Federal Education Policy Is Mostly Impervious to the Midterm “Wave”

A week after the midterm elections, there’s been some hopeful speculation that perhaps Republican control of both houses of Congress will allow for more progress on the overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (and other key education bills). I’m skeptical, as I write in a TPM column today:

As most Washington, D.C. watchers know, the fundamental Beltway political equation since 2010 has been working out whether House Speaker John Boehner can pass anything that President Obama is willing to sign. And, as others have already noted, making Congress more conservative isn’t likely to make that dynamic easier…Is there any reason for Obama to tack to the right on education? I don’t think so. This is an area where he has deep, coherent convictions — and he largely accepts NCLB’s core aims as key federal priorities. To put it directly: the first African-American President of the United States is not likely to cooperate with Republicans who would weaken the federal government’s ability to force states to take educational equity seriously. For most of American history (and today), the decentralization of public education has been repeatedly used to protect de jure and de facto segregation, inequitable allocation of educational resources, and a dizzying variety of civil rights abuses.

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