A Case Study of Policy Change by Rachel Dinkes

The Genesis of Race to the Top: A Case Study of Policy Change

by Rachel Dinkes

B.A. in English, May 2002, George Washington University M.Sc. in Social Research Methods (Statistics), December 2004, the London School of Economics and Political Science

A Dissertation submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of the George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 15, 2015

Dissertation directed by

Steven J. Balla Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Rachel Dinkes has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy as of January 27, 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation

The Genesis of Race to the Top: A Case Study of Policy Change

Rachel Dinkes

Dissertation Research Committee:

Steven J. Balla, Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs, Dissertation Director

Kathryn Newcomer, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Committee Member

Yas Nakib, Associate Professor of Education Policy, and Public Policy and Public Administration, Committee Member

Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to my sons, Max and Spencer. Never quit.

iii

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the many policy actors who generously offered their insights and observations and, without whom, this dissertation would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank my advisor, Dr. Steven Balla. This project took a long hiatus, but Dr. Balla always welcomed me back to his office with open arms, kindness, and inquisitiveness. Without Dr. Balla’s support, this project would not have come to fruition. I am forever grateful for his stewardship of this project. Dr. Kathryn Newcomer supported me throughout my doctoral studies. She not only cared about my studies, but about me personally. That care made all the difference to my continued pursuit of this dream. Dr. Yas Nakib taught my first class on education policy at GW and taught me to think about the unintended consequences of policy making. His comments on this dissertation have made it a stronger piece of work. I would also like to thank my two examiners: Dr. Peter Cookson who provided thought provoking conversations throughout the dissertation process, and Dr. Donna Infeld who provided guidance throughout my studies.

My husband, Jason Hoffman, who has never been infamous, offered support, encouragement, and sense of humor throughout this very long journey. I would also like to thank my parents, Ellen and Larry Dinkes, for always promoting the value of education, for their guidance, love, and for the tremendous value they put on education.

My sister, Michelle Dinkes, a public school teacher, always keeps my research grounded.

Finally, I would like to thank the American Institutes for Research (AIR) which

has financially supported this effort from classwork, comprehensive exams, to

dissertation. My colleagues’ encouragement to continue on this endeavor was invaluable.

Abstract of Dissertation

The Genesis of Race to the Top: A Case Study of Policy Change

This study examined the factors that led to the rise and eventual adoption of the state incentive grants program, later known as Race to the Top (RTT), in the American

Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2009. Until the Recovery Act in 2009, reauthorizations of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) had been the primary law, and mandate the primary mechanism that federal policy makers used to influence state and local education policy. However, the Obama administration used the

Recovery Act and a competition mechanism to advance their education agenda. Based on analyses of relevant documents and interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors, this study sought to establish a narrative of the factors that led to the genesis of RTT.

Consistent with established theories that seek to explain policy change, this study found that policy windows, elections, policy entrepreneurs, the decline of previously powerful interest groups, new interest groups, and venue change were all important factors in the genesis of RTT. In addition to traditional factors that explain policy change, this study found that speed, minimal verbiage, and a small, tight-limited group of actors were key factors in the genesis of RTT.

This study has important implications for policy makers seeking to advance federal education reforms. Given the structural limitations of ESEA and the lack of constitutional authority for the federal government to make state education policy reforms, future Presidents and administrations will continue to seek alternate pathways for their education reform agendas like RTT. Understanding the factors and conditions

v that led to the genesis of an alternate pathway to federal education reform in 2009 may be a useful case study for future policy makers.

Table of Contents

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Abstract of Dissertation ...... v

List of Figures ...... x

List of Tables ...... xi

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Purpose of Research and Intended Contribution ...... 3

Research Question ...... 5

Need for Study ...... 6

Assumptions ...... 7

Delimitations and Limitations ...... 8

Qualitative Methods ...... 9

Sample...... 10

Data Collection and Analysis...... 11

Findings...... 11

Definitions and Key Terms ...... 12

Organization of the Dissertation ...... 13

Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 14

Introduction ...... 14

ESEA...... 14

The EIC and Education Reform Movement ...... 23

ARRA and RTT ...... 28

Understanding Policy Change...... 38

RTT Research ...... 44

vii

Analytical Framework ...... 48

Conclusion ...... 48

Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 50

Research Question and Design ...... 50

Case Study Approach ...... 51

Sample...... 52

Interview approach...... 53

List of Potential Interviewees ...... 55

Interview Protocols ...... 60

Interview Questions ...... 62

Analysis of Interviews ...... 64

Validity of Findings ...... 65

Human Participants, Ethical Considerations, and the IRB ...... 69

Data Collection ...... 70

Interviews ...... 74

Data Organization and Analysis ...... 78

Overview ...... 78

NVivo ...... 79

Summary ...... 82

Chapter 4: Findings ...... 83

Context for RTT ...... 83

Recession ...... 85

RTT and the Recovery Act ...... 88

President Obama ...... 94

Relative Amount ...... 105

viii

Time ...... 108

Venue ...... 110

Vague ...... 112

Limited number of highly knowledgeable policy actors ...... 121

New Administration ...... 124

The Narrative of RTT and Theories of Agenda Setting ...... 127

Summary ...... 142

Chapter 5: Conclusion...... 143

Summary of the main findings ...... 143

Contributions to Theory and Policy ...... 147

Commentary on the Genesis of RTT ...... 149

Study Limitations ...... 151

Future of Federal Education Policy Making ...... 152

Conclusion ...... 156

References ...... 157

Chapter 6: Appendices ...... 163

Appendix A: Initial Contact Letter/Email and Interview Participant Consent Form ...... 164

Appendix B: Interview Guide for Highly Knowledgeable Policy Actors...... 167

Appendix C: Extract of the Recovery Act as it relates to RTT ...... 169

Appendix D: RTT Points System ...... 171

List of Figures

Figure 4.1. Genesis of RTT...... 84

Figure 4.2. Number of Days to Pass Legislation ...... 109

Figure 4.3. Typical Legislative Process vs. Process for Recovery Act ...... 114

Figure 4.4. Illustration of Multiple Streams (MS) Theory...... 129

Figure 4.5. Illustration of Factors in the Genesis of RTT using MS theory ...... 130

Figure 4.6. Illustration of Punctuation Equilibrium (PE) Theory ...... 130

Figure 4.7. Illustration of Factors in the Genesis of RTT using PE Theory ...... 131

List of Tables

Table 2.1. Timeline of Selected Key Events and Key Actors in the Education Reform Movement ...... 26

Table 2.2. Timeline of H.R. 1 (111TH): American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ...... 29

Table 2.3. Factors Examined in the Study, Based on Influential Factors Identified in the Literature ...... 47

Table 3.1. Highly knowledgeable Policy Actors List (Phase I) ...... 56

Table 3.2. Policy Actors List (Phase II) ...... 59

Table 3.3. Interview Organization ...... 64

Table 1.4. High Quality Research Studies ...... 67

Table 3.5. Interview Summary Statistics ...... 73

Table 3.6. Names, Dates, Times, Length, and Type of Interview ...... 76

Table 3.7. Types of Policy Actors ...... 77

Chapter 1: Introduction

President Obama assumed office as the United States was roiled in the worst

economic crisis since the 1930s. The first item on the President’s agenda was addressing

the crisis. Less than one month after assuming office on February 17, 2009, President

Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law. Overall,

ARRA totaled $840 billion dollars. Four areas of spending received more than, or close

to, $100 billion dollars. One of those areas was education. The nearly $100 billion dollars

earmarked for education in ARRA was more than 1.7 times the normal amount of

federally appropriated funds for education in any one of the five years prior to ARRA.1

Over ninety percent of the ARRA education funding was distributed via

traditional funding formulas. These formulas appropriated funding based on either (1) a

state’s population (for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund) or (2) the highest number or

highest percentage of poor children that a district serves (like that for categorical

programs like Title I in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). The statutory

language of ARRA education funding specified four specific areas (known as assurances)

to improve student achievement.2 There were minimal consequences for failure to adhere

to these four assurances.

However, section 14006 of ARRA, “State Incentive Grants,” outlined a program

that awards grant funding to states whose proposals detail how they would meet the four

1 In 2008, the federal government appropriated $155.3 billion dollars in federal funds for education programs. In 2009, the federal government appropriated $277.9 billion. This number includes all education funds from ARRA even though some of these funds had two-year availability (2013 Digest of Education Statistics, table 419).

2 These four assurance areas were: (1) college and career standards, (2) data systems, (3) teacher effectiveness, and (4) interventions for lowest performing schools. 1 assurances and other criteria the Secretary of Education deemed appropriate (American

Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Title XIV, sec 14006 and Appendix A). In other words, in order to receive a state incentive grant, states would have to submit plans outlining how they would meet the assurance areas. The administration hoped that, by submitting a proposal, states would be more invested and committed to the four assurance areas that had minimal consequences.

The $4.35 billion dollars allocated for state incentive grants in section 14006 was used for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top (RTT) competition. RTT became the largest competitive grant in the history of U.S. education (Nicholson-Crotty and

Staley, 2012) and one of the major policy legacies of the Obama administration. Even though RTT funds were designed to be one-time grants and, more importantly, there were no guarantees a state would be awarded any funds, by the summer of 2010, states began to pass legislation to compete more favorably for an RTT award (Meredith, 2013). For example, 46 states made or passed statutory and regulatory policies between March 2009 and August 2010 that reflected the criteria in RTT (e.g., the adoption of the Common

Core State Standards (CCSS) or value-added teacher evaluation models to measure teacher performance). RTT was remarkable for the changes made in non-winning states

(e.g., the application process alone motivated state action to implement the Obama administration’s education reforms).

Until the Recovery Act in 2009, reauthorizations of the 1965 Elementary and

Secondary Education Act (ESEA) had been the primary law federal policy makers used to influence state and local education policy (Manna, 2007; Mehta, 2006; Peterson and

West, 2003; Rudalevige, 2003). However, the Obama administration advanced its

2 education policy agenda through ARRA, not ESEA.3 For the first time in fifty years, an administration would seek to, and be successful in, advancing their education policy reforms outside ESEA reauthorizations. The promotion of an administration’s federal education policy reforms outside of ESEA represented a profound policy change.

Many political science theories describe policy change in the United States as conservative, favoring long periods of relative stability over change and with major policy change occurring sporadically and reactively. In other words, incremental policy change in the United States is more of the norm than major policy change. However, sometimes there are dramatic changes in which policy moves forward in an entirely new direction. RTT represents such a change. This research study seeks to understand the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT.

Purpose of Research and Intended Contribution

The purpose of this research is to analyze the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT on the Obama administration agenda. Why is it important to study and understand the factors and conditions that lead to policy change? One reason is that case studies of policy change can legitimize democracy. For example, while theories of agenda setting note that interest groups and iron triangles are factors that inhibit policy change and reinforce the status quo, case studies of major policy change illuminate how policy change can occur despite these forces. Another important reason for examining case studies of policy change is that an understanding of the factors that lead to major

3 The Obama administration also advanced its education reforms through the ESEA waiver process. In 2011, the Obama administration introduced a formal process for waiving ESEA requirements mandated in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. 3 policy change and how issues arise on the agenda can help current and future policy makers employ similar strategies for keeping their policy issues on the agenda and moving them up the list of policy priorities. Since all policymakers are constrained by bounded rationality (i.e., they cannot consider all solutions to all problems at the same time) policy entrepreneurs can learn from case studies of policy change to understand how issues can gain salience.

In addition to the purpose of studying policy change in general, analyzing the factors that led to such a profound policy change in education is relevant to both education policy researchers and education policy makers. RTT is likely to serve as a model for future Presidents’ agendas (Maranto and McShane, 2012). This is because,

“the ‘take my money, take my reforms’ strategy is more likely to enact changes the

President wants than any preaching from the bully pulpit or any strictures codified in federal education statutes and regulations” (Maranto and McShane, 2012, p. 151), such as

ESEA.

If future Presidents seek to make education policy reforms through ESEA reauthorizations, they may find limited success because the law itself was designed to limit the federal government’s involvement in state education, and because the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to force state education reforms. In order to pass ESEA in 1965, “the legislation contained large political and structural barriers to federal influence on how Title I could be used” (Cohen and Moffit, 2009, p. 3). If it is true that future Presidents seeking to make education policy reforms are likely to need alternate laws and alternate mechanisms, it is important to understand how new policies like RTT arrived on the agenda. Further, the dynamics leading to institutional change in

4 education policy, such as RTT, have been understudied (Cohen-Vogel and McLendon,

2009). By examining the dynamics that led to the genesis of RTT, this study seeks to help fill this void.

Research Question

This study looked into the black box of the pre-enactment stages of the state incentives grants to identify the factors that led to the rise and eventual adoption of the state incentive grants, later known as Race to the Top, in the Recovery Act in 2009. The primary research question of the study is: What factors and conditions led to the genesis of RTT on the Obama agenda?

Based on a review of literature on agenda setting, policy change, and education policy making, factors that likely led to the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda include, but are not limited to: the economic environment; an election; President

Obama’s experience as a community organizer; the declining power of education interest groups, such as teachers unions; increased data on student and school performance

(which is correlated with the declining power of established interest groups); the increasing political power and influence of new interest groups, such as Democrats for

Education Reform (DFER); and venue change from an authorizing committee to an appropriating committee.

The identification of the factors and conditions that led to RTT’s rise on the

Obama agenda is framed by input generated by a small group of highly knowledgeable policy actors. “Insights from these policy actors combined with document analysis contributed to the development of a policy narrative with an applied social scientific

5 framework. Interviews provided descriptive information that informed the study’s analysis of why and how these factors interact and led to the policy action” (Berman,

2008, p. 7).

Need for Study

In addition to the value of studying the agenda setting process in general, this study is needed because there is an incomplete picture of the conditions that led the

Obama administration to pursue RTT within education policy research. Additionally, analysis of factors that lead the federal government to undertake major education policy reforms is generally understudied (Cohen-Vogel and McLendon, 2009). Cohen-Vogel and McLendon (2009) argue that education policy researchers have been too focused on the outcomes and effects of federal education policy, and that too little attention has been paid to the theories that explain why federal policy reform occurs. This study, a case study of the factors that led to the ascension of RTT on the federal agenda, seeks to fill some of that void.

As McGuinn (2010) notes, RTT was both a policy and political tool. In both aspects, RTT represents a major policy change. To date, there have been many scholarly works on how RTT policies represented both radical and incremental policy change

(Maranto and McShane, 2012). With regard to RTT as a political tool, there are two components to the tool: the mechanism (competition) and the vehicle (ARRA). There has been considerably less research on the factors and conditions that gave rise to a new political tool aspect of RTT.

In addition to the need for this study for education policy researchers, this study is

also relevant for education policy makers. The last reauthorization of ESEA (No Child

Left behind (NCLB)) was first scheduled for reauthorization in 2007. After significant

starts and stops at re-authorizing the law since 2007, it re-authorized in December of

2015. The re-authorization effort was not led from the White House, but by Senator

Lamer Alexander, the Republican chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and

Pensions Committee.

The Obama administration’s impact on state education policy making outside

ESEA can be seen in the nearly constant media attention on the Common Core, teacher

evaluations, and merit pay. Given that the next President of the United States will likely

have to contend with the same political forces that influence federal education policy as

the current administration, this study’s examination of the factors and conditions that led

to a change in the major policy vehicle used by federal policy makers to exert influence

in state education reform is highly relevant and timely.

To generate that narrative, I conducted interviews with policy makers who were,

or are, key members of the Obama administration, campaign, and transition team. These

narratives, in the context of the history of federal education policy reforms and agenda

setting theories, are used to produce a rich, nuanced, narrative history explaining the

policy process that led to the ascension of RTT.

Assumptions

Agenda setting and policy change are complex processes. A major underlying

assumption supporting this research study is that policy actors are able to offer insights

7 about their own motives and the motives of others. This assumption enabled the development of a case study of the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT.

This study does not presume that all policy actors tell a consistent story. “What this study attempts to do is create a rich and nuanced description and analysis, including contradictory interpretations, of what motivated certain actors and action in the policy development and passage processes” (Berman, 2008, p. 12).

Delimitations and Limitations

This study is delimited by the following factors. First, the analysis and findings of a single case study of a specific policy change, the genesis of RTT in this research project, is not meant to be a model or present a theory to predict policy change in the future. In addition, this study does not attempt to describe the implementation or the effectiveness of RTT in meeting the Obama administration’s goals. The analysis is limited to the pre-enactment stages of RTT and to the genesis of RTT in ARRA. Further, this study does not attempt to explain why the Obama administration’s policy focused on the four assurance areas in the SFSF.

This study is also limited by factors typically associated with qualitative studies.

Although I sought to identify the key policy actors in the genesis of RTT, the list of actors may not have been comprehensive. In addition, this study was limited by non- response. Several policy actors did not respond to interview requests. To minimize the limitation of non-response and a small sample size, I conducted interviews until data saturation was achieved. Data saturation occurs when a series of additional interviewees adds little additional findings and the researcher hears the same information repeatedly.

In addition, case studies informed by interviews are subject to recall error, whereby interview subjects do not have a clear memory of an event, or that memory has been affected by later events that reframed their personal narrative. Although efforts were undertaken to minimize this limitation, some of the data collected likely suffer from recall bias due to the nature of this research. Finally, the interpretation of data gathered as a part of this study may have been interpreted differently by another researcher. Although the presentation of direct quotes and the preservation of the original interviews seeks to minimize this limitation, the findings from this study may not be precisely replicated.

Qualitative Methods

Qualitative methods allow researchers to observe phenomena in ways quantitative cannot. Qualitative methods can provide a more nuanced and richer interpretation of data than quantitative research. Patton (1990) suggests that qualitative research findings allow the researcher to see the world through the lens of the participant. Merriam (1998) writes that qualitative case studies attempt to provide a holistic description of an experience or phenomenon. This qualitative study seeks to identify policy actors’ and government officials’ interpretations of what factors influence the rise and adoption of RTT legislation.

According to Yin (1994), an exemplary case study has three criteria. It is (1) unique; (2) of general public interest; and (3) has underlying issues of national importance in terms of policy. The study of the genesis of RTT meets all three of Yin’s criteria. RTT represents a radical, seminal shift in the policy lever employed by the federal government to exert influence on state and local education (criteria 1). RTT and

some of its components, such as encouraging states to adopt standards that align with college and career readiness, (e.g., the Common Core State Standards), have affected nearly all public school students in the United States. As such, this case study is of general public interest (criteria 2). Finally, the Obama administration has employed multiple “races” throughout its administration, illustrating its national importance as a policy tool (criteria 3).

Sample

This study used “purposeful” selection sampling (Maxwell, 1996). Interviewees

were purposefully selected because it was believed that they could provide unique

information and perspective on the research question. To generate a list of potential

participants, this study relied heavily on Steven Brill’s 2011 book, Class Warfare, that,

through a reporter’s lens, pieces together 200 interviews with key education policy actors

to weave a detailed history of the education reform movement.

This study employs Berman’s (2008) definition of policy actors: those individuals

who were directly and in some cases, indirectly involved in RTT’s pre-enactment stages.

