchers and educational leaders may bolster efforts to connect what we know about school leadership and teacher quality. Few states referenced research related to school leaders, which suggests that—as a field—we have much to do to leverage policy into evidence-based decisions for improving equity.

In fact, one of the most notable features of ESSA that seeks to promote equity has been the increased role that state-level agencies have within the policy. Unlike the era of No Child Left Behind, where power and authority was heavily concentrated at the federal level, ESSA attempts to shift power and authority back to states. However, what implications emerge from the decentralization of power and authority is a question that remains particularly as it is related to promoting equity in schools. In an effort to address said question, Egalite, Fusarelli, and Fusarelli walk readers through the evolution of ESSA, paying particular attention to the role the federal government has played in the oversight and accountability of federal education reform efforts. More specifically, Egalite and colleagues hypothesize the implications that ESSA’s decentralization efforts and devolution of power might have on state and local education officials’ efforts to promote educational quality and equity in schools. They conclude that ESSA’s capacity to promote equity is limited both in part because of the current political battles shaping educational reform and because much of the responsibility lies within the efforts of individual states to develop the capacity to implement ESSA provisions that can ultimately reduce educational inequities. Thus, the power and influence that ESSA’s decentralization efforts has on promoting equity in schools hinges on how states decide to interpret and implement ESSA at the local level.

Moving beyond state-level agency responses to ESSA, Mackey centers an often marginalized perspective. By focusing her article on the implications of ESSA on Indian Country, Mackey urges readers to consider the potential consequences ESSA might have on the relationship between state and federal governments on tribal sovereignty and self-determination and to critically examine how ESSA is ensuring equity for American Indian and Alaska Native students. Through the application of a postcolonial interpretive policy analysis framework, and informed by Tribal Critical Race Theory, Mackey notes elements of ESSA (e.g., State/Tribal Education Partnerships, Native language immersion, tribal consultation, etc.) that appear to center Indigenous education. However, Mackey critiques the ESSA components that symbolically center Indigenous education by highlighting the lack of tribal self-determination that exists within the law. Mackey suggests that the decentralization efforts of ESSA are negatively affecting Indigenous self-determination, “shifting oversight of Indigenous education to states rather than tribes.” Thus, according to the author, ESSA is prioritizing states’ interests over tribes’ interests and ultimately providing fewer protections to Indian education programs.

In yet another article that seeks to center the implications that ESSA may have on elements outside the response of state-level agencies, Malin, Bragg, and Hackman consider how state-level flexibility under ESSA may affect efforts toward enhancing students’ college and career readiness (CCR) and particularly among those students historically underserved by higher education. To do so, the authors take a critical perspective and examine ESSA’s CCR provisions and how they might intersect with current state efforts in this area. They find that CCR-related content was contained throughout ESSA, suggesting a larger, and the authors argue, historic shift in federal reform policy from focusing solely on K-12 to include the higher education sector. Additionally, they argue that while both the state (Illinois) and federal policies emphasized CCR, the specifics of how and for whom these efforts should be provided varied. As such, the authors voiced some concerns regarding new state-level flexibilities within ESSA and particularly how such flexibility will affect the degree to which states can and will hold local districts and schools accountable to address CCR for all learners. The authors conclude the piece with the same cautious optimism seen elsewhere in the special issue, recognizing both the opportunity ESSA provides to use CCR policy to increase opportunity and equity for students and that real change is the result of much more than shifts in policy documents.

Together these papers provide a more nuanced picture of the implications and consequences that ESSA might have for state- and local-level agencies, Indigenous education, and college and career readiness.