Dive Brief:
- With longstanding Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the way out, the coming retirement of House education committee chair John Kline (R-MN), and the departure of John Boehner (R-OH) creating a vacuum of power in the House Speaker position, the fate of current and proposed education policy initiatives is murky.
- The Obama administration’s ability to enforce initiatives using competitive grants is now limited due to funding and the waning political force of the outgoing president.
- As a result, the administration seems positioned to largely hold its course and focus on the last remaining major objective, passing a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — now known as No Child Left Behind — though how that might shape up is also now in question.
Dive Insight:
One of the elements constraining the possibility of rolling out new policy objectives and putting pressure on those already in place is the administration’s cautious approach to deploying its substantial clout. Though the current system of waivers from NCLB's more stringent requirements offer the U.S. Department of Education considerable power over state policy, federal leaders have proved reluctant to use it to punish states that step out of line. Only Washington state’s waiver was revoked over its refusal to use test scores in teacher evaluations. The turnover at the top, with the appointment of former New York state schools chief John King, seems unlikely to change that, Education Week reports.
"What's in their toolbox?" Terry Holliday, Kentucky's former commissioner of education, asked Education Week. Experts say King is no more likely to take a hardline enforcement approach than Duncan, but without that — or the Race to the Top funds — there's little the administration can do.