These actors included individuals who were directly involved in, or associated with, the

Obama campaign or transition, legislative staff, Department of Education staff,

representatives of educator and education-related associations, individual educators,

researchers, and journalists. Berman defines policy actors as:

Actors who, though they do not have the authority to enact or reject legislation

directly, exerted influence through their advocacy or engagement with legislators

are also included in this category for research shows that social and professional

networks as well as policy entrepreneurs often play an influential role in policy

setting. (Berman, 2008, p. 15).

Interviews with policy actors in the second stage continued until data saturation was achieved.

Data Collection and Analysis

The conducting and coding of interviews was guided by the work on this subject by Aberbach and Rockman (2002). To analyze the semi-structured interviews, I created categories and themes that emerged from these interviews that were informed by theories of agenda setting. The literature review helped identify themes that were explored further in the interview process. I used a qualitative software, NVivo, to help visualize relationships within the data.

Findings

Based on interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors, this dissertation found that the recession, the Recovery Act, President Obama, the relative amount appropriated for RTT, time, venue, vague language, and a new administration were all factors that led to the genesis of RTT. In many ways, the narrative of the genesis of RTT is consistent with established theories of agenda setting that seek to explain policy change. For example, policy windows, election, policy entrepreneurs, and venue were all important factors in the genesis of RTT. In addition to these factors, the narrative of RTT developed in this dissertation found that speed, vague language, and a small, tight, limited group of actors were key factors in the genesis of RTT.

Definitions and Key Terms

Below are definitions of key terms used throughout the study. Although the state incentive grants program was not formally named Race to the Top (RTT) in the Recovery

Act, that term is used to describe the policies that were written into the Recovery Act to explain how the state incentive grants were to be dispensed by criteria that the Secretary of Education deemed appropriate. The term agenda setting, or agenda setting model, is the collection of processes that seek to explain the political process, including policy change (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993).

Policy monopoly refers to a “monopoly on political understandings concerning the policy of interest, and an institutional arrangement that reinforces that understanding”

(Baumgartner and Jones, 2009, p. 6).

Punctuated equilibrium theory (PE), formulated by Baumgartner and Jones

(2009), seeks to explain long periods of policy stability and policy change.

Kingdon’s (2003) multiple streams theory posits a theory that describes the agenda setting process as having three streams (problems, policy, and politics) floating in the primordial soup and coupled by policy entrepreneurs in the presence of a policy window.

A focusing event, such as a natural disaster or disasters of any kind, illuminates problems. A policy window (Kingdon, 2003) is an “opportunity for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions, or to push attention to their special problems” (p.

165).

The education industrial complex (EIC), a term coined by Maranto and McShane

(2012), is the powerful conglomerate of education interest groups that have had an established a policy monopoly on federal education policy. The EIC includes more than

200 association, federations, alliances, departments, offices, administrations, councils, boards, commissions, and panels (Maranto and McShane, 2012).

Organization of the Dissertation

The objective of this dissertation was to understand the factors that shaped the development and genesis of RTT. This first chapter provided an introduction and overview of this study. Chapter two presents a literature review on federal education policy making, a review of existing research on RTT, and an examination of how this project contributes to that research. Chapter three details the study’s methodology.

Chapter four presents the findings. The fifth and final chapter provides a conclusion.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Introduction

This chapter considers the background and research on federal education policy making and offers, based on this research, an analytical framework for understanding the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT. This chapter begins with a review of the history of federal education policy making to establish ESEA and subsequent reauthorizations of ESEA as a policy problem. This chapter also substantiates the argument that RTT represents a profound policy change. The chapter continues with a review of the role of interest groups in federal education policy. This is followed by an overview of the Recovery Act and RTT.

This study uses Baumgartner and Jones’ (1993) punctuated equilibrium theory and Kingdon’s (2003) multiple streams theory to help understand the factors that led to the genesis of RTT. These theories, as well as additional theories specific to education policy making are briefly described. This chapter then highlights relevant education policy research on how and why federal education policy change occurs, including how this study fits into that research. The chapter concludes with a presentation of the analytical framework on which this study is based.

ESEA

To substantiate how RTT represents a significant policy change, it is important to present a brief history of how and why federal education policy changes have historically been made through reauthorizations of ESEA, as well as the traditional mechanisms that

have been used to encourage states to adopt federal education reforms. Unquestionably,

reauthorizations of ESEA, such as the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (IASA)

and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, have been shaped by the rationale

and structure of the initial ESEA. Thus, it is important to review the initial structure of

ESEA first.

In many ways, the early political history of ESEA mirrors the macro-political

environment of the 1960s (Cohen and Moffit, 2009; McGuinn 2003), including

segregation, religious issues, and states’ rights. The aforementioned macro-political

issues of the 1960s that limited the scope and impact of the initial ESEA continue to

affect how federal education policy reforms can be made through reauthorizations of

ESEA. Understanding the political compromises agreed to in the seminal ESEA is

essential to understanding why and how ESEA has become a policy problem. RTT,

unhinged from the macro-political constraints of ESEA, represents a profound policy shift.

Until the 1960s, public education was largely absent from the national political

agenda (Manna, 2003; McGuinn, 2003). In the 1950s and 1960s, efforts by liberal

legislators to send federal aid to public schools were thwarted by southern legislators who

did not want a federal presence in their segregated schools and civil rights advocates who did not want federal funds supporting such schools (Cohen and Moffit, 2009). Catholics supported federal aid to schools so long as aid was sent to both public and parochial schools, while Protestants, the National Education Association (NEA), and civil liberties advocates opposed this stipulation (Cohen and Moffit, 2009; Manna, 2003). These

political constraints stymied any attempts to send federal aid to schools during the 1950s

and early 1960s.

The effort to send federal aid to schools gained new momentum after the

assassination of President Kennedy (Cohen and Moffit, 2009). This momentum was

furthered by the political savvy of President Johnson (Cohen and Moffit, 2009; McGuinn,

2003). To undercut the opposing positions of Catholics and the NEA (two important

Democratic interest groups), the legislation targeted aid to poor children, regardless of the

school they attended. The distribution of aid was determined via a formula grant and,

after funds were appropriated to ESEA, each state received a proportion of the allocation

that reflected its proportion of poor relative to the national population of poor. Within a

state, funds were distributed the same way (i.e., each locality would receive funds based on its share of poor relative to the overall state population of poor) (Cohen and Moffit,

2009).

The funding formula was also designed in such a way to gain the support of opposing Democratic interest groups. Cohen and Moffit (2009) write:

[Francis Keppel, the commissioner of education at the time] used the child benefit

theory’ to include religious schools, an idea that was based in part on a 1947

Supreme Court Decision, Everson v. Board of Education, in which the Court had

held that public financial aid to religious schools was legal if it supported

educational and not religious activities. Keppel designed the bill so that federal

monies would benefit education for parochial school students but would not aid

their schools because it would be spent only on improved education for specific

eligible students….The bill left unclear whether just parochial schools or all

schools had to focus aid on particular children, and that ambiguity helped to make

a winning coalition. (p.49)

The vagueness and ambiguity of the initial legislation was critical to gaining enough support for the bill.

In addition to ambiguous language, ESEA was also propelled by a savvy

President. The legislation was secretly drafted by a presidential task force. The bill, when finally introduced to Congress, was passed quickly, without amendments, and with little deliberation. This swift passage earned ESEA the nickname the Great Railroad Act of

1965 because President Johnson railed it through Congress (McGuinn, 2003). McGuinn

(2003) writes that, “by all accounts, President Johnson’s legislative savvy and active lobbying on the bill’s behalf were crucial to its passage” (p.48).

It is important to note what ESEA did not do: There was no prescription about how funds should be spent, only on who they should be spent. Cohen and Moffit (2009) argue that the absence of this prescription was a political concession to conservative legislators:

Southerners chief among them, [who] would only support aid that was distributed

in this way. America’s deep ideological divisions over state and federal authority

were written into Title I; the legislation itself contained large political and

structural barriers to federal influence on how Title I would be used. (p.3)

In allowing states to determine how Title I funds would be spent, the federal government handicapped its ability to influence state policy. While the federal government was forced to make this concession, the persistence of this structural design (i.e., states determining how to spend the funds) has, to date, limited the ability of the federal government to

17 influence states’ improvement of the educational outcomes of economically disadvantaged students in ESEA.

Acquiesces to Southern legislators purposefully limited the ability of the federal government to influence education policy. By allowing states to determine how funds should be spent, the federal government was acting, in many respects, like a cash register rather than a policy maker. Federal funding, without prescription, is somewhat analogous to lottery winners: States had additional cash, but did not have experience investing these funds for their intended purpose, (e.g., to improve the educational outcomes of poor children). While some lottery winners are able to manage new-found funds in a way that enhances their windfall, the majority squander their inheritance. By providing funding but no guidance on how the funds could be used to improve educational outcomes of poor children, the odds were likely that some, if not all, states would be less successful in achieving the intended purpose of ESEA funds. Cohen and Moffit (2009) write, “Title I’s purpose was to improve education in a system that had been carefully designed to impede central political and educational influence on schools” (p. 6). While ESEA was a seminal initiative that brought the federal government into schools, ESEA’s structure reinforced that states and localities were primarily responsible for how the money was spent. This aspect of ESEA reflected the political compromises that were required to garner enough political support for its passage.

Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. Office of Education (USOE) began to take on larger and stronger administrative and enforcement roles in response to criticism and evidence that state and local education agencies had failed to use Title I funds effectively or fairly (McGuinn, 2003) to improve the educational opportunities for

poor and disadvantaged students. In hindsight, given the southern compromise, perhaps

the criticism that federal funds were not used effectively or fairly should have been

expected. Despite the criticism over spending, state education agencies expanded both in

terms of their capacity and responsibilities in the 70s and 80s. The capacity building of state education agencies was a design feature of ESEA so that that states would be equipped to distribute Title I funds (McGuinn, 2003).

Manna (2003) terms the 1970s the era of school finance and minimum competency testing due to the rise of school finance litigation and the finance equity movement, which aligned with criticism over how Title I funds were being spent. The

U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in San Antonio School District v. Rodriquez (1973) found that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause did not mean that all students were guaranteed a right to equal educational resources and that state courts were responsible for considerations of funding equity. In some ways, these findings emphasized states’ rights. Manna (2003) also notes that minimum competency testing movement began during the 1970s as well. By the end of the 1970s, thirty-nine states had adopted some form of competency testing standard that defined the lowest level of achievement students could achieve to be competent in one subject area. However, states instituted these standards in many different ways: some as graduation decisions (e.g.,

Alabama); others as identifiers of follow-up efforts (Connecticut); and other states left it to local districts (Washington) (Manna, 2003). One additional and rather remarkable note of this era was that, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter furthered the institutional role of the federal government in education by creating a cabinet level Department of Education

(DOE).

By the 1980s, the federal role in education had been established, and was

supported by interest groups like teachers unions, state education agencies, and parents

(McGuinn, 2003). Despite the fact that Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign platform

in 1980 called for the elimination of the newly established DOE, his National

Commission on Excellence in Education’s 1983 report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative

for Educational Reform, is largely credited as the impetus for a wave of federal reform

efforts (an example of a Nixon goes to China policy moment). A Nation at Risk found

that low achievement and large education gaps threatened U.S. competitiveness (Manna,

2003; McGuinn, 2003; Weiss, 2013). The news that U.S. students were not achieving at

high standards generated frustration that the federal government’s growing investment in

schools through Title I was not improving education (Cohen & Moffit, 2009). The report

identified the lack of standards and accountability within schools and states as a source of

low achievement. As a result of the report, the standards and accountability movements

gained traction.

A Nation at Risk (1983) was the impetus for a wave of reform efforts. Manna

(2003) terms this era the excellence movement. The 1988 reauthorization of ESEA,

signed by President Ronald Regan, included testing and accountability demands and

began to focus on educational outcomes. “The basic political dynamic of increasing

federal involvement with little oversight changed abruptly in the Regan era” (Maranto

and McShane, 2012, p. 19). During this era, states enacted multiple reforms to improve

the educational outcomes of students. Between 1980 and 1989, forty-two states had

instituted high school graduation requirements, forty-seven instituted student testing,

twenty-three states some accountability measures, and thirty-nine states some sort of teacher standards (Manna, 2003).

The emphasis on educational outcomes, testing, and accountability that began with the 1988 reauthorization under Reagan was emphasized and strengthened with the

1994 ESEA reauthorization known as Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) and

President Clinton’s Goals 2000. The reauthorization and initiative mandated that states develop uniform content and performance standards for all students and develop assessments aligned to those standards to measure student achievement. At the end of

President Clinton’s term in office, the U.S. Department of Education released a report that evaluated state progress on Goals 2000 and IASA. The report, much like A Nation at

Risk, was less than positive. Of the 34 states reviewed in the report, only 11 earned the highest marks for alignment of curriculum to goals. Manna (2006) highlights that this period is also notable for the expansion of school choice options, (e.g., charter schools).

President George W. Bush’s 2001 reauthorization of ESEA and No Child Left

Behind (NCLB) added consequences for not meeting the standards and accountability

measures in IASA by conditioning Title I funding on states’ implementation of standard

and accountability reforms (Cohen & Moffit, 2009; Manna, 2011; McGuinn, 2003;

Meredith, 2013). The law required all states to set challenging and rigorous content

standards for achievement, mandated state testing in every year in grades three to eight,

and required every student to meet proficiency standards by 2014. Many have argued that

the passage of NCLB was the most significant piece of federal education legislation

passed since ESEA was first authorized in 1965 because of its attempts to directly

21 influence state education policy (Manna, 2007; Mehta, 2006; Peterson and West, 2003;

Rudalevige, 2003).

Despite the expansion of the federal government into state education policy via

NCLB, many policy makers were disappointed with the implementation of NCLB, which they argued limited the bill’s intent and purpose. As Manna (2011) notes, NCLB’s over- specification of consequences and under-specification of uniform state goals created a perverse incentive for states to create low standards that could be easily met by schools.

In addition, NCLB resulted in disparate state standards that made it difficult to compare states to one another. Additionally, NCLB’s implementation led to “fifty different programs by lodging authority for tests and standards with the states, many of which set weak criteria for success” (Cohen and Moffit, 2009, p. 12). The unintended consequences of NCLB’s implementation led many education policy makers to question whether Title I funds in NCLB were an effective policy lever to improve student learning and achievement (McGuinn, 2010).

In 2009 Cohen and Moffit questioned, and were unsure, whether reauthorizations of ESEA would ever be able to change the politics of education given the structural limitations of ESEA that stretched back to the compromises made in 1965. Yet, until

2009, ESEA had been the primary law federal policy makers used and relied on to influence state and local education policy (Manna, 2007; Mehta, 2006; Peterson and

West, 2003; Rudalevige, 2003). While the role of the federal government grew considerably over the last fifty years, mainly through re-authorizations of ESEA, the last two major reauthorizations of ESEA, IASA, and NCLB illuminated how the compromises made to pass the initial ESEA in 1965, to some degree, handicapped the

22 federal government. “Federalism and the lack of national constitutional authority to directly impose school reform on the states have greatly complicated politics and policymaking in American education, as they have forced the federal government to pursue its goals for school reform indirectly through the grant-in-aid system and state education agencies” (McGuinn, 2010, p. 15).

This section reviewed the history of federal education policy to make the following case: (1) ESEA has been the primary law the federal government has used to make reforms; (2) ESEA was designed to limit the federal government’s influence in state education policy; (3) given the lack of constitutional authority to impose reforms, the federal government relied on mandates in reauthorizations of ESEA with an over specification of consequences and under specification of specific reforms; and (4) the mandate approach has led to some undesirable implementations of the law. This section sought to illustrate how education reforms through reauthorizations of ESEA had become a policy problem. The next section considers the role interest groups have had on ESEA and federal education policy.

The EIC and Education Reform Movement

Interest groups and ideas play important roles in the agenda setting process. This section reviews the roles interest groups played in shaping education policy over the last thirty-five years. This review and consideration of the roles interest groups and ideas play in education policy development helps comprise the analytical framework on which this study is based.

Prior to the 1980s, Maranto and McShane (2012) argue that the education industrial complex (EIC) had a policy monopoly on information regarding public school performance. Maranto and McShane argue that the teachers unions, elected officials, and bureaucrats that comprise the EIC, sought, like any policy monopoly does, to “maintain and increase its power by empowering its stakeholders while delegitimizing others” (p.

37). To maintain their policy monopoly, Maranto and McShane (2012) argue that the EIC perpetuated myths about public education and opposed reforms that did not increase the power of the EIC. These reforms were mostly focused on school inputs, such as increased funding, professional development, small class size, and more credentialed teachers to improve student outcomes (Maranto and McShane, 2012). The EIC supported its policy monopoly by arguing: (1) public schools are underfunded and struggling to get by on declining resources; (2) money leads to better educational outcomes; (3) demographic changes have made the work of American Schools more difficult ((e.g., you just can’t teach those kids); and (4) real changes in education can only occur after broader social changes (Maranto and McShane, 2012).

As concern grew in the 1980s that low achievement threatened U.S. competitiveness and the federal government’s investment in public education had not improved student performance, the EIC began losing some of its credibility, power, and, along with it, control of the state and local education debates (Maranto and McShane,

2012, p. 48). Following A Nation at Risk, the elite consensus that schools were underperforming and that the federal government needed to play a role in their improvement provided an opportunity for education reformers to put forth policy proposals that increased the federal government’s focus on outputs. This is reflected in

24 the standard and accountability reforms in IASA and NCLB. When President Obama was elected in 2008, the EIC remained powerful, but it was no longer dominant. This left an opening for entrepreneurial education reformers (Maranto and McShane, 2012).

While the 1980s marked the beginning of the declining power of the EIC, the

1990s marked the beginnings of the education reform movement. The education reform movement began challenging some of the aforementioned powerful messages of the EIC.

Specifically, that: (1) public schools could improve student achievement with their current resources; (2) all children can learn; (3) teachers matter; (4) teacher effectiveness can be measured; and (5) different types of schools and alternative teacher credentials can improve student achievement. Two major events in 1989 were pivotal in the launch of the reform movement. The first was the Charlottesville Education Summit convened by

President George H.W. Bush and the nation’s governors to discuss education reform.

Attending that summit, and chair of the Democratic Governors association, was Arkansas

Governor Bill Clinton. At the summit, six national education goals were developed.

These six national education goals would be incorporated into Goals 2000, which was signed into law on March 31, 1994, by President Bill Clinton.

At the same time as the Charlottesville Education Summit, a senior at Princeton

University, Wendy Kopp, sought a solution to the same policy problem that the nation’s governors were trying to address. In her senior thesis, Kopp addressed the problem of poor outcomes. She called for a national teacher corps of high-performing college graduates to teach in high-need urban and rural schools, arguing that teachers could make a difference. By December of 1989, Kopp began recruiting for the first Teach for

America (TFA) corps. Not only was TFA groundbreaking in that it challenged the long-

25 held message of the EIC that teachers needed to have credentials in order to teach, but

TFA corps members would become some of the most prominent and influential education reformers in the following decades.

