Testing Race: Civil Rights Groups, the Democratic Party, and the Politics of the Contemporary Education Reform Movement

Abstract

This paper draws on a series of elite interviews to illuminate the position of the country’s major civil rights groups on the central components of the contemporary “education reform agenda.” It also analyzes the historical origins and contemporary political dynamics of the growing divide between civil rights groups and teachers unions over school reform and federal accountability policies. The two sides — both crucial members of the Democratic coalition — have long been united by the push for greater education spending but in recent years have engaged in an increasingly charged fight over school testing, accountability, choice, and teacher evaluation reforms which the teachers unions generally oppose. Many civil rights and anti-poverty group leaders believe that NCLB’s disaggregated data and accountability provisions offer an unprecedented and powerful tool in the fight for educational equity. Many in the education community, however, believe that the law — and new principal and teacher evaluation systems — unfairly hold schools and teachers responsible for resolving educational problems that have their roots elsewhere, in broader social ills like poverty. The divergent views within the Democratic party led commentator Richard Kahlenberg to write a 2008 article entitled “How the Left Can Avoid a New Education War” and the split was on public display in a clash at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008 and during recent debates over federal education legislation in Congress. This paper will provide an overview of the historical relationship between the teachers unions and civil rights groups, identify the factors will have led to their growing divergence on education policy, and examine the possible consequences of this rift for the politics of education and the direction of future school reform efforts in the U.S.

Keywords: education policy, politics of education, school reform, teachers unions, civil rights groups