Is Child-care Policy Today Similar to Past Education Reform?
Article/Op-Ed in The Huffington Post
Sept. 17, 2012
Recent discussions about reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the main federal legislation helping support America’s child-care system, remind me of where we were in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the main federal K-12 education support statue). I was a staffer advising a U.S. senator on education policy at the time and remember the focus on accountability in education. The national debate at the time centered around how to raise the quality of educational outcomes for children by boosting accountability of teachers, schools and dollars. At the time, a bipartisan group of congresspeople and senators, along with the White House, rallied a bill around that principle of accountability.