Table 2.1. Timeline of Selected Key Events and Key Actors in the Education Reform Movement

1983 A Nation at Risk is published.

1989 Wendy Kopp writes Princeton senior thesis, A for case for Teach for America.

1989 Charlottesville Education Summit.

1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act signed into law March 31, 1994.

1994 Improving America’s Schools Act signed into law October 20, 1994.

1994 George Miller proposes amendment to ESEA. It would require states receiving federal aid to certify that teachers were qualified in their subject area, and that schools systems had provisions for merit pay for effective teachers.

1995 Former TFA teachers start first KIPP classrooms.

1998 Education Trust’s President Katie Haycock publishes “Good Teaching Matters: How Well Qualified Teachers Can Close the Gap” based on Eric Hanushek’s research.

1999 Whitney Tilson visits, and then invests in, KIPP.

1999 TFA alumni Michael Johnston and Jon Schnur meet at Kennedy school and work on business plan for New Leaders for New Schools.

2000 TFA alumni Michelle Rhee and New Teacher Project.

2000 Jon Schnur persuades Al Gore to give a campaign speech about paying teachers for being effective.

2002 Eli Broad donates $3.75 million for a study aimed at restructuring NYC schools.

2005 Whitney Tilson and hedge-fund friends Boykin Curry and John Petry launch Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Senator Barack Obama agrees to be the guest speaker at DFER launch party.

2005 George Miller and Ted Kennedy propose TEACH Act (merit pay and pay for teaching in hard to staff schools).

2005 New Republic publishes Robert Gordon’s article, “What Democrats Need to Say about Education.” The article put forth reforms that challenged unions and the concept that underfunding was the cause of poor outcomes.

2006 Senator Barack Obama proposes The Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act.

2006 Hamilton Project. Thomas Kane (Michelle Rhee’s thesis advisor at Kennedy School), Robert Gordon (Centers for American Progress), and Douglas Staiger are recruited by Peter Orszag to write “Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job.” The paper attacked the idea that qualification required certification, and that teacher effectiveness could be measured. Senator Barack Obama came to the Brookings event that launched the Hamilton Project. The paper recommended federal grants in up to 10 states to fund implementation of controversial measures.

2007 Senator Barack Obama re-introduces The Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act.

2007 Barack Obama announces he will run for President.

2007 Heather Higginbottom, Obama’s campaign issues director, makes a video for Iowa field organizers that highlights Obama’s education reform approach.

2008 Barack Obama becomes presidential nominee.

2008 Michelle Rhee gives presents pay-for-performance proposal to DC teacher’s union.

2008 Gates Foundation identifies, and invites, 10 school districts to compete in a competition. Based on plans submitted by the districts identifying how they would initiate teacher effectiveness programs, the Gates Foundation would award grants totaling $350 million to 4 or 5 districts. Robert Gordon consults on this strategy.

2008 In October/November, DFER drafts a transition memo identifying education reformers for key positions in the administration.

2008 Barack Obama elected President of the United States.

Former TFA alumni include the co-founders of KIPP charter schools, Michelle

Rhee and Michael Johnston. To help with the business side of TFA, Kopp’s brother introduced her to his Harvard classmate, Whitney Tilson. Tilson would become a co- founder of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). The community of education reformers was smaller and more intimate than the EIC.

Table 2.1 presents a timeline of selected events in the education reform movement, and is based in part on Steven Brill’s 2011 book Class Warfare. Through a reporter’s lens, Brill (2011) weaves interviews with 200 key education policy makers to present a history of the national education reform movement from1989 through 2011.4

This section presented a review of the EIC and the education reform movement.

Federal investment in education was not producing higher student achievement. This was a powerful idea that allowed a new interest group, Democrats for Education Reform, to gain a foothold in the agenda setting process. The next section will review the Recovery

Act, RTT, and a timeline of events that helps compromise the analytical framework on which this study is based.

ARRA and RTT

This section provides a review of the Recovery Act and its timeline, with a specific focus on the section that would become RTT. This section also includes a brief review of the details of the RTT competition that were not included in the Recovery Act.

The details of RTT are presented to help illuminate how RTT operated as a new vehicle

4 The timeline is based on the contents of the book and is entirely my own. It does not cover every event Brill (2011) discussed. 28 for federal policy making and why this represented a policy change. There is a brief section that looks at the state responses to RTT to illustrate the effectiveness of RTT as a policy tool to encourage state reforms.

President Obama assumed office as the United States was roiled in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. As the economic crisis worsened, it became obvious that the newly elected President’s first priority would be the economy rather than domestic policy. Less than one month after being sworn into office, President Obama signed the

American Reinvestment and Recovery Act into law (ARRA). Table 2.2 presents a timeline of key events in the Recovery Act.

Table 2.2. Timeline of H.R. 1 (111TH): American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

January 26 Recovery Act introduced to congress by the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, David Obey.

January 27th Rules change – Agreed to (limit debate).

January 28th Rules change – Agreed to (limit debate).

January 28th Passed House.

February 10th Passed Senate with Changes.

February 10th Conference Committee: Representatives: Obey, Rangel, Waxman, Lewis (CA), and Camp. Senators: Inouye, Baucus, Reid, Cochran, and Grassley.

February 13th Conference Report Agreed to by House and Senate.

February 17th President Obama signs Recovery Act and it becomes law.

Source: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr1

ARRA totaled over $840 billion dollars, of which $525.6 billion was for contracts, grants, loans, and entitlements, including appropriations for the environment, science, safety net enhancements, health, taxes, and infrastructure, and education.

Education was the fourth largest area that received spending ($94 billion) after individual tax credits ($131 billion), Medicaid/Medicare ($105.7 billion), and Making Work Pay

($104.4 billion).

The nearly $100 billion dollars earmarked for education was more than 1.7 times the normal amount of federally appropriated funds for education in any one of the five years prior to ARRA.5 Of the $94 billion dollars in ARRA targeted for education, over ninety percent was distributed via formula funding. A little more than half of the ARRA education funds, $51.3 billion, were appropriated to the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

(SFSF). The SFSF program was a new, one-time program created in ARRA. Of the SFSF funds, $39.5 billion was available to local districts and colleges to avert teacher and staff layoffs and $8.8 billion was for infrastructure repairs, areas that were experiencing tremendous affects from the recession. SFSF was distributed by formula. According to the law, sixty-one percent of the SFSF was allocated on the basis of a state’s relative population of individuals aged five through 24, and the remaining 39 percent was allocated on the basis of their relative total population.

In addition to the SFSF, $30 billion of education funds in ARRA were appropriated to existing programs in ESEA, namely Title I and the Individuals with

5 In 2008, the federal government appropriated $155.3 billion in federal funds for education programs. In 2009, the federal government appropriated $277.9 billion (this number includes all education funds from ARRA even those some of these funds had two-year availability (Digest of Education Statistics, table 419).

Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Like the SFSF funds, the categorical programs were distributed by formula. The formula used for the distribution of categorical funds followed the funding formulas already established for those existing programs.

Several Obama reform goals for education funds were within the statutory language of ARRA. The statutory language for the formula-based portion of ARRA required assurances in four areas that reflected the administration’s priorities. These four areas include: (1) Adopting standards and assessments that align with college and career readiness; (2) Building data systems that measure student growth; (3) Teacher development, recruitment, and rewarding; and (4) School turnaround (U.S. Department of

Education, Meredith, 2013; Weiss, 2013). However, because the stimulus funds were meant to move quickly to states to help stall and recover from the economic crisis, the education appropriated funds for the SFSF and categorical programs had little federal consequences for failure to adhere to these assurances (e.g., the administration’s goals).

Over ninety percent of the ARRA education funding was distributed via formula.

However, $6.2 billion dollars for the Secretary of Education’s discretionary spending was included in the $51.3 billion dollars for the SFSF. This discretionary spending was for grants to strengthen K-12 infrastructure, expand statewide data systems, improve educational technology, enhance teacher quality, and stimulate innovation. These were listed as state incentive grants in section 14006 and in the Innovation Funds in section

14007. The $4.35 billion dollars allocated for state incentive grants in section 14006 would be used for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top (RTT) competition, which would become the largest competitive grant in the history of U.S. education

(Nicholson-Crotty and Staley, 2012).

The state incentive grants outlined in section 14006 of the ARRA were to be awarded at the discretion of the Secretary of Education.6 ARRA reads:

The Secretary shall determine which States receive grants under this section, and

the amount of those grants, on the basis of information provided in State

applications under section 14005 and such other criteria as the Secretary

determines appropriate. (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Title

XIV, sec 14006 and Appendix A)

The criteria for the state incentive grants that later became RTT echoed the assurances in the SFSF. And while SFSF funds had no real consequences for failure to adhere to the assurances, the state incentive grants would be awarded to Governors who submitted an application that described how the state planned to meet the assurances outlined in the

SFSF. The Secretary of Education had discretion in awarding the state incentive grants.

In other words, while there was an unenforceable mandate that states use the funds in the

SFSF for the four assurance areas, to win a state incentive competition grant, which emphasized the same four assurance areas, states would have to detail how they planned to meet those assurances. In addition, states would be evaluated by the Department, based on those plans.

It is important to emphasize how the mandates in the SFSF mirror the mandates in

NCLB. Like ESEA mandates, SFSF mandates had little consequences for failure to use the funds in the way the administration desired in those assurance areas. However, the

6 A total of $5 billion was set aside for state incentive grants. Of this $5 billion, $650 million was targeted for the "Invest in What Works and Innovation" fund, and would be available through a competition to districts and non-profit groups with a strong track record of results.

32 state incentive grants would only be awarded to states that developed plans in accordance with the administration’s preferred assurance areas. This represented a new mechanism to encourage policy adoption. The tying of the state incentive grants, and echoing the same assurance areas in those grants that were in the SFSF, represents a radical policy change in the way in which the administration sought to affect state education reforms.

The competition rules for RTT were announced in July 2009, well after ARRA was passed in February of that same year. State applications for the competition were slotted into four different potential award categories based on the share of school-age children. The largest award, ranging from $350 million to $700 million, was only possible for the four largest U.S. states (i.e., California, Texas, Florida, and New York).

The lowest bracket had an award amount of $20 million to $75 million. The grants were awarded for a four-year period culminating in 2014.

The Department of Education scored states’ applications for funding based on six categories. The maximum amount of points was 500, with up to 138 points for Great

Teachers and Leaders, 125 points for State Success Factors, 70 points for Standards and

Assessment, 55 points for General Selection Criteria, 50 points for Turning around the

Lowest-Achieving Schools, and 47 points for Data Systems to Support Instruction.

Additional all-or-nothing points were awarded to states that emphasized STEM education activities (science, technology, engineering, and math). The scoring of applications was complex. Each sub-section of the six criteria had specific points attached (Weiss, 2013).

The area that was emphasized in RTT because it has the largest impact on states’ scores, was the awarding of points for the development of teacher and principal evaluation systems that used measures of student achievement to measure growth. These

are known as “value-added” models. The Obama administration awarded 40 points out of

the maximum 500 points for adopting standards for the value-added models based on the

Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

In order to receive points in RTT, there was an August 2, 2010, deadline for states

to adopt common K-12 standards.7 Six states approved the CCSS when the standards

were still in draft form in February 2010 (LaVenia, 2010). The final CCSS standards

were released on June 2, 2010. By October 2010, 41 states and the District of Columbia

had adopted or taken formal steps toward adopting the CCSS, and two more states were

projected to adopt CCSS by the end of December 2010 (LaVenia, 2010).

Although the development of CCSS was a state led effort, many have attributed

the adoption of CCSS by states as a response to RTT to compete more favorably

(Maranto and McShane, 2012; LaVenia, 2010). The competition-based RTT is an

example of rapid policy adoption and change (Meredith, 2013). The adoption of CCSS by

nearly every state in a short period of time demonstrates the effectiveness of a

competition that encourages states to adopt the administration’s preferred reforms.

As noted earlier, NCLB’s over-specification of consequences and under-

specification of uniform state goals created a perverse incentive for states to create low

standards that could be easily met by schools. In addition, NCLB resulted in disparate

7 The roots of the CCSS can be traced to at least 2006-07, when Janet Napolitano, then the chair of the National Governor’s Association (NGA), created a task force focused on creating an internationally competitive education system. The findings from the task force resulted in the NGA and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSO) leading a collaborative effort to develop quality academic standards in core subject areas that could be used in state across the country (LaVenia, 2010). In early 2009, the NGA and CCSSO proposed the CCSS, and by the summer of 2009, 48 states and the District of Columbia had signed a memorandum agreeing to work jointly on the development of CCSS.

34 state standards that made it difficult to compare states to one another. While a national curriculum is a policy solution to the aforementioned policy problem, NCLB prohibited such a solution. Prohibitions on Federal Government and Use of Funds, 2002, in NCLB noted:

No State shall be required to have academic content or student achievement

standards approved or certified by the Federal Government, in order to receive

assistance under this law. (No Child Left Behind [NCLB], 2002)

In other words, reauthorizations of ESEA were expressly prohibited from mandating the adoption of standards, such as CCSS. By designing a competition that was voluntary, the

Obama administration was able to circumvent this structural limitation of ESEA.

In emphasizing value-added models based on the CCSS in RTT, the Obama administration addressed some of the problems with the implementation of IASA and

NCLB. In this regard, the emphasis on CCSS in RTT can be viewed as incremental policy making because it builds on the standard-and-accountability approach that began with Clinton’s IASA and Bush’s NCLB. However, the use of a competition to encourage states to adopt the Obama administration’s reforms represents a dramatic shift from the mandates prior administrations had used to encourage reforms.

Although the development of CCSS was a state led effort, many have attributed the adoption of CCSS by states as a response to RTT to compete more favorably

(LaVenia, 2010). Using an innovation policy diffusion framework based on Berry &

Berry (2007), LaVenia (2010) found that states vying for RTT funds were compelled by the U.S. Department of Education to adopt the CCSS in order to compete more favorably.

Meredith (2013) found that, relative to other vehicles, the competition-based RTT is an

35 example of rapid policy adoption. The adoption of the CCSS by nearly every state demonstrates the Obama administration’s effective tact of using the stimulus bill to spur the education policy reforms that had not been achieved under NCLB.

It is notable that the Obama administration was not critical of the standards and accountability reform policy platform: Only the undesirable implementation of the reforms by states as encouraged under NCLB. As Manna and Ryan (2011) write,

NCLB’s implementation shaped the educational priorities of the Obama administration.

They write that the Obama administration entered the White House with two major criticisms of NCLB. First, NCLB encouraged states to lower their standards. Second,

NCLB was administratively misguided and created red tape. The emphasis on the aforementioned four assurances in SFSF mirrored the components of NCLB (Weiss,

2013). Like NCLB, RTT focused resources on disadvantaged schools. Thus, it is not surprising that the Obama administration’s education platform built on the standards and accountability reforms of previous administrations.

Although the policies promoted in the SFSF and RTT are examples of incremental policy making, in as much as the Obama assurances areas built on NCLB reforms, the state incentive grants were remarkable because, as a competitive grant process, it was a new mechanism to encourage states to adopt administration-backed reforms in a way that ESEA and NCLB could not. This is because ESEA had structural scaffolding to prevent the federal government’s influence as a part of the original design as discussed earlier. As quoted earlier, Cohen and Moffit (2009) write, “Title I’s purpose was to improve education in a system that had been carefully designed to impede central political and educational influence on schools” (p. 6). RTT relied on incentives to drive

the administration’s reforms as opposed to sanctions and mandates. RTT represented

something different from NCLB because it was an attempt to prescribe what school

districts needed to do to reform schools, yet allowed for different visions about how to

achieve those goals by letting states decide how they would meet those goals. In other

words, as McGuinn (2010) writes, RTT was both a policy and political tool.

RTT was both a policy and political tool because states wrote their own proposals.

By giving states ownership, RTT tried to avoid the criticism that NCLB was too coercive, and the general sense that the Obama administration was mandating the way forward.

Further, by giving states ownership of their RTT proposals, states could set their own course for reform. While states knew that they would be given additional points for adhering to the Obama administration’s criteria, by designing their own way to achieve those goals, RTT was designed to make states more invested. thus avoiding the criticism of NCLB that street level bureaucrats prevented successful implementation. RTT was also designed to bring together state education agencies and governors, empower new actors, and create new political alliances (McGuinn, 2010).

As both a policy and a political tool, RTT represents major policy changes. To date, there have been many scholarly works on how RTT policies represented both radical and incremental policy change (Maranto and McShane, 2012). With regard to

RTT as a political tool, there are two components to the tool: the mechanism

(competition) and the vehicle (ARRA). There has been considerably less research on the factors and conditions that gave rise to a new political tool aspect of RTT. This study seeks to fill that void by examining the factors and conditions that gave rise to a new policy tool.

This section provided an overview of the Recovery Act and RTT to illuminate

how RTT operated as a new vehicle for federal education policy making and why RTT

represented a policy change. In addition, the timeline in Table 2.2 showed the speed with

which the Recovery Act was passed, which will form a key aspect of the analytical

framework of this dissertation. In addition, this section touched on how the policies in

RTT and the SFSF built on the reforms of IASA and NCLB. This section briefly looked at state responses to RTT to illustrate the effectiveness of RTT as a policy tool to encourage state reforms. The next section will review theories of policy making that help comprise the analytical framework of this project.

Understanding Policy Change

Two theories of agenda setting, Baumgartner and Jones’ (2009) punctuated

equilibrium theory (PE) and Kingdon’s (2003) multiple streams theory (MS), serve as

frameworks for the development of the case study. These frameworks facilitate an

understanding of how RTT arrived on the Obama administration agenda and how the idea

for RTT eventually took form in ARRA. Many prominent education scholars (Cohen and

Moffit, 2009; McGuinn, 2010; Maranto and McShane, 2012, etc.) have based theories of

federal education reform on Kingdon and Baumgartner and Jones’ theories. Theories of

federal education reform are also included in this section.

The use of multiple theories on agenda setting is beneficial because each of the

aforementioned theories emphasizes different aspects of the agenda setting process.

Kingdon’s theory focuses on why issues get onto the agenda, while Baumgartner and

Jones’ theory emphasizes how policy monopolies are developed and destroyed and the

38 role of venue and policy change. Both of these emphases are relevant to the narrative of

RTT. These two theories complement each other. The use of both theories creates a richer development of the narrative of the genesis of RTT.

Many political science theories describe policy change in the United States as conservative, favoring long periods of relative stability over change, with major policy change occurring sporadically and reactively. In other words, incremental policy change in the United States is more of the norm than major policy change. Punctuated equilibrium theory (PE) is designed to explain these long periods of policy stability as well as periods of rapid change.

PE can be given credit for rebranding the basic idea of incremental policy change as the status quo, or equilibrium (Bellino, 2013). The status quo is supported by political institutions and the definition of a policy issue. This is also referred to as a “policy monopoly.” The success of a policy monopoly rests on a positive public image and positive tone. Periods of equilibrium are engaged in a negative feedback loop (NF). The

NF loop is the process by which groups or individuals push against the policy regime

(using time, money, and political capital) in the hopes of achieving policy change, however, only small concessions are made, restoring equilibrium. The possibility of large policy change is predicated on the ability to challenge the support a policy monopoly

(e.g. changing the public image and positive tone, which undercuts the authority of the policy monopoly). Rapid policy change can also be affected by the mobilization of policy into a new venue or by new participants (True, Jones, and Baumgartner, 2007).

According to Baumgartner and Jones (2009), policy monopolies have two important characteristics. “First, a definable institutional structure is responsible for

39 policy making, and that structure limits access to the policy process. Second, a power supporting idea is associated with the institution” (p. 7). Many policy researchers have noted the monopoly teachers unions have had on federal education policy (Maranto and

McShane, 2012). However, in this study, I seek to make the case that ESEA, in itself, represents a kind of policy monopoly. ESEA meets both of Baumgartner and Jones’ criteria. For fifty years, ESEA has been the major law for federal education reforms.

Being the only major federal education law for fifty years makes ESEA (1) responsible for policy making and (2) limits the policy process because it limits the type of policy changes that could occur. With regard to the second point, ESEA was designed to limit the federal government’s influence in education policy. The Recovery Act disrupted this policy monopoly.

Baumgartner and Jones utilize a theory of the role of image and venue in the policy making process. Baumgartner and Jones (2009) define venues as the institutions or groups that have the authority to make decisions concerning an issue. “Dramatic changes in policy outcomes are often the result of changes in the institutions that exert control”

(Baumgartner and Jones, 2009, p. 33). In federal education policy, most laws, including

ESEA, are drafted in authorizing committees. On the Senate side, the Health, Education,

Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and, on the House side, the Education and

Workforce Committee are responsible for drafting ESEA. However, ARRA was drafted by Appropriations, not an authorizing committee. This represented a radical venue change. In changing venue, new actors had authority to make decisions concerning this issue.

Prior to PE, the standard model of policy change was that change was generated by elections which “shift[ed] the preferences of policymakers by replacing them with other policymakers, who in turn shift policy” (Jones & Baumgartner, 2012, p. 5).

However, Jones and Baumgartner’s PE theory countered the standard model of policy change based solely on elections. Specifically, PE theory argued that major policy change could occur absent elections and that election-centered models did not explain the prioritization of policy issues. Baumgartner and Jones did not “deny the impact of elections” (p. 6), but argued that there were many cases where elections played a small role, or no role, in policy change. The agenda setting model, as opposed to the election centered model, recognized the critical role of information in the policy process, including problem definition, policy dynamics and political institutions.

In contrast to the work of policy change by Baumgartner and Jones, Kingdon

(2003) sets forth a theory that recognizes the inherent chaos associated with policy change. Unlike the neatness of punctuated equilibrium, Kingdon argues that systems move in a more chaotic and constantly changing fashion. Kingdon (2003) describes the agenda setting process as having three streams (problems, policy, and politics) floating in the primordial soup and coupled by policy entrepreneurs in the presence of a policy window.

A focusing event, such as a natural disaster or disasters of any kind, helps illuminate “problems.” The problem stream is where decision-makers recognize there is a problem, as well as where policy entrepreneurs try to emphasize a problem by highlighting it. Problems only become visible when there are policy solutions, which brings us to the second stream, the “policy stream.” The policy stream is where policies

41 are formulated and refined. Politicians, bureaucrats, academics, interest groups, and citizens are interacting, and all may act as policy entrepreneurs exemplified by the investment of resources (e.g., time, money, or human capital) to promote their policy solution. The decision to take up a particular policy proposal is dependent on the costs and technical and political feasibility. In addition, solutions that are ready prior to a policy window are most likely to be adopted. Finally, the political stream encompasses the political environment such as elections, changes in administrations, public opinion, and national mood. Kingdon finds that the coupling of these three streams occurs when windows of opportunity open up. Kingdon’s emphasis on policy windows and chaos is particularly applicable to the genesis of RTT, given the economic crisis.

McDonnell (2009) provides an overview of how politics of education researchers should use and understand political science theory to examine regime change; specifically, how the interaction of interests, ideas, and institutions have been incorporated into political science theory to explain cycles of policy stability and change in education policy. Institutions, McDonnell (2009) writes, matter because they define the framework in which policy-making occurs. Citing the work of March and Olsen (1989),

McDonnell highlights that some institutional arrangements advantage some interests at the extent of others. This occurs because the structure of rules and norms determines who participates in the policy process and who is granted authority to set the agenda. In education policy, McDonnell (2009) argues that institutional arrangements are particularly critical in thinking about policy outcomes. In this case study, I consider

ESEA an institutional arrangement.

McDonnell (2009) also comments on policy stability and change. McDonnell defines path dependence as the process by which policy choices create institutional arrangements that make policy reversal (or change) difficult. While the consequences of major policies can occur as the result of small or unique events, it is difficult, or sometime impossible, to reverse course. McDonnell notes that those who examine policy stability and change from a path dependent perspective stress the importance of timing and sequence, and distinguish formative moments in the policy development process from periods that reinforce the status quo.

However, McDonnell (2009) finds that path dependence may not be applicable to education policy change. Patrick McGuinn and Paul Manna are two of the foremost thinkers on education policy change. McDonnel (2009) suggests that McGuinn’s findings on NCLB’s ascension on the policy agenda suggests that education policy is an atypical policy domain. It does not follow the path dependent process, but, as explained by

Kingdon or Baumgartner and Jones, is an ends and means change. Manna, however, has developed a new theory of policy change in education, borrowing strength, which supplements Baumgartner and Jones’ theory. Borrowing strength occurs when policy entrepreneurs at one level of government attempt to push their agendas by leveraging justification and capabilities that exist elsewhere in the federal system. In the example of

NCLB, Manna (2003) finds that NCLB ascended on the policy agenda because state governments had already enacted reforms around standards and assessments. Policy entrepreneurs could mobilize around the license or arguments states had already made to justify the involvement of higher levels of government in the classroom. This is certainly something we see in the policy choices the Obama administration made in emphasizing

43 the CCSS. The concept of borrowing strength maybe a useful framework for CCSS because many states had already adopted CCSS prior to the Obama weighting it heavily in the RTT competition, thus giving strength to those states that had not yet adopted reforms.

This section reviewed theories of agenda setting and policy change that help comprise the analytical framework for this study. The next section will review some of the existing research on RTT.

RTT Research

While there is a significant volume of work on federal education policy making and RTT, there is a smaller volume of research on how the Obama administration advanced education reforms through the Recovery Act. This section will review the existing research on RTT as a policy tool and how this study contributes to that existing body of research.

The leading work on this topic has been done by Weatherford and McDonnell

(2011). In their article Advancing a Social Policy Agenda through Economic Policy:

Obama’s Stimulus and Education Reform (2011), Weatherford and McDonnell (2011) argue that by using ARRA to promote its education reform agenda, the Obama administration was able to accomplish federal education reforms that had eluded other administrations. Using the stimulus for a vehicle had distinct advantages over ESEA.

Specifically, the Obama administration was able to proceed with billions of dollars to pursue their reform agenda: (1) with little Congressional scrutiny; (2) without

overwhelming the domestic policy agenda, which was crowded with other items (health care); and (3) without being constrained to a piece of legislation (e.g., ESEA).

Weatherford and McDonnell (2011) discuss how there was little debate about

RTT because the larger debate was about whether the funds would immediately stimulate

the economy. To make this point, Weatherford and McDonnell (2011) point to an article

by Klein (2009) in EdWeek. According to Klein, Republican senators were arguing that,

before increasing funding for ESEA in ARRA, ESEA should be redesigned to ensure

greater impact on student achievement.

Pointing to research by Alter (2010), Weatherford and McDonnell (2011) note

that there was some disagreement between Democrats regarding education reforms in the

stimulus. Specifically, Representative David Obey (D-WI), the chair of the House

Appropriations Committee, and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chair of the Senate

Appropriations Committee, disagreed with Representative George Miller (D-CA), chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions HELP committee, on the best way to distribute ARRA education funds. While Representative

Miller supported additional funds to help promote the Obama agenda (e.g., state incentive grants), Representative Obey wanted to allocate all of the funding through grants. Obey was skeptical that major reforms could be achieved through the grants.

Building on the article she authored with Weatherford in Surprising Momentum:

Spurring Education Reform in States and Localities, McDonnell (2011) adds additional analyses on how the Obama agenda compared with earlier education policy. McDonnell

(2011) also examines the impact of RTT as well as why the Obama administration selected policy strategies that angered the teachers unions, one of the Democratic Party’s

key constituent groups. McDonnell (2011) writes that Obama indicated he supported

NCLB during several campaign speeches, but noted that underfunding prevented

successful implementation of the law. During the campaign, Obama promised to work

with governors and educators to create better assessments that would improve student

learning. McDonnell (2011) notes that it was unclear during the Obama campaign how

these promises would be translated into a legislative agenda.

In her examination of the educational reform agenda of RTT, McDonnell (2011)

writes that the “Obama administration articulated an agenda firmly grounded in the

standards-based reform philosophy that has defined state and federal education policy for

more than two decades” (p. 239). Building on what others (e.g., Weiss, 2013) have

commented on, RTT was not a radical policy agenda. McDonnell (2011) then explores

how the Obama administration’s emphasis on the four assurance areas continue along an

incremental policy trajectory, but added new emphasis on human capital, specifically

teachers, as well as instructional materials aligned to reforms. This was not only reflected

in the assurance areas, but in Obama’s selection of Arne Duncan as the Secretary of

Education. Duncan, a chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools at the time, was a member of the school reformer movement . This movement espoused human capital strategies, such as high teacher compensation based on performance and reconstituting failing schools, as key strategies to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students.

McDonnell (2011) argues that Obama knew he might be challenging teachers unions, a key support for democratic candidates, by selecting an urban reformer like

Duncan for Secretary. McDonnell (2011) notes that Obama did not feel beholden to the

46 teachers unions because both of the major teachers unions supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary (Alter, 2010). However, McDonnell (2011) notes that, in selecting Duncan, Obama emphasized that his strategy was to engage in a conversation rather than attack, reiterating Alter’s (2010) comment that Obama’s approach echoed

Nixon’s approach to China.

Table 2.3. Factors Examined in the Study, Based on Influential Factors Identified in the Literature

Factors indicated in the literature Case-specific factors

Policy Problems  Implementation of IASA & NCLB

 Lack of constitutional authority to

create curriculum

 Student achievement

 Structural limitations of ESEA

Interest groups / Policy Monopolies /  Education Industrial Complex

New Ideas  Democrats for Education Reform

Recovery Act  Speed of Act

 Amount of funding

 Venue change

Policy Window  Recession

Elections  Obama campaign and election

This section reviewed some of the existing research on the factors that led to the genesis of RTT. Weatherford and McDonnell (2011) and McDonnell (2011) have started

47 a body of research on the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT. However, their research is based on secondary analysis. This research builds on their work by creating a richer, nuanced, and primary sourced study of the factors that led to the genesis of RTT. Based on the research highlighted in this section, the next section will offer an analytical framework for understanding the genesis of RTT.

Analytical Framework

This section presents the analytical framework guiding this study. The framework was informed by this study’s literature review, and draws from themes that emerge in existing research on agenda setting. The list of factors identified during the literature review also helped inform the coding of the interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors. This framework was not used to predict what be the most influential factors, but to show how this study is grounded in theory and an understanding of policy change.

Conclusion

This chapter considered the background and research on federal education policymaking and offered, based on this research, an analytical framework for understanding the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT. This chapter began with a review of the history of federal education policy making to establish ESEA and subsequent reauthorizations of ESEA as a policy problem. It also substantiated the argument that RTT represents a profound policy change. The chapter continued with a review of the role of interest groups in federal education policy, followed by an overview of the Recovery Act and RTT and a review of theories of policy change. The chapter

48 concluded with a presentation of the analytical framework on which this study is based.

The next chapter will focus on the study’s methodology.

Chapter 3: Methodology

This chapter focuses on the methodology used to address my research question

and describes how I accomplished my investigation. This methodology section includes a

restatement of my research question and describes my research. The research approach, sampling, interview protocols, validity concerns, interview data collection, document

review and analysis, analysis of interviews, and human participants and ethical

considerations are all described. This study’s research design and approach was modeled

on, and borrowed heavily from, Ilene Berman’s dissertation, The Rise and Adoption of

Middle Grades Literacy Policy in the State of Florida, a case history of the factors that

shaped middle grades literacy policy on Florida’s legislative agenda (Berman, 2008).

Research Question and Design

The primary research question of the study is: What factors and conditions led to

the genesis of RTT on the Obama agenda? Qualitative research methods are used to

answer the research question. Qualitative methods allow researchers to observe

phenomena in ways quantitative cannot, and allows for a more nuanced and richer

interpretation of data than can be accomplished by quantitative studies. Patton (1990)

suggests that qualitative research findings allow the researcher to see the world through

the lens of the participant. Merriam (1998) writes that qualitative case studies attempt to

provide a holistic description of an experience or phenomenon. Rubin and Rubin (2012)

suggest that qualitative interviewing is the right tool when the research question seeks to

examine the processes, steps over time, sequences of causation, or tries to explain the

unexpected. This qualitative study seeks to identify policy actors' and government

50 officials’ interpretations of what factors influenced the rise and adoption of RTT legislation, and is best answered with a qualitative approach.

Case Study Approach

This study employs a case study design to address the proposed research question.

Using multiple sources of evidence, the case study approach is an empirical inquiry that investigates contemporary phenomena within the real-life context. According to Yin

(1994), case studies are particularly useful tools to examine contemporary, real-life situations, such as the black box of policy making, where the boundaries between phenomena and context are not clearly evident. Case studies are typically used to answer research questions that ask “how” or “why,” and are targeted to a limited number of events and inter-relationships, as is the case in this study.

This study meets the three criteria Yin (1994) identified for an exemplary case study. It is: (1) unique, (2) of general public interest, and (3) has underlying issues of national importance in terms of policy. It is unique (criteria 1), in that RTT represents a radical, seminal shift in the policy lever employed by the federal government to exert influence on state and local education. It is of general public interest because RTT, and some of its components, such as encouraging states to adopt standards that align with college and career readiness, (e.g., the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)), have affected the majority of public school students in the United States. This makes this case study of general public interest (criteria 2). This study is of national policy importance because it is likely that future policy makers will need to seek alternate pathways for federal reform (criteria 3).

Sample

One challenge present in this study was the determination of a sufficiently representative sample. Another challenge was overcoming the bias inherent in sample selection. To generate a list of potential study participants, this study relied heavily on

Steven Brill’s 2011 book, Class Warfare, which interviewed more than 200 people to piece together a history of the national education reform movement. Using Brill’s interviewees as a an initial list of potential interviewees for this study, I sought to narrow that list down to the policy actors who were directly and, in some cases, indirectly involved in RTT’s pre-enactment stages. I included policy actors who are typical actors in the EIC even if they were not directly involved in the genesis of RTT. An understanding of the roles these policy actors’ played (or non-roles, as the case turned out to be) in the development of RTT in the Recovery Act was an important consideration in the development of the narrative of the genesis of RTT.

These actors included individuals who were directly involved in, or associated with, the Obama campaign or transition, legislative staff, Department of Education staff, representatives of educator and education-related associations, individual educators, researchers, and journalists. Berman defines policy actors as:

Actors who, though they do not have the authority to enact or reject legislation

directly, exerted influence through their advocacy or engagement with legislators

are also included in this category for research shows that social and professional

networks as well as policy entrepreneurs often play an influential role in policy

setting. (Berman, 2009, p. 15)

This study used “purposeful” selection sampling (Maxwell, 1996). Interviewees were purposefully selected because it was believed that they could provide unique information and perspective on the research questions under analysis. Per the approach chartered by Berman (2009), research study participants fell into two general categories: highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors. The highly knowledgeable policy actors were those individuals identified during the document analysis and other sources as having greater expertise regarding RTT’s genesis.

Interview approach

The highly knowledgeable (hereto referred to as HK) interview approach employed by Berman (2008) is a “two-step interview process that uses the initial group of interviewees to refine the interview questions, add specific probes, begin to discern patterns among the responses, and help identify policy actors for the second set of interviews” (Berman, 2008, p. 78). The first stage of the HK approach is to interview a set of highly knowledgeable policy actors. This first set of highly knowledgeable interviewees are identified via “purposeful” or “criterion-based” selection sampling

(Maxwell, 1996, p. 70). Purposeful (i.e., criterion-based) sample selection can provide rich, illuminating insights to address the research questions under study. In the Berman

HK approach, highly knowledgeable interviewees are purposefully selected because it is believed that they can provide unique information and perspective to address the research questions. In this study, each consecutive interview with a highly knowledgeable policy actor helped refine the interview protocol and codes. Constant refinement of the interviews enables the researcher to use the experience with the prior interviews to refine

53 the interview protocol and probes for later interviews. The refinement of the research questions and themes for later interviews also allows the researcher to validate the list of individuals initially identified as potential interviewees.

To identify the second set of interviewees, the HK approach calls for a combination of purposeful sampling as well as the “snowball technique,” whereby highly knowledgeable interviewees are asked to recommend for interviews other individuals they thought were involved in, or well-informed about, the research question. The HK approach is based in part on the snowball technique. This dual approach (i.e., a review of sources as well as feedback from highly knowledgeable policy actors) allows the researcher to validate the list of potential interviewees generated through the first step, and to identify respondents who may not have been initially identified as involved in policy deliberations.

One of the unique aspects of the genesis of RTT was the rapid timeline between

Obama’s electoral win and the passage of ARRA–it was only 16 weeks. This short time period helped in the generation of the list of highly knowledgeable policy actors familiar with the genesis of RTT because it narrows the scope of potential highly knowledgeable actors. These actors must have been members of Obama’s transition team, members of his domestic policy counsel, or former staff members in his Senate office. Interviewees in this study were purposefully selected because it was believed, based on results from web searchers of key transition team members and newspaper articles, that they could provide unique information and perspective to address the research question. It was hoped that these interviewees would be able to verify the information about pre-enactment stages, as well as provide seminal insight into the genesis of RTT.

The second wave of interviews was designed to target individuals who were

directly and, in some cases, indirectly involved in RTT’s pre- and post-enactment stages.

These actors included legislative staff, Department of Education staff, representatives of

educator and education-related associations, individual educators, researchers, and

journalists. “Actors who, though they do not have the authority to enact or reject

legislation directly, exerted influence through their advocacy or engagement with

legislators are also included in this category for research shows that social and

professional networks as well as policy entrepreneurs often play an influential role in

policy setting” (Berman, 2008, p. 15).

In the HK approach, interviews with policy actors in the second stage continued

until data saturation was achieved. Saturation occurs when a series of additional

interviewees adds little additional findings and the researcher hears the same information

repeatedly. Rubin and Rubin (1995) argue that data saturation and completeness define

the boundaries for termination of the interviewing process. Sample size decisions for this

study were informed by data saturation. Ultimately, when data saturation was reached,

the interview process was considered complete.

List of Potential Interviewees

The list of highly knowledgeable policy actors who had direct participation in the ascension of RTT onto the policy agenda is relatively small. In addition to the list of actors I identified based on Brill (2011), the list also includes those identified from my personal work experience, a review of the Obama transition webpage staff listing, and with assistance from my advisors. In addition, because each interview concluded with the

55 question, “Is there anyone else I should speak with,” the list of highly knowledgeable actors expanded based on those interviews. Table 3.1 presents a list of highly knowledgeable policy actors identified for this study. An asterisk (*) by an interviewee’s name indicates that I interviewed that individual as a part of the study. A short description of the policy actor’s role is also included. Each actor on this list was contacted at least twice.

Table 3.1. Highly knowledgeable Policy Actors List (Phase I)

David Axelrod Chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.

Melody Barnes First Director of the Domestic Policy Council for President Barack Obama. Prior, she was the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. She left CAP in June 2008 to work on the Obama Campaign. She served on the advisory board for the Obama presidential transition team. From 1998 until 2003, Barnes served as chief counsel to then- senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Peter Cunningham* Worked with Arne Duncan when he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and then worked with Secretary Duncan as the U.S. Department of Education Secretary for Communications and Outreach. He is currently the Executive Director of Education Post, a Chicago-based non-profit promoting education reform.

Linda Darling- In 2008-2009, she headed President Barack Obama’s Hammond education policy transition team. She is currently a Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she is Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. She is a former President of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education.

Arne Duncan Was the 9th U.S. Secretary of Education. He served in this post since his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on January 20, 2009 until 2015. Before becoming Secretary, Duncan served as chief executive officer of the Chicago Public schools, a position he held from June 2001 through December 2008.

Rahm Emanuel First White House Chief of Staff for the Obama administration (2008).

Jason Furman* Economic Policy Director for the Obama campaign in 2008 and was a member of the presidential transition team. He was confirmed by the Senate on August 1, 2013, as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. In this role, he serves as President Obama’s Chief Economist and a Member of the Cabinet. Prior to this role, he served as the Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President.

Robert Gordon* Served as acting deputy director of Office of Management and Budget and, while there, helped develop the priorities for RTT. While a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, he co-authored a widely cited study of teacher effectiveness that helped put value-added measurement on the education reformer agenda.

Heather Began working for then-Senator Obama in 2007 when she Higginbottom* served as Policy Director for the Obama campaign and supervised all aspects of foreign and domestic policy development. From January 2009 until January 2011, Ms. Higginbottom served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. In that role, she advised the President on education issues, specifically helping to design RTT.

Carmel Martin* Current Executive Vice President for Policy at Center for American Progress. Previously served for four years as an assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development at the Department of Education. Prior to serving in the Obama administration, Martin worked as general counsel and chief education advisor to Sen. Kennedy for his work on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. In that role, she served as deputy to the staff director. Prior to that, she worked in the Senate as chief counsel, senior policy advisor to former Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and special counsel to former Sen. Tom Daschle (D- SD).

George Miller United States Representative from California from 1975-2015. From 2007-2011, Miller served as chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.

Ellen Murray Staff Director of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies from 1999-2010.

David Obey United States Representative for Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district from 1969 to 2011. Obey served as chairman of the powerful House Committee on Appropriations from 1994 to 1995 and again from 2007 to 2011.

Peter Orszag 37th Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Barack Obama and also served as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Co-author of the Hamilton Paper.

Roberto J. Presently serves in the White House Domestic Policy Counsel Rodriguez* as Special Assistant to the President for Education. Previously, he was the Chief Education Counsel to United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. In this capacity, he managed the Democratic education agenda for the Committee and led policy development and strategy for legislation addressing early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, higher education, and adult education.

Cecelia Rouse Member of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009-2011. Prior to serving in the Obama Administration, Rouse served in the National Economic Council under President Bill Clinton from 1998-1999.

Jon Schnur* Served as a senior advisor to President Obama's campaign and presidential transition team as senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as well as President Clinton's White House Associate Director for Educational Policy, Senior Policy Adviser on Education to Vice President Gore, and special assistant to U.S. Secretary of Education Dick Riley.

Cheryl Smith* Served as Staff Director on the Labor-HHS-Appropriations Committee from January 2007-2010 on behalf of Representative David Obey. Had served as Associate Staff on the Appropriations Committee since 1993.

Marshall (Mike) S. Served as Department of Education’s director of international Smith* affairs and a senior counselor to Secretary Duncan. Prior to serving President Barak Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Smith was both acting deputy secretary and under-

secretary under Secretary Richard Riley during the Clinton Administration. He was chief of staff to the first secretary of education, Shirley Hufstedler, and also served as the assistant commissioner for policy studies in the Office of Education, in the former Department of Health and Education in the Carter Administration.

Emma Vadehra* Currently Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Education. From 2007- 2009, she worked as a senior education counsel for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the staff of the U.S. Senate Education Committee. From 2009 through 2011, Ms. Vadehra served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development.

Joanne Weiss* Joined the Department of Education in 2009 to serve as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Director of the Race to the Top Fund.

*Note: Indicates Interviewed

Table 3.2. Policy Actors List (Phase II)

Joe Conaty* Joined the Department of Education in 1987 and has served in numerous roles, including: the Department of Education's Acting Director of the Office of Research; Director of the National Institute on Student Achievement, Curriculum, and Assessment; and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. Dr. Conaty is currently the Director of Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Program in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Rick Hess* Director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Mr. Hess is an educator, political scientist and author. He is also the author of the popular Education Week blog and is a regular contributor to The Hill.

Kati Haycock One of the nation’s leading advocates in the field of education. She currently serves as President of The Education Trust.

Jack Jennings* From 1967 to 1994, Mr. Jennings served as subcommittee staff director and then as a general counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and Labor. In these positions, he was involved in nearly every major education

debate held at the national level, including the re-authorizations of such important legislation as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Vocational Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Higher Education Act, and the National School Lunch Act. He is the founder of the Center on Education Policy as well as a widely cited author.

Bethany Little* Chief Education Counsel, U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (2009-2012). Top education staffer for the Chairman of the U.S. Senate committee with jurisdiction over education bills and managed education policy staff to negotiate bipartisan bills, draft legislation, hold hearings, and provide oversight for relevant agencies and programs

Tony Miller* Joined Department of Education in 2009 as the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer.

Mike Petrilli* President of the Thomas Fordham Institute. Served as a Bush administration appointee in the U.S. Department of Education (2001-2005), where he helped coordinate No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB).

Margot Rogers Currently, Vice Chairmen of the Parthenon Group’s Education Practice. Served as Chief of Staff to the U.S. Department of Education Secretary of Education. From 2004-2009, served in multiple roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

James Shelton Acting deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to that, he was the program director for education and Gates Foundation.

* Note: Indicates Interviewed Interview Protocols

In the HK approach, a two-stage interview process requires the design of two interview protocols to reflect the different probes and follow-up questions that were used for each group. Both protocols entailed an open-ended format. This type of format allows the researcher to obtain a richer and fuller description of events. In the HK approach, responses from the highly knowledgeable actors guide the development of the semi-

60 structured protocol for the second set of policy actors. The first protocol asked highly knowledgeable policy actors to recall how the idea arose, who raised concerns or supported actions related to a competition-based federal education policy, what solutions were proposed, and how other actors responded to the problem and developed solution alternatives. Responses to these questions were used to revise the interview protocol for the remaining policy actors.

During the interviews, the main survey questions were designed to be read directly from the protocol. Probes were designed for the following purposes: (1) clarification of response(s); (2) definition of terms; (3) confirmation of interviewer understanding; and (4) to follow-up on factors suggested by the interviewee.

The design was such that the first phase of interviews included general questions based on the study’s research question. These formal questions were preceded by an open-ended question that asks respondents to describe the evolution of the idea of Race to the Top. This open-ended question provided a wealth of information that could not be ascertained via document review or analysis. Additionally, these interviews enabled me to construct a chronology of events. Beginning the interviews with an open-ended question eased respondents into the more formal probes (Berman, 2008).

Given the list of potential interviewees, I expected that the interviews would last one hour or less given the limited time of highly knowledgeable policy actors. I asked each respondent if I could identify him or her by name in the study. I offered each respondent the opportunity to talk “off the record” at any time. I also asked to record the interview and, immediately after the interviews, I typed up any notes I took during the interview.

The HK approach specifies that the protocol for the interviews conducted during the second stage should not be finalized until analysis of the data from the first stage was complete. Thus, the study allowed me to integrate themes identified from the first set of interviews into my questions for later interviews.

To increase the validity of the interview protocol, prior to its first administration, I piloted the questions on other education researchers and policy analysts who work in education policy. During the pilot testing phase, I probed interviewees for the protocol’s coherence, clarity, and wording (Berman, 2008). Based on feedback from these pilot sessions, I refined the set of questions for the first set of interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors.

As discussed earlier, the instrument for the second set of interviews was designed to be refined, in part based on knowledge garnered during the first stage interviews. The questions asked during the second stage were also designed to be semi-structured,

“addressing each of the research sub-questions and probed on factors for analysis from the study’s analytical framework” (Berman, 2008, p. 70), as suggested by the literature on RTT, political theories, and information garnered from interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors.

Interview Questions

Each interview with a highly knowledgeable actor began with an open-ended the question. The first question I asked at the start of each interview was, “Can you describe the evolution of the idea, and the eventual policy, for Race to the Top?” In practice, the highly knowledgeable policy actors often started by launching into a different directions based on my initial content letter. Based on the highly knowledgeable or policy actor’s

role or responses to the initial question or their statement, I asked follow up questions.

Each interviewee was asked, “What was your position and/or relationship with Barack

Obama during his campaign?” Each interviewee was asked the following three

concluding questions:

1. Is there anything else you think I might be interested in?

2. Are there any other people who would suggest I contact about my

research?

3. If I have any follow-up questions as I review my findings, would you be

willing to participate in a very brief follow-up phone call or email

exchange?

Additional questions varied based on the policy actor’s role, as well as the response to the first question regarding the evolution of the idea. Some additional follow up questions included:

1. Did discussions about the education policy objectives change after Obama

secured the presidency? If yes, please describe.;

2. In what ways to you think RTT reflected Barack Obama’s policy

objectives?;

3. What role did political factors play in shaping the design of RTT?;

4. What role do you think NCLB played in the development of RTT?;

5. Were alternative policy solutions proposed and/or developed?; and

6. What elements of RTT appealed to those in the Obama administration?

The majority of the interview followed an open-ended, unstructured format. This was the

preferred interview format, as explained above.

Analysis of Interviews

Analysis of the data collected through the interviews was aimed at generating

an understanding of the factors present and dominant in the genesis of RTT. The

analysis of interviews (both stages) followed the approach used by Berman (2008),

which is based on techniques recommended by Cresswell (1998). The interviews will

be organized for analysis based on:

Table 3.3. Interview Organization

 Data Organization: Facts about the case based on information from interview participants and document reviews, were arranged in a logical order.  Data Categorization: Categories were identified, and the data gathered through interviews and document reviews were clustered into meaningful groups (coded).  Code Interpretation: Specific statements that fell into similar clusters (codes) were examined for specific meanings in relationship to the purpose and objectives of the study.  Pattern Identification: The data and their interpretations were scrutinized for underlying themes and patterns that characterized the case and allowed conclusions to be drawn.  Synthesis: An overall portrait of the case was constructed. Conclusions and recommendations were drawn based on the interview and document review data.

Source: Taken from Berman (2008), p. 79.

To develop a set of descriptive codes, I followed the coding processes recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994). Miles and Huberman (1994) articulate a method of pattern coding whereby groups are formed based on similar themes and constructs that are generated during the interviews. The codes are informed by the research questions, terminology from the literature, and terminology from the analytical frameworks. The purpose of coding the interviews and documents using both initial codes and emergent codes is to provide an additional lens of interpretation that may not be obvious to the principal investigator.

Validity of Findings

Quantitative studies are validated based on the accuracy and/or representativeness of the study or data, and are evaluated in terms of validity in four domains: measurement, internal, external, and statistical conclusion validity (Newcomer, 2013). However, qualitative research studies are evaluated using different criteria. Rubin and Rubin (2012) write that, in qualitative research:

“Quality means that the results of the research are fresh and real. The conclusions

are balanced, thorough, credible, and accurate and the final reports are rich with

ideas. High-quality research makes a complex reality understandable without

oversimplifying it. Good reports provide nuanced portraits of events, time

periods, or cultures, portraits that the interviewees recognize as an accurate

reflection of their world” (p. 60).

This study strives to be a high quality research study as defined by the criteria set forth by

Rubin and Rubin (2012) and outlined in Table 3.4.

In order to achieve fresh and real results, Rubin and Rubin (2012) recommend the interviewees have firsthand experience and that the researcher uses these interviewee’s words as the evidence in their studies conclusions. Rubin and Rubin (2012) write that high-quality interviewing studies are seminal in nature and do not imitate work that has already been done. To keep the results of this study fresh and real, I employed the HK approach and interviewed individuals with firsthand knowledge of the factors that shaped the development of RTT. The selection of the HK approach was an attempt to achieve a quality research project. Because this research study is also one of the first to use in-depth interviews to examine the factors that shaped the development of RTT, it also makes the findings fresh and real. To keep the findings from the study fresh and real, to the extent feasible, I used direct quotes and the interviewees own words in my conclusion. In these ways, this project is keeping it fresh and real, one of the criteria of a high-quality research study.

Balance and thoroughness can be achieved by selecting interviewees who have complementary experiences and represent different points of view. The two methods used attain this balance are (1) using data saturation to inform sample size selection and (2) generating a list of potential interviewees based on document analysis and the snowball technique. High-quality interview studies demonstrate thoroughness when they seek to fill in missing information, seek contrary data, and explore alternative explanations. The study at hand was designed to meet the high-quality criteria of balance and thoroughness in several ways. First, the second interview protocol was refined based on analysis of the data from the first protocol. Second, the research design allows for modification of

66 emerging themes. Third, the snowball technique and data saturation method to determine sample size were used to achieve a balanced and thorough study.

Rubin and Rubin (2012) state that “credibility is achieved in part by showing that you have talked with people who are informed about your research concerns” (p. 65).

This study was designed to interview the people who are the most knowledgeable about the factors that shaped the genesis of RTT, the very people who were responsible for this shift in policy lever. To meet the criteria of credibility, this study designed an interview protocol that did not push people into answering a certain way by using open-ended questions.

Table 1.4. High Quality Research Studies

Criteria Definition To Assure This Study Quality Fresh and Do not imitate Choose Used the words of individuals Real other published interviewees with who know about RTT from work. firsthand their own experience to and experience. knowledge and, thus, portray Explores new real events and real ideas. Use their words as experiences. evidence.

Balanced and No major gaps in Choose Refined second interview Thorough information. interviewees with protocol based on analysis of complementary data from first protocol. experiences. Modified emerging themes.

Snowball technique / data saturation used to delineate sample size. Credible Achieved in part Choose Designed interview protocol by showing that interviewees who that did not push people into you have talked are answering a certain way or to people who knowledgeable. made them uncomfortable. are informed

Criteria Definition To Assure This Study Quality about your Build in checks for Interviewed multiple people research candor, memory, to offset selective recall, and concerns. and consistency used documents to learn about into protocol. events and refresh participants’ memory. Ask for detailed examples. Checked what respondents said against pertinent When possible, documents. discuss tentative conclusions with I kept my interview interviewees. recordings for anyone who wishes to check my data. Report findings in a transparent I kept a diary of my project. manner. Accurate Accurate Record each Transcribed interview transcription of interview and immediately following interviews. carefully interview. transcribe it. Double checked by listening If feasible, ask to recording while reading interview to transcription comment on what might have been missed / misinterpreted. Rich and Present matters Examine a variety Interviewed for richness using Nuanced step by step. of themes and HK two stage approach. examples in detail Detail, combined and explore with alternative thoroughness, interpretations and helps create perspectives. nuance understanding.

Source: Adapted from ideas in Rubin and Rubin (2012).

Another aspect of credibility in qualitative studies is reporting findings in a transparent manner. In this regard, I kept my interview recordings and transcriptions for review by my advisors. In addition, I kept a diary/journal of each interview that describes

68 when it took place, how long it lasted, and a summary of what I learned. This running file of ideas makes my own reactions transparent to others as well as to me.

If interviews are accurately described, than “participants in the research recognize themselves and their world in the portrait [you] have drawn” (Rubin and Rubin, 2012, p.

65). In this way, qualitative studies are kept accurate. Accuracy can be achieved by carefully obtaining, recording, and reporting each interview. In addition to transcription, I took notes to help clarify the transcription. Further, interviewees were given an opportunity to review their quotes prior to the study’s completion.

Human Participants, Ethical Considerations, and the IRB

Each respondent was given the option to have their identity revealed or not. As the nature of the interviews questions is not particularly harmful, it was my hope that these individuals would speak on the record because they would like their name associated with this study. However, since policy actors may be “more comfortable revealing what they perceive as influential factors on their decisions if they know their identities will not be revealed” (Berman, 2008, p. 84), I offered interviewees the option of remaining anonymous.

On June 26, 2014, I submitted the study (#061447) for IRB approval. The submission included my recruitment scripts, my interview guides, information sheet, the introduction to the project, and the methodology section. In order to secure IRB approval,

I also had to watch a webinar about human research participants through the

Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative Website (CITI). On July 11, 2014, I secured

IRB approval for my project. My project was registered as "Exempt Category 2" with the

IRB Office. No ongoing oversight was required by the Office of Human Research unless

I altered my research in any way that might increase risk to participants, which I did not.

Please see Appendix A for the Initial Contact Letter/Email.

Data Collection

Following IRB approval, I contacted 21 highly knowledgeable and knowledgeable policy actors as outlined in my proposal. I conducted interviews over a nine month period, from August 6, 2014, through May 13, 2015. Table 3.5 provides an overall summary of the interviews and Table 3.6 provides additional detail on the interviews such as the name of the individual, the date and time of day of the interview, the length of the interview, whether or not I was allowed to record the interview, and the medium in which the interview was conducted (in person or by phone).

On July 22nd, 2014, I emailed the initial contact letter and interview consent form to five highly knowledgeable policy actors. These individuals were identified as highly knowledgeable policy actors by reviewing documents located on the Obama transition team’s website. These initial contact letters were sent to: (1) Jon Schnur, (2) Marshall

(Mike) S. Smith, (3) Cecelia Rouse, (4) Linda Darling-Hammond, and (5) Joanne Weiss.

While Joanne Weiss was not a part of the transition team, the document review of RTT indicated she is a highly knowledgeable policy actor because she was hired to design and run the RTT competition.

The first individual to respond to my requests was Mike S. Smith on August 6,

2014. I then interviewed Joanne Weiss. Following my interview with Joanne Weiss, she offered to connect me with Jon Schnur and several other individuals she had identified

70 during my interview with her. In this way, Joanne Weiss served as a key entry point and provided access to key policy actors. In forwarding my interview requests to other policy actors, Joanne Weiss gave my research validity with these key subjects. This methodology (i.e., the snowball technique) is described earlier. However, due to the political stature of my respondents and the persistence necessary to procure and interview, I did deviate from the two prong highly knowledgeable protocol I had initially designed.

Specifically, I deviated because (1) some of the actors I had identified early on as highly knowledgeable were not highly knowledgeable and (2) I learned that other actors I had not initially identified were, in fact, highly knowledgeable. Thus, while I did refine and continuously improve my interview protocol, my interviews were not directly split between highly knowledgeable actors in Phase I and policy actors in Phase II.

Throughout the data collection, I was continuously trying to secure interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors. For example, Robert Gordon was one of my last interviews. I sent him a first interview request on October 9, 2014, a second request on

March 4, 2015, and a third request April 10, 2015. He responded to the last request and an interview was conducted. This is an example of where a highly knowledgeable policy actor was interviewed after policy actors and where there was overlap between Phase I and Phase II data collections.

Of the 21 policy actors I contacted, I interviewed seventeen: ten of whom I classified as highly knowledgeable policy actors and the remaining seven as policy actors.

On average, the interviews lasted 35 minutes and were conducted by phone. There was a significant range of interview length, with some interviews lasting only 17 minutes and

71 two interviews that were close to, or longer than, an hour. The standard deviation of the average interview duration was a little less than 17 minutes. Sixteen of my interviewees allowed themselves to be recorded. Only one interview was conducted in person.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to conducting interviews by phone.

One of the advantages of telephone interviews is the extended access to participants compared to face-to-face interviews (Opdenakker, 2006). In this study, phone interviews allowed access to people from all over the country in less time and for less expense than face-to-face interviews. In one case, I was offered the opportunity to meet face-to-face for an interview, but would not have been allowed to record the interview due to building restrictions on recording devices. In this instance, I choose a telephone interview over the face-to-face meeting to enable a more thorough and accurate account of the interview.

One of the disadvantages of phone interviews is that is difficult to establish credibility with interviewees. In this study, I gained credibility despite the fact that most of the interviews were conducted by phone because, as mentioned earlier, Joanne Weiss served as an entry point and early validator of my study.

After Ms. Weiss had reached out to two additional participants and I procured interviews with them, I was then able to note that I interviewed Jon Schnur and Joanne

Weiss in the next wave of contact letters with additional policy actors. Each interview I conducted added credibility to my study, acted as a form of inducement to potential policy actors, and enhanced credibility for the project. This is an example of the utility of the snowball technique. The snowball technique allowed me to mitigate the inherent difficulty of establishing credibility when conducting the interviews by phone. Another limitation of phone interviews is the reduction in social cues. Because the interviewer

72 does not see the interviewee, body language cannot be used as a source of information

(Opdenakker, 2006). Another disadvantage is that it is more challenging for the interviewer to create a good interview ambiance. This was again perhaps mitigated by the credibility of the previous actors I had interviewed. Rather than being reluctant, policy actors in this study were eager participants.

Table 3.5. Interview Summary Statistics

Interview Summary Number of interview 17 In person 1 Phone 16 Allowed to record 16 Average length of interview 34 minutes What period of time interviews conducted August 2014-May 2015

In Table 3.7, I classified policy actors and highly knowledgeable policy actors by the various positions they had, or currently have, that are relevant to this project. On the far right side of the table, I have the initials of the policy actor and, on the left, their position. For example, for the Obama White House Domestic Policy Council there are two initials, RR and HH. These initials represent Roberto Rodriguez and Heather

Higginbottom. Ms. Higginbottom is also listed under the campaign team, the transition team, the Senate (she was a member of John Kerry’s staff), as well Communities in

Schools, a non-profit. The list of policy roles is not an exhaustive representation of Ms.

Higginbottom’s resume, but what I felt were pieces of her experience that were relevant for the purposes of this project. For example, her current role as U.S. Secretary of State for Management and Resources is not listed in Table 3.7 because it is not directly applicable to this project. Her role as Deputy National Policy Director for the Kerry-

Edwards presidential campaign is also not listed in the table. Table 3.7 is not exhaustive but illustrates the relevant roles my interviewees have.

Interviews

For the actual interviews, I followed the methodological approach outlined earlier in this chapter (i.e., I employed an open-ended question structure which allowed me to probe for information in a manner that afforded my respondents maximum flexibility to structure their response). In many of my interviews, I raised specific questions based on a policy actor’s, or highly knowledge policy actor’s specific role. For example, my questions for my interview with Mr. Furman, who was the Economic Policy Director for

President Obama’s Campaign in 2008, were mainly focused on the Recovery Act rather than education policy or the principals or policy objectives that the Education Transition

Team were working on during the campaign. Each interview’s set of questions or probes were tailored to each interviewee. All but one of my interviewees agreed to be recorded.

The one exception was Joe Conaty, who did not want to be recorded on a government line. All of the interviewees requested the opportunity to review any direct quotes or links back to them prior to being published.

One of the strong points of this research was that I was able to interview several key individuals who were involved directly in the genesis of RTT. However, because the list of HK policy actors is very small (a key factor itself in the genesis of RTT), non- response is an issue in this study. Obvious gaps are interviews with Arne Duncan, Rahm

Emanuel, President Barack Obama, and Linda Darling-Hammond. To help alleviate the non-response burden, I triangulated the findings from my interviews with some of the

reports in other published sources (e.g., Brill (2011) and newspaper articles) to try and

capture these actors’ perspectives from secondary data sources. In some interviews, I also

asked interviewees what they thought one of the aforementioned individuals knew and

was thinking at the time RTT was being discussed. Although these interviewees could not

speak directly on what was in the other person’s mind, it was hoped that speaking with

these actors mitigates some of the bias from sample selection. Although the number of

actors interviewed for this case study is small (n=17) and there was significant non-

response, this limitation is mitigated in two ways. First, I used data saturation to indicate

when additional interviews would yield no additional information. Second, the policy

actors that I did interview were the “right people”: they were the actors directly involved

in the genesis of RTT who could speak most knowledgeably on the topic. A future point

of research would be to attempt to interview the key actors who I was not able to

interview and see if the findings from this study would change.

For all of the recorded interviews, I used TapeACall. This professional service has

an annual subscription cost of $10 per year. TapeACall is a seamless, phone-based recording application that works by creating a three-way call between the interviewer, the caller (in this case the interviewee) and the TapeACall service. In other words, it is a three-way call between the interviewer, the interviewee, and a blank recording line.

When the interview is complete (i.e., the call has ended), the audio record file is processed and pushed to the recording device (in this case, an iPhone). There is no limit on the length of a TapeACall recording.

Table 3.6. Names, Dates, Times, Length, and Type of Interview

Name Date Time Length Type Marshall (Mike) S. Smith 6-Aug 12:00 1:14:37 Phone Joanne Weiss 5-Sep 9:00 0:45:28 Phone Jon Schnur 24-Sep 1:30 0:43:46 Phone Jack Jennings 28-Oct 1:30 0:59:40 Phone Rick Hess 29-Oct 12:30 0:17:25 Phone Mike Petrilli 21-Nov 3:30 0:33:11 Phone Cheryl Smith 12-Dec 2:00 0:41:55 Phone Roberto Rodriguez 15-Dec 11:00 0:45:00 In person Tony Miller 11-Mar 5:15 0:35:13 Phone Peter Cunningham 12-Mar 3:00 0:17:46 Phone Jason Furman 13-Mar 4:00 0:17:55 Phone Emma Vadehra 6-Apr 1:00 0:26:32 Phone Joe Conaty 6-Apr 2:00 0:45:05 Phone Heather Higginbottom 10-Apr 11:30 0:21:48 Phone Robert Gordon 10-Apr 4:30 0:15:05 Phone Carmel Martin 24-Apr 9:30 0:24:38 Phone Bethany Little 13-May 11:07 0:17:14 Phone

All recordings were saved in a “recordings screen” section of the app. Audio files

can be labeled in the recording screen section. In my case, I used the name of each

interviewee. The recording screen saves the name of the interviewee, the date, the length

of the call, the time of the call, and an audio file of the call. Audio files can be transferred by email or Dropbox to another device, such as a computer. For this project, all audio files were transferred to a computer and backed up to a cloud storage system.

Table 3.7. Types of Policy Actors

Types of Policy Actors Type of policy Actor* White House Domestic Policy Council I RR HH Cabinet member (Chairman of Council of Economic Advisors) I JF Office of Management and Budget I RG Transition team III MS JS JF HH RG Campaign team JS JF HH Congress I JJ CS Senate RR EV HH CM BL Policy wonk/Interest group RH MP Department of Education MS JW TM PC EV RG Obama Administration II CM Clinton Administration II MS JC BL Bush Administration MP JC Carter Administration I MS Academic III MS JW Author I MS Venture Philanthropy firm/Non profit TM New Schools I JW America Achieves I New Leaders for New Schools I JS Communities in Schools I HH Center for American Progress (CAP) II RG CM *Respondents may be in more than one category

In addition to acting as a recording device, TapeACall allows for the direct

uploading of audio files to a transcription service called Rev. Rev is a separate app from

TapeACall, but they are affiliated with one another. Rev is a transcription app that allows

for the easy upload of files for transcription by vetted transcriptionists. Seidman (1998)

notes that transcribing data can be an intensive and time consuming process. For the

purposes of time, I used Rev transcription services to transcribe my audio files. Rev files

are securely stored and transmitted using a 128-bit SSL encryption, the highest level of

security available. The terms of service agreement states that the files and audio

recording will never be shared with anyone outside of Rev. The audio files are only 77

visible to transcriptionists who have signed strict confidentiality agreements. Once

transcribed, either Rev or the transcriptionist deletes the files if a request is made to do so. The majority of Rev transcriptionists are based in the United States and are native

English speakers. The cost of transcription is $1/minute.

Rev is also the recording app that I relied on as a backup recording device on my

iPad while I was using TapeACall on my iPhone. As a recording device, it operates the

same way a traditional tape recorder would. Similar to the management of audio files in

TapeACall, Rev recorded the date, time, and length of the interview, and labeled the file with the interviewee’s name. Once a copy of the audio file from TapeACall was saved to a cloud storage system, the Rev backup audio file was deleted.

Data Organization and Analysis

Overview

All sixteen transcriptions were uploaded into NVivo; a software that enables

researchers to organize qualitative data, such as interview transcriptions, to help identify trends and themes within the data. NVivo does not do any analysis, but allows researchers to organize the data, access the information and visualize relationships within the data. The software tools embedded in NVivo support analysis by acting as a filing system that aids researchers in producing code and categorization. Each interview was categorized as a case within NVivo.

NVivo

Coding in qualitative research is used to both organize and analyze cases. From an

organizational perspective, coding allows researchers to identify where ideas within the data originate, and do so for multiple sources. For analysis purposes, coding helps with the interpretation of qualitative data. While the project started with a relatively simple

coding shell, the shell went through a Darwinian evolution whereby, through the analysis,

the shell changed and morphed into a new shell as interviews were analyzed during the

data analysis. Codes were grouped together as common themes through the use of NVivo

nodes.

The framework for the codes in this study was informed by the analytical

framework outlined in Table 2.3. That framework was developed based on the study’s

literature review, and drew on themes that emerged in existing research and theories on

agenda setting (see Chapter 2). Table 2.3 identifies seven factors that may have influenced the genesis of RTT: (1) policy problems, (2) interest groups, (3) policy monopolies, (4) new ideas, (5) Recovery Act, (6) policy windows, and (7) elections.

Table 2.3 also illustrates how these factors may translate into case-specific factors. The case-specific factors, outlined in detail in Table 2.3, includes, for example, the EIC, the

Recession, the Obama campaign, and structural limitations of ESEA. As an initial starting point in the coding of the transcripts, I established nodes for each of the factors and case-specific factors, and then examined the text grouping text under one of these nodes. If no node reflected the text being examined, a new node was generated. For example, as will be discussed later in the findings section, “vague” was not a node identified in the framework, but it was an important factor in the genesis of RTT.

NVivo allows researchers to collect references about a specific theme under a

‘node.’ NVivo uses the term nodes to provide a way to organize data by codes, and

allows for a hierarchical structure to be built into the coding structure. Nodes are like a

basket (i.e. all interviewees that reference a similar theme are grouped into similar

nodes). The simplest example of how I built my initial hierarchical structure and how this was informed by theory is the node policy window, since it is familiar to many in this field. In my initial analysis, I created a policy window node since Kingdon (2003) notes that windows are a part of the policy making process. Thus, I was using Kingdon to inform my analysis. In analyzing the transcripts of my interviews, it appeared that the recession may fall into the Kingdon description of a policy window, so I coded it as such.

I then relabeled the node widow as recession as I continued to refine my analysis.

Each of the interviews that were imported into NVivo were analyzed, first at the paragraph level and then at the sentence level, to determine which code best fit the quote.

Again, while my initial list of codes was informed by my analytical framework, the process of naming the codes was an evolutionary process and not constrained to either of these theories.

After the first round of analysis of all of the interviews, I subsequently re- reviewed each individual transcript. During the second stage review, I revisited my initial assignment of text to nodes, adjusting when necessary, (e.g., removing specific text from an individual node, or reassigning text to a new node). Text was often assigned to more than one node. As I refined my analysis, I looked for similarities and differences in what was being said by the policy actors, and looked for ways to draw conclusions based on the findings. It was during the second review when themes began to emerge as well as

80 patterns and hierarchical structure within the nodes. I categorized over 100 nodes during my initial review, and refined to less than 50 nodes and sub-nodes during my second stage of analysis.

Analysis in a qualitative research study is an ongoing process. The evolutionary nature of qualitative research and analysis was a design element of my research study, as seen in the design of my open-ended questions and in my coding process. While NVivo software is a powerful tool for organizing and sorting the data, the analysis of the data was informed by theory and relied on my analysis. What patterns and themes did I see emerging? How should these be interpreted in a theoretical framework? Interpretations of the interviews informed the study throughout the data collection: it was not a static process, but an evolutionary one.

Studies based on qualitative research must always consider how coder bias can affect themes and findings. One solution that qualitative researchers often employ is the use of multiple coders so that inter-coder reliability can mitigate some of the potential coder bias. However, multiple coders is expensive and time consuming and, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this project. To mitigate my personal coder bias, I reviewed the transcripts multiple times with fresh eyes. I tried to ensure that every piece of each transcript was sorted into a theme or basket. Then, as I was drawing conclusions,

I re-reviewed each transcript to examine how I had coded it. Finally, after I wrote my conclusions, I re-reviewed the transcripts to see if I had missed any potential factors.

Summary

This chapter focused on the methodology used to answer my research question and described how I accomplished my investigation. I relied on interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors to examine the factors that led to the genesis of RTT on the Obama administration agenda. My sample of interviewees was based on purposeful selection sampling was drawn heavily from the list of actors identified in Brill (2011). The list of highly knowledgeable policy actors was small, an element that became part of the analysis framework itself. Considering the roles and positions of the actors I sought to interview, I had a relatively decent response rate.

However, there are certainly actors I wish I could have interviewed such as President

Obama, Secretary Duncan, Congressman David Obey, and Rahm Emanuel. I tried to account for non-response in my interview protocol.

I interviewed 17 actors for this research study. All but one interview was conducted by phone. The interviews were conducted for a period of nine months between

August of 2014 and May 2015. The average interview lasted about 34 minutes. All but one interview was recorded. Each interview was transcribed and saved for documentation and analysis. I used NVivo to assist with the coding of the interviews, and refined my coding and framework with each subsequent interview. The next chapter presents the findings from the aforementioned interviews.

Chapter 4: Findings

In this chapter, I present findings from interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors to develop a narrative of the ascension of RTT onto the

Obama decision- making agenda. The first section will present the overall model of the narrative. This is followed by detailed analysis of each of the main factors identified in the narrative. These include: (1) the recession, (2) the Recovery Act and RTT, (3)

President Obama, (4) the relative amount appropriated for RTT compared to the overall

Recovery Act, (5) the time spent debating the Recovery Act, (6) the venue where the legislation was written, (7) the vague language used to detail the plans for RTT, and (8) a new administration. This chapter concludes with a consideration the relationship between the narrative of RTT and general theories of agenda setting.

Consistent with established theories that seek to explain policy change, this dissertation found that policy windows, elections, policy entrepreneurs, the decline of previously powerful interest groups, new interest groups, and venue change were all important factors in the genesis of RTT. In addition to traditional factors that explain policy change, this study found that speed, minimal verbiage, and a small, tight limited group of actors were key factors in the genesis of RTT.

Context for RTT

Figure 4.1 illustrates the dynamic of the factors that led to the genesis of RTT.

The first factor discussed in this presentation of findings, and the pillar of the model, is the recession. In addition to being a relatively obvious factor, it is also the catalyst for the

83 other factors that led to the genesis of RTT. The recession sits at the top of the model because, as will be explained in more detail later, the recession was a catalyst for the other factors. The “plus” sign in the middle of the model symbolizes that it was the addition of the recession to the other factors (indicated by the bubbles) that led to the genesis of RTT. The swirled arrows on either side of the model illustrate how these factors are swirled together and intertwined. The model is a general overview of the analysis of the findings from my interviews. While the factors are independent, they are also interrelated.

Figure 4.1. Genesis of RTT

Recession

When interviewed about what conditions or events shaped the decision to set aside funding for the state incentive grants (later known as RTT) highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors universally noted the 2008 economic recession. President

Obama assumed office as the United States was roiled in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. When Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, both presidential candidates, McCain and Obama, were forced to put the United States economy at the forefront of their respective campaigns. The days following Lehman’s collapse, the yields on short term Treasury Bills went below zero and withdrawals from money market funds were $400 billion overnight (the normal is $5 billion) (Alter, 2010).

In addition to Lehman’s collapse, AIG, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, was also on the brink of collapse and GE Capital was precariously close to demise (Alter,

2010). With the exception of Americans who were alive during the 1929 Crash,

“September 2008 brought the most frightening market turmoil of their lifetime, with the values of homes, investment portfolios, and life savings declining by a quarter, a half, or more” (Alter, 2010, p. 4). It was in this frightful environment that both then-Senator

Barack Obama and Senator John McCain were not only campaigning, but developing their policy agendas for their first 100 days in office.

Nearly every interview with a highly knowledgeable policy actor or policy actor began with the interviewee noting the state of the economy and the national mood about the economy in late 2008. The role the economic crisis played in every aspect of both candidates’ fall campaigns and then subsequently, the role the recession played in the

President’s policy proposals cannot be overstated. Every highly knowledgeable policy

85 actor and policy actor interviewed for this study felt the need to ‘set the stage’ at the start of the interview. By highlighting the recession as the first factor, I echo what I heard first by nearly all my interviewees at the start of their interview regardless of my first question

(which was typically, “How were you personally involved in the genesis of RTT?”). My first question never asked about the recession, or specifically asked about the role the recession played in the development of RTT However, every interviewee backtracked to the recession as a starting point for our interview.

Within the first few minutes of the each of the 17 interviews I conducted, every highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actor began with a commentary on the state of the economy. Nearly all of the quotes below were recorded during the first minutes of the interview process and illustrate this phenomenon:

“The recession is key to understanding where the President was at the time. That

was the context for his proposed, historic $100 billion investment in education –

including helping states and school districts avert massive layoffs, expanding

college access and more” (Jon Schnur, personal communication, September 24,

2014).

“It was a very intense period, probably the most intense period that I have had in

twenty-five years on Capitol Hill” (Cheryl Smith, personal communication,

December 12, 2014).

“I think that the imperative with the Stimulus Act was to address the precipice

that we were about to go over and boost the economy to the extent that we were

involved in the education piece of the stimulus” (Heather Higginbottom, personal

communication, April 10, 2015).

“The reality was that the economic crisis began under Bush. Wall Street was

tanking. Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others had to write a bailout

program for Wall Street and the big banks. They were doing all that during

October, November, [and] December, before Obama became President. When

Obama became president, things were still awful and there was a fear that the

United States was going to go into a second Depression. The Congress and

Obama decided to spend money in order to stimulate the economy and to prevent

a depression” (Jack Jennings, personal communication, October 28, 2014).

The above examples from my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors, as well as the context in which these remarks occurred in the first minutes of each interview, substantiate the identification of the recession as a key factor in the ascension of RTT on the Obama administration agenda. The country’s precarious perch on the verge of economic collapse was the catalyst for the Recovery Act in which

RTT was embedded. This is why the recession sits at the top of Figure 4.1.

RTT and the Recovery Act

Another one of my key findings during interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors was that RTT, and RTT in the Recovery Act, was not considered prior to

President Obama securing the nomination in November, thus illuminating how quickly this major policy initiative arrived on the agenda. The Obama campaign team and the

Education Transition Team were not thinking about a major, competition driven federal education reform until mid-to-late November 2008, in spite of either the recession or the fact that the Recovery Act was being developed by Congress concurrent with the campaign. Heather Higginbottom, a key education advisor for the Obama campaign, a leader for the Education Transition Team, and soon-to-be appointed Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, confirmed RTT was not on the policy agenda during the campaign:

“No, [RTT] wasn't something that we were thinking about during the campaign

because we would not have been able to envision a situation with such a large set

of resources. We were looking at what we could do with the existing or slightly

increased federal resources. In other words, we were developing our educational

policies on the campaign and we had lots of ideas about how we might change No

Child Left Behind, make improvements, [and] change some of the teacher

training. There were lots of proposals developed during the campaign. But we

hadn't envisioned, and couldn't have prior to the election, that we would be

confronted with the possibility of billions of dollars at our disposal to create

something new. That's just isn't something we could've contemplated. Having

worked on federal education policy in Congress, you don't get large, new sums of

money. The opportunity just all of a sudden fell into our lap. It's just not even

conceivable normally [and] that's why it wasn't something envisioned in the

campaign. The campaign policy proposals are consistent with RTT and others

reforms, but not envisioned at this scale with brand new opportunity” (Heather

Higginbottom, personal communication, April 10, 2015).

RTT was not on the policy agenda during the campaign. As Ms. Higginbottom notes, this is because it wasn’t even conceivable as a policy because it was so beyond the normal realm of policy reality. During the campaign, the Obama team was developing education policies that were ‘traditional’ in the sense that they were focused on reauthorization of ESEA and how to make improvements to NCLB. The reauthorization of NCLB would have been an example of incremental policy making. A billion dollar federal education reform competition was not on the policy agenda during the campaign.

That leads to the obvious questions of when, why, and how RTT ended up the Obama administration agenda.

The answers to when and why RTT arrived on the Obama administration agenda are intertwined. Through interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors, I learned that policy priorities set forth for the Recovery Act, by then-President elect Obama, are key to understanding when and how RTT arrived on the Obama policy agenda. I first learned that priorities for the Recovery Act led to the genesis of RTT on the agenda during my interview with Jason Furman, who was then serving as the Economic Policy

Director for President Obama’s campaign in 2008 and, later, as a member of the presidential transition team. Mr. Furman explained that there were three policy priorities that the Obama administration was trying to accomplish with the Stimulus bill. The first two priorities were (1) ensuring that there was sufficient funding in the Bill to prevent a deeper recession and (2) moving the country on a path to recovery. The second priority was address in the hope that it would slow the recession. The third policy priority of the

Recovery Act was put forth by President Obama and his White House Chief of Staff,

Rahm Emanuel. In addition to goals one and two, Rahm Emanuel vis-à-vis the President, wanted the Recovery Act to have a lasting impact.

President Obama’s personal goal of ensuring that the billion dollar Recovery Act had a lasting impact became goal number three. Goal three, that the Recovery Act have a lasting impact is a root cause of the ascension of RTT. RTT was inserted into the

Recovery Act to make sure that the bulk of the education funding in the Recovery Act was spent in a meaningful way and produced lasting education reforms. In other words, because President Obama wanted the Recovery Act to have a lasting impact, the

Economic Team turned to the Education Team and said, “How can we make sure that if we send billions of dollars through traditional Title I formulas to states and localities to starve off the Recession and meet goals one and two, and that the billions of dollars in education will also have a lasting impact to meet the President’s goal number three?” The

Education Team then developed RTT by setting aside discretionary funding within the education section of the Recovery Act. This funding was earmarked for a competition to drive the use of the larger set of funding in a way that had an impact beyond the recession.

The discretionary funds set aside for the Secretary of Education in the Recovery

Act (i.e., RTT) were designed to address policy goal three of the Recovery Act. RTT ascended to the agenda because it met this policy goal for the Recovery Act. President

Obama wanted the stimulus to not just repair the economy, but have a lasting impact that bore the genesis of RTT on the policy agenda. Mr. Furman notes:

“The third goal was to use [the Stimulus] as an opportunity for lasting change.

You can create jobs by having people dig holes in the ground and fill them up

again. That would create a lot of jobs today, but it won't change the trajectory of

the economy in the future. We wanted those jobs today, but we also wanted to use

it to create change. Building a road rather than digging a hole in the ground, for

example. When it started, the economic team wasn't really thinking of goal

number three, making lasting change. They were really thinking of one and two.

We want to get as much money out to states and localities as possible.

At first, our proposal was to spend half the money on an increased match

rate for Medicaid. So you get more money for Medicaid for your state, and half

the money is just general fiscal relief. In meetings in November of 2008, Rahm

[Emanuel] made the argument that it would be very hard to convince Congress to

just give money to the states with no strings attached and without attaching some

exciting, worthwhile purpose to it. The economic team said we could do

education. Rahm [Emanuel] pushed back and said. ‘It can't just be education. You

have to give people a vision of what that education would be for.’ The people on

the economic team, myself [and] Larry Summers, who were really putting this

91 together, really mostly with goals one and two from before in mind, reached out to Robert Gordon and, I think, Jon Schnur. I remember we had a conference call the Tuesday or Wednesday before Thanksgiving [2008]. Heather Higginbottom, I think, was a part of it. Coming out of that, the education people said they had been working on this Race to the Top idea. I think not in a Stimulus Act context

[or] Recovery Act context. I think in another, but I'm not sure. It fit right in with what Rahm [Emanuel] told us we needed to do. It filled in category number three, and created more vision and a more compelling idea of what we'd be doing with the money than just handing money out. From the purely economic short-run perspective, the most important thing was the dollars. From the transformative perspective, it was like what you're going to get for the dollar.

We were really focused on getting as much state and local fiscal relief as possible. Rahm [Emanuel], as I said, was very focused on, ‘You can't just spray money at the states and localities. You have to do something with the money.’

That's when we went to the education people and said, ‘We have a lot of money.

We'd like you to be a part of this act. We need a better way to spend it than to just mail it around at random.’

Yeah, we very much came to them. We very much wanted the number to be big for our own macro-economic purposes. The vision from them came up with the idea. I think they'd already been working on [it], but I'm not positive

(Jason Furman, personal communication, May 13, 2015).

The first thing we learn from Mr. Furman is the timeline of RTT. The Obama administration’s involvement in the Recovery Act began immediately following the election. This, in concert with the finding from Heather Higginbottom that RTT was not a policy on the campaign trail, puts the genesis of RTT sometime in early to mid-

November 2008. The second major finding is that the inclusion of RTT in the Recovery

Act was dependent on the President-elect’s third policy goal for the Recovery Act.

Education was selected as a vehicle for the Recovery Act because of its ability to quickly send money to states and localities through traditional funding formulas, like Title I and

IDEA. In fact, of the $53.6 billion dollars for education (known as the State Fiscal

Stabilization Fund), $48.6 billion was delivered through the traditional formula funding.

Education, as a topic area, met the Obama Economic Teams’ goals one and two. RTT was included in the Recovery Act because it met goal three. A billion dollar federally funded education reform competition wasn’t being developed as a policy solution independent of the Recovery Act. My interviews with Heather Higginbottom, and Robert

Gordon confirm that RTT wasn’t in development during the campaign. RTT ascended to the policy agenda because it fit the third criteria for the stimulus bill to build bridges, not just fix potholes.

This section reviewed when, and one of the reasons why, RTT arrived on the policy agenda. Given the limited constitutional authority of the federal government to enforce the assurance areas in the SFSF, RTT was an attempt to guide the larger set of funding and to make changes that reflected the Obama administrations reforms outlined in those assurance areas. President Obama’s personal experience and views on education

93 reform are also an important factor in the genesis of RTT. Those factors will be explored further in the next section.

President Obama

President Obama and his views on education reform were also key factors in the ascension of RTT on the decision-making agenda. Since I was not able to interview

President Obama to develop a narrative of the role President Obama played in the genesis of RTT, I relied on interviews with key members of the transition team who worked closely with the President and President Obama’s personal autobiography, Dreams of my

Father (Barack Obama, 1995). I also relied on Jonathan Alter’s The Promise: President

Obama, Year One (2010) and Steven Brill’s Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix

America’s Schools (2011). The last two books weave together interviews from over 200 people inside and outside of government to create a story of the President’s first year and the education reform movement, respectively. Additionally, interviews and research done by Maranto and McShane (2012), which also collected first-hand remarks from President

Obama reflecting his views on education reform, were used to develop a narrative of

President Obama’s views on education that led to the genesis of RTT.

Prior research has argued that President Obama’s education policy agenda was shaped by his own personal education experiences (Obama, 1995; Alter, 2010, Maranto and McShane, 2012; Brill, 2011). While attending an elite Catholic school in Indonesia,

Barack Obama was regarded as an average student. However, before school every morning, his mother would wake him up for correspondence courses on English and other US subjects. Maranto and McShane (2012) cite this experience as shaping the

94 future President’s views that parents have a personal obligation in the education of their children.

While living in Hawaii with his grandparents, President Obama won a scholarship to an elite private school. Maranto and McShane (2012) argue that future President’s education agenda was shaped by his experience living in Hawaii in two ways. First,

Hawaii has a large private school sector which predates the public school system. In addition, as a single-district state, Hawaiian public schools have historically been non- responsive to public demands, particularly from minorities. “Exposure to Hawaiian schooling may have made Obama relatively open to school choice and other measures likely to empower parents and communities rather than central bureaucrats” (Maranto and McShane, 2012, p. 60). In addition, the private school Barack Obama attended in

Hawaii does not consider certification when hiring teachers. Maranto and McShane

(2012) argue that this reflects the disdain the current President has for traditional teacher certification mechanisms and the EIC that advocates for them.

President Obama was also influenced by his experience as a community organizer. In Dreams from my Father (1995), President Obama expressed frustration with the inner city public school system and the teachers unions. Specifically, Barack Obama found that inner city schools were more concerned with employing a middle class than educating the underclass. The future President did not see that children were the first priority in this structure. His experience as a community organizer shaped two of the future President’s main education policy goals. The first was that education policy should revolve around what was best for kids and not what was best for interest groups. The

95 second goal, reflected from his experience as a community organizer, was that approaches that engaged with stakeholders were more likely to lead to change.

President Obama’s views on education were shaped by his own experiences in school and as a community organizer. They are reflected, albeit briefly, during his tenure as junior Senator from Illinois. The future President proposed two education bills while in office that reflect his education reform agenda. Senator Obama proposed Senate bill

2441, The Innovation Districts for School Improvement Act, on March 16, 2006, in the

109th Congress shortly after his first year in the Senate. The Innovation grants directed the Secretary of Education to award competitive grants to 10 urban and 10 non-urban local education agencies for the creation of innovation districts. The legislation read:

The Secretary shall establish a program to award grants, on a competitive basis, to

10 local educational agencies in urban areas and 10 local educational agencies in

non-urban areas (which shall include a mix of rural and suburban areas), to enable

such agencies to create innovation districts to implement systemic reforms in

areas of teaching, assessment, school leadership, and administration. (American

Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Title XIV, sec 14006)

The bill was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and

Pensions. A little less than a year later, on January 4, 2007, Senator Obama introduced the bill again to the 110th Congress (S.114). Again, the bill did not move beyond committee. However, the bill indicates Obama’s interest in spurring competition-based

96 funding. Although these particular bills had no success, in his first major piece of policy,

President Obama was able to incorporate competitive grants.8

One notable event, highlighted in Table 2.1 in Chapter 2, was when then-Senator

Obama spoke at the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) launch party in June of

2005. According to interviews in Brill (2011), not only did Obama enthusiastically espouse ideas that aligned with the DFER platform at this event, but he did so “standing on a chair” (p. 132). The same evening, when the cheering for Obama’s speech at the main event concluded, “Obama went down to the bar and did a reprise for the overflow group” (p. 132). Not only was President Obama the guest speaker at DFER’s launch event, but he enthusiastically cheered for education reforms.

In addition to legislation he introduced, President Barack Obama also indicated his alignment with the education reform movement during the campaign. The Obama campaign promoted sweeping domestic reforms including health care, elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education, climate change, and immigration

(Weatherford and McDonnell, 2011). On November 20, 2007, candidate Obama laid out his education plan (Moore, 2007). In an interview regarding the plan, Obama promoted policies that aligned with the DFER platform, such as merit pay for effective teachers and teaching in hard-to-staff schools. Obama noted the need to understand more fully what was going on in the classroom. He also highlighted a merit-pay program in Denver, where pay was based on meeting student achievement. Obama said, “Those are the kinds of experiments that are worth pursuing” (Moore, 2007). Jonathan Alter, in The Promise:

8 There is an existing body of research on how federal grants have moved states and local governments to adopt and implement an administration’s preferred policies. See Manna 2010.

President Obama, Year One (2010), writes that during the campaign, Obama indicated his support for teacher merit pay during a speech at the National Education Association.

This signaled his inclination to promote an education reform agenda.

Alter (2010) writes that Obama solidified his education policy reformist agenda when he first met with Arne Duncan during the transition. During that meeting, Obama stressed two education policy goals. The first goal was that education policy should revolve around what was best for kids and not what was best for interest groups. The second goal was that his administration should engage states and stakeholders to adopt reforms rather than mandate reforms. Alter writes that with these two principles:

Every divisive question in education was much clearer, higher teacher pay? That

was good for kids because it would attract better teachers to the profession.

Contracts that barred paying effective teachers more than those with seniority?

Bad for kids. Using federal dollars to incentivize states to lift the caps they placed

on the number of charter schools allowed? Good for kids. Pressuring states to tear

down the firewalls some had erected between student evaluation and teacher

evaluation? Good for kids. Obama’s second principal was to avoid putting a stick

in anyone’s eye. ‘Let’s engage, not attack,’ [Obama] said. (p. 90)

President-elect Obama’s two major education goals, not catering to interest groups and focusing on coercion rather than attack, are reflected in RTT. Specifically, the policies promoted in RTT reflect an education reform approach and the competition design (e.g., financially rewarding states who promoted an agenda the Obama administration supported) reflect the engage-not-attack approach.

Once in office, President Obama’s transition team began working on the

Recovery Act. During my interview with Jon Schnur, he noted that the President personally felt strongly that it was important to invest in education:

“[The President had] been saying… beyond the short term economic stimulus,

‘What are the fundamentals for the long term recovery? They are education,

energy, and healthcare.’ So it really was the President's interest in leadership

saying, ‘How do we not only stimulate the economy short term, but how do we

make sure we actually put in the fundamentals of actually over the next several

years [and] invest in things that matter, including education and better educational

outcomes.’ No one else had that vision initially, and he did. And so what we put

together was a $100 billion education section of this bill. I remember it was the

first time that it was heard by the Congressional folks. They were shocked that he

was thinking about this massive focus on education” (Jon Schnur, personal

communication, September 24, 2014).

Jon Schnur notes that it was President Obama himself who proposed education as the focus of the stimulus bill. Because the President believed education was critical to the recovering economy, and because it was a policy priority to ensure that the stimulus bill had a lasting impact, RTT ascended on the policy agenda.

My interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors also revealed that the choice of Arne Duncan as the Secretary of Education reflected President

Obama’s policy priorities with regard to education. In my interview with Emma Vadehra, she noted that Duncan was familiar with how grants could drive change and give cover:

“I feel like Arne brought a theory. Arnie believed hugely, as a former local leader,

that competitive grants were a tremendous way to both drive change and give

cover. That wasn't because he'd spent time making grants before. It's because he

was a local leader who'd gotten grants and felt like it was very helpful and he was

a compelling face for that.... He told that story in a very compelling way to the

Hill when talking about competitive grants. Often more successfully to

Republicans than Democrats, because prior to this administration, Republicans in

Congress had historically supported competitive grants and Democrats had

supported formula grants, and that was a real dynamic in Congress. Often that

was a more appealing story to Republicans. But it was a story that as a local

leader he told pretty compellingly to both, and I think that was a piece of all this,

too” (Emma Vadehra, personal communication, April 6, 2015).

My interview with Peter Cunningham also revealed how the choice of Arne Duncan as the Secretary of Education reflected the President’s education policy priorities:

“But we [Arne Duncan] came there, having a set of reforms back in Chicago, like

trying to turn around under-performing schools, using data to drive decision-

making, [and] providing choice to people. So now you we had to, we wanted to

figure out how to help advance those reforms in other states and districts around

the country” (Peter Cunningham, personal communication, March 12, 2015).

My interview with Peter Cunningham also echoed that the choice of Arne Duncan, as the

Secretary of Education, reflected the President’s education policy priorities. Heather

Higginbottom also noted that the choice of Arne Duncan reflect Obama’s priorities:

100

“I would say that educational policies like Race to the Top and Investing in

Innovation, the different programs, Promise Neighborhood, they are very much

aligned with the direction that he [Obama] believed domestic social policy,

including educational policy, should move in. He [Obama] invited people into his

transition team, into his administration. Secretary Duncan, I think, being the best

example of people who agreed with and adhered to those types of policies”

(Heather Higginbottom, personal communication, April 10, 2015).

The choice of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education was a reflection of President

Obama’s policy priorities.

The assurance areas in the SGS and the mechanism behind RTT also reflect

President Obama’s views on education reform. While the description of what would later become RTT and how the competition would operate in the stimulus bill was vague, it did specify that the criteria for awarding the state incentive grants would echo the assurance in the larger State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF). These four assurance areas included: (1) adopting standards and assessments that align with college and career readiness; (2) building data systems that measure student growth; (3) teacher development, recruitment, and rewarding; and (4) school turnaround (U.S. Department of

Education, Meredith, 2013; Weiss, 2013).

From my interview with Cheryl Smith, I learned that there was a fair bit of discussion over what the four assurances would be. Ultimately, the four assurances continued the requirements that were already started in IASA and NCLB:

“We did have a great deal of discussion and negotiation over those provisions that

were in the Education Jobs Fund and the key aspects of Race to the Top, in terms

101

of requirements that would states would have to address. The reason being is that

these provisions really laid the foundation for what the states would have to do to

receive the Education Jobs Fund money and then later, to compete for Race to the

Top.

The involvement of both Representative Miller's staff and Senator

Kennedy's staff was around the issues of these four criteria that I mentioned

(standards and assessments, teacher equity, supporting struggling schools and

implementing longitudinal data systems)─what education reforms would be

imposed on the states. That's where they were involved. There was disagreement

about how many strings we should attach, with Members of staff on the education

committees wanting more strings. Congressman Obey was in the camp of fewer

strings. His posture was that the country was in a recession and states should have

a general revenue sharing type of program with fewer strings. We had a lot of

discussion about what education reforms the states should be required to do.

In the end we landed on these four things, in part because they were

essentially requirements that were made of the states in the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act, even preceding No Child Left Behind. To some extent,

they were requirements that states had already been told to accomplish” (Cheryl

Smith, personal communication, December 12, 2014).

Cheryl Smith notes that the assurances in the SFSF and RTT were chosen in part because they were requirements included in ESEA, even preceding NCLB. The assurances in the

SFSF and RTT were already education requirements that states had been told to do, but were unenforceable (see Chapter 2). The Obama administration’s decision to push these

102 assurances forward is an example of incremental policy making as well as President

Obama’s views on education policy.

In Chapter 2, I presented evidence that President Obama had two main education policy goals. The first was that education policy should revolve around what was best for kids and not what was best for interest groups. The second goals was that his administration should engage with states and stakeholders to adopt reforms rather than mandate reforms. The second of these two principals, that his administration should focus on coercion rather than attacks, are reflected in the state incentive grants program that later became RTT. Since RTT was a competition that states could elect to (or not to) participate it in, it is a perfect mechanism for engagement. My interviews reflected that the design of RTT was a specific choice to engage with states rather than mandate reforms

Emma Vadehra noted that the blueprint of RTT was to give political capital states to take on education reforms that they many of them already wanted to take on:

“Certainly priorities for the new President [were to] try to figure out the best way

to [move] forward…in partnership with states and, in the process, give a bunch of

political capital to states to do things that a set of them wanted to take on. I know

that was a large part of the theory. In terms of the blueprint, the idea of really

significant grants focused on the four assurance areas to give cover to, and

support, some dramatic change in the areas. Then obviously executing that added

a lot more detail” (Emma Vadehra, personal communication, April 6, 2015).

The idea that RTT should be a carrot and not a stick was a central component of the discussion when RTT was flushed into an actual policy as well.

103

The President’s policy priorities, to engage rather than attack and to select Arne

Duncan as the Secretary of Education, were key factors in the ascension of RTT on the policy making agenda. Further, my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors revealed that there was not as much debate around the assurance (i.e., the priorities) that would be included in RTT. Roberto Rodriguez noted that there was quick consensus on the assurances:

“The members had heard a lot from their states and from the broader education

community about the law and were very eager to do more to strengthen and shore

up K-12 public education. I think we found pretty quick consensus on elements

that we would attach to the stabilization fund and to the competitive portion,

which is one pot that later became the investing and innovation fund and the Race

to the Top. There was quick consensus around the importance of standards and

having some assurance around academic standards, around the importance of

teachers, [and] around turning around low-performing schools. We had a number

of conversations back and forth with the administration” (Roberto Rodriguez,

December 15, 2014).

The easy consensus on the reforms included in RTT are evidence that the policies promoted in RTT are an example of incremental policy making. The assurances, the importance of standards and teachers, and turning around low-performing schools were not radical policy ideas to insert on the agenda. What was a major policy change was the vehicle used to influence state adoption of reforms as well as the method (coercion rather than attack) that would be used to encourage adoption. The President’s policy approach

104 as well Obama’s personal decision to focus on education, were key factors in the genesis and ascension RTT on the policy agenda.

President Obama, and his views on education reform, were a key factor in the ascension of RTT on the decision-making agenda. Through interviews with key members of the transition team, President Obama’s autobiography, and other secondary source material, I find that the newly elected President was a key factor in the genesis of RTT.

Relative Amount

The total amount of money in the Recovery Act and, specifically, the total amount of money in the Recovery Act for education, diverted focus from what later became known as RTT, because the funding allocated for RTT was minor relative to the overall amount for education in the SFSF. In this regard, RRT’s ascension to the policy agenda appeared to be, or could have been, a footnote on a much larger policy. However, the

$4.3 billion dollars for RTT was historic when compared to historic federal funding for education related activities besides Title I and IDEA. The amount of money appropriated to RTT relative to the amount of money appropriated to the overall Recovery Act is the reason why RTT did not receive a tremendous amount of attention at the time the

Recovery Act was being debated on the hill.

Below are some findings from my interview with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors that support my finding that the relative amount of money set aside for RTT, when compared to the total amount in the stimulus bill for education related activities, was a major factor in the ascension of RTT on the Obama agenda:

105

“We didn't view it as huge. We viewed it as a modest set aside relative to the entire size of the stabilization fund, which was upwards of $30 billion” (Roberto

Rodriguez, personal communication, December 15, 2014).

“Now, I would just also like to say that the Race to the Top was really a small part of a much larger negotiation. The Recovery Act provided almost, rounding, fifty- four billion dollars for the, basically shorthand, the Education Jobs Fund. Race to the Top is really a very, I don't want to say it was a very small piece, but there were much more contentious issues that had to get resolved compared to the discussions we had on Race to the Top” (Chery Smith, personal communication,

December 12, 2014).

“The amount of money involved in the stimulus bill overall was so large that suddenly $4.3 billion dollars didn't seem that big, whereas in any annual appropriations process, $4.3 billion dollars is bigger than every K-12 education program except IDEA and Title I. The idea of ever getting $4 billion dollars through the normal appropriations process would be nearly impossible, but in the stimulus bill, where there was so much money, and even within education there was a whole $100 billion. Normal conversations about what's a reasonable amount or not to spend were just changed” (Emma Vadehra, personal communication, April 6, 2015).

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“It was also such a chaotic time with the economy at the brink and such a huge piece of legislation. The stimulus was a massive bill. [RTT] was a pretty small chunk of it” (Heather Higginbottom, personal communication, April 10, 2015).

“Most of the education money was actually just a straight out cash grant so that it would move to the states quickly, help provide them relief right away, [and] help prevent them from laying off teachers. $5 billion of the education total was set aside for Race to the Top” (Jason Furman, personal communication, March 13,

2015).

“Relatively speaking, this seemed like a relatively small amount of money. $5 billion out of $100 billion. Most of the money was just formula. That's fine. That's the way it should be. I think the only reason why it happened is because the rest of the money was so big that it seemed in comparison, [this part was] relatively small” (Peter Cunningham, personal communication, March 12, 2015).

“It was a huge amount of money, $4 billion, but it’s also important to put this in the context of ARRA and the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. There was $100 billion that was going to every state on a pro rata basis to help stem the tide of job losses in education that were happening around the country” (Joanne Weiss, personal communication, September 5, 2014).

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“You write a handful of paragraphs into this big stimulus bill. There was a

hundred billion going out the door for education. This was less than five percent

of the total K-12 education spend. This was a footnote” (Rick Hess, personal

communication, October 29, 2014).

Because the overall funding for education was so large, the inclusion of the set aside for RTT did not attract a lot of attention at the time. As Cheryl Smith notes in personal communication on December 12, 2014, RTT was “really a small part of a much larger negotiation.” In addition to being a small amount of money relative to the overall

Recovery Act, the amount of time for negotiations also dictated how much attention could be paid to RTT. Time, as a factor, will be discussed in the next section.

Time

The short period of time between Obama’s nomination in November and the passage of Recovery Act in February meant there was not a long opportunity to dissect each section of the Act, including RTT. When there is little time, there is inherently less focus on any single part of a larger piece of legislation. Time, specifically the lack of time, was a factor in RTT’s ascension on the policy agenda. Below are some key quotes

(data) that support the finding that time is an important factor in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda.

The Recovery Act was introduced to Congress on January 26, 2009, and signed by President Obama on February 17, 2009. It took 32 days from the time the bill was introduced from when it was signed into law. In comparison, No Child Left Behind

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(NCLB) was introduced March 22, 2001, and was not signed into law until January 8,

2002; a total of 292 days. It took even longer for Bill Clinton’s Improving America’s

Schools Act of 1994; a total of 653 days. Figure 4.2 illustrates how remarkably short the timeline was for the Recovery Act compared to the last two major reauthorizations of

ESEA.

Figure 4.2. Number of Days to Pass Legislation

Days

700 653

600

500

400 292 300

200

100 32 0 Improving America's Schools No Child Left Behind (2002) Recovery Act (2009) Act (1994)

Days

The recession and the economic crisis, discussed earlier in this chapter, impacted the amount of time spent discussing the Recovery Act. There was a general sense on Capitol

Hill and among the American people that the crisis needed to be addressed quickly. This was emphasized during my interviews:

“It turned out to be a pretty complex negotiation to get this done in a short amount

of time” (Cheryl Smith, personal communication, December 12, 2014).

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“In the end, this was a major economic bill that was needed quickly in order to

help avert an economic collapse. There were lots of intentional conversations but

it was certainly a shorter period of time” (Jon Schnur, personal communication,

September 24, 2014).

“Once the bill was passed, once we were sworn in and the administration began, it

was only a couple of weeks before the bill was passed” (Peter Cunningham,

personal communication, March 12, 2015).

In addition to the economic crisis, which put pressure on the President and members of

Congress to act where the bill was introduced (i.e., venue) also played a significant role in the genesis of RTT. Venue, and its role in the genesis of RTT, will be discussed in the next section.

Venue

A major factor in the ascension of RTT onto the policy agenda was that the policy was drafted in the Appropriations Committee, not in an Authorizing committee. The

Appropriations Committee as a venue for education policy was extremely unusual. The traditional venues for major federal education policy are the Senate HELP committee and

House Education and Workforce Committee.

Below are some key quotes (data) that support my finding that “were” factors in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda:

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“Obey, the appropriators, and Congress are used to writing appropriation laws

that specify how much money is spent and they give some direction on it. But

usually they provide the money to carry out legislative programs enacted by the

authorizing committees, because Congress, as you know, is divided between

Authorizing Committees and Appropriating Committees. Usually, Obey would sit

there and decide, ‘How much money am I going to give to Title I, as written by

the Education Committee? How much money am I going to give to Pell Grants, as

written by the Education Committee?’ Sometimes, the Appropriations

Committees fiddle a little bit with the rules, but they usually follow the legislation

as enacted by the Authorizing Committees. Well, in this instance, there was no

legislation; they wanted to move so fast, because they thought we really were

teetering on the edge of a depression that the Appropriations Committee wrote

everything” (Jack Jennings, personal communication, October 28, 2014).

“The idea of ever getting $4 billion dollars through the normal Appropriations

process would be nearly impossible. But, in the Stimulus bill where there was so

much money and, even within education, there was a whole $100 billion dollars.

Normal conversations about what's a reasonable amount or not to spend were just

very, very different” (Emma Vadehra, April 6, 2015).

As Jack Jennings highlights, the Appropriations Committee is not normally tasked with writing legislation, but with appropriating money as to the Authorizing Committee.

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However, the Recovery Act was not drafted in an authorizing committee. In the previous section where I discussed time as a factor in the genesis of RTT, I noted the total number of days the legislative process took for the Recovery Act. One of the reasons the time period was so short was because the Recovery Act was not drafted in Committee.

There are six general steps in how a Bill becomes a law as shown in Figure 4.3.

The Recovery Act, however, bypassed steps 2 through 4, which typically cause legislation to stall or even die. In addition to not being referred to Committee, one of the remarkable aspects of the legislative process of the Recovery Act was the fact that the number of amendments scheduled for floor votes was limited in the House and that the

Senate voted to end debate on the bill and advance it to the Senate floor for vote. Both of these actions impacted the time that was spent on the bill.

RTT was part of the larger Recovery Act and, because the Recovery Act was on a fast track, RTT was also fast-tracked. The amount of time allocated for the legislative process was a significant factor in the genesis of RTT. The verbiage of RTT was short and vague, in part because of the amount of time allocated for the Recovery Act as well as the fact that the Recovery Act was drafted outside of a Committee. The language of

RTT, specifically, that the language was vague, was a factor in the genesis of RTT. The language of RTT will be discussed in the next section.

Vague

Another factor in the genesis of RTT is that the actual wording of RTT, as it was in the Recovery Act, was intentionally vague and purposefully used non-alarming language. Over the course of my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors, it

112 was clear that, although RTT was not named ‘RTT’ in the Recovery Act, the idea of a large scale competition to drive change was the clear intention of the discretionary

Secretary of Education funding. While the details of the competition were not drafted until after the Recovery Act, the purpose of the idea to use a large competition to drive major educational reform were clear. Although the program was not formally announced by the Obama Administration until July 24, 2009, Secretary Duncan was already talking about RTT to the press (i.e., before it was even passed in the Senate) (see page 6).

Although several policy actors noted that the detailed work on RTT did not begin until

Joanne Weiss was hired in May 2009, the notion that RTT would be a vessel to drive major education reform in states through a large scale competition was known by all the highly knowledgeable policy actors interviewed for this study.

Although the highly knowledgeable policy actors knew RTT would be a large scale competition designed to impact the spending of the larger pot of funds in the State

Fiscal Stabilization Fund, the language of RTT (which wasn’t even named RTT in the

Recovery Act) was intentionally left vague so that it not draw any additional attention at that time. Vagueness is, therefore, a factor in the ascension of RTT onto the policy agenda.

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Figure 4.3. Typical Legislative Process vs. Process for Recovery Act

Legislative Process Recovery Act vs. Typical Legislation

Recovery Act Typical Legislation

Introduction by Congress Referred to Committees Committee Changes Congressional Debate Congressional Vote Conference Committee

Many of the interviewees I spoke with note that keeping the language vague was an intentional decision:

“We tried to not draw attention to it, yes, by using very, very limited language.

Where there was a relevant portion of NCLB or elsewhere to draw from, like

‘academically challenging’ and standards and talking about equity in the same

way we did that. But the biggest thing done to it to make it fly under the radar was

just very limited language” (Highly knowledgeable policy actor, personal

communication).

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“I would say that there's a very clear intention to, from the transition team [to the]

Administration and [to the] Congress, to have the language authorizing funding to be taken from, taken exactly or adapted closely from existing from Congressional authorizing language, and not to add too much detail beyond that. I think that was really a driving principal in the negotiations of that language. What I would say is that when you look at other provisions in federal law, there is lots of precedent and lots of continued examples of places where the legislative language get passed but there’s lots of room for regulatory or guidance process to lay that out in level of detail that doesn't make sense for Congress, that's true across programs.

I think that the idea was taking language which had been authorized and it was an expectation to leave room for the regulations or the non-regulatory guidance from the Administration” (Jon Schnur, personal communication, September 24, 2014).

“That was very important at the time that many of these provisions that were being put in that Congress previously had enacted. There was language was language from previous bills that was adapted to this context, but much of the key languages was completely or virtually the same. That was very important. I'd say that keeping the language that broad allowed for a post enactment process with a chance for feedback, and lots of stakeholder involvement before the final package was put out. That's partly what the brevity of the language in the act partly allowed for -- a post-enactment process that got tremendous stakeholder engagement and feedback” (Jon Schnur, personal communication, September 24,

2014).

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“There's a handful of vague paragraphs with boiler plate, cut and paste language”

(Rick Hess, personal communication, October 29, 2014).

“Beyond that, it was … the Secretary just had tons of discretion so it was very

broad. It did come to just a lot of flexibility and leeway in terms of defining

beyond that, what he wanted to do with the competition” (Joanne Weiss, personal

communication, September 5, 2014).

“So by the time the bill came out, we kind of knew this was happening. And

remember, when you go back and you look at the statute. I think, ‘That's not a lot

of words there’” (Mike Petrilli, personal communication, November 21, 2014).

Several highly knowledgeable policy actors commented on how it was an intentional choice to use vague language. A highly knowledgeable policy actor notes that limited language was chosen to draw less attention to the bill, while Mr. Schnur notes that there was an intentional choice to repeat existing language due to time constraints.

Being broad allowed for details to be constructed and added during the development of the actual competition. Both interviews reveal a conscious choice to use vague and limited language.

Marshall (Mike) S. Smith, a key member of Secretary Arne Duncan’s team during the first year of the administration, notes that the language in the bill was not only generic, but its lack of specificity meant that legislators were not likely to suspect that the

116 discretionary funding would be used the way it was eventually used in RTT. While the highly knowledgeable policy actors knew that the $4.35 in discretionary spending could be used for a large scale competition to drive lasting change and build bridges not potholes, the language in the Bill did not use the words ‘Race to the Top’ or give any details about the competition:

“The language is very generic. You could put the money out to pretty

much anyone you wanted to but by my guess is … It’s not just a guess, I know

people who worked on the Hill who were very surprised when the money went

into a competition and then shocked when only two states were given money in

the first round. Oh gosh, if they were going to give away $4.35 billion and they

had any idea it was only going to go out to two states and then 12 states in total,

that their state had only a 20 percent chance of winning in the long run, I think

they would have said, ‘No, no, no.’ Congress could have required something like

90 percent of the money goes out under the formula and the rest of the money can

be used at Arne’s discretion. I don’t think there is any question. They wouldn’t

have appropriated the money if their state had a good chance of not getting any.

Yeah, it’s very general and it was initially pretty non-controversial. Where

in this language would the unions get upset? It doesn’t say anything about firing

teachers. It doesn’t even say anything about holding them accountable. It must say

somewhere about improving the quality of schools but schools aren’t doing well,

but that’s a pretty generic statement, and there was already lot money coming in

for school improvement. The state data systems were all started after being in a

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previous program. School improvement and data systems were not super

controversial things at all.

When you start moving up into the billion dollar range, it’s unlikely in

people’s minds that they would think of that any anything but basically a set of

grants that would be going to almost all of the states. A big difference between

Race to the Top and the other grant programs is that most of the other grant

programs are fairly small. If you look at the Trio programs, they are large state

programs and I don’t know any grant competitions that are over a billion dollars. I

think the idea they had when they gave them the discretionary money was that the

Secretary would develop some sort of program that would go out to all the states.

That was the big difference between what ended up being Race to the Top. The

other grant programs, which were smaller, and the bigger programs like Title I,

which were in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, went to all the states.

Duncan’s team really had a different approach. My guess is that very few

people imagined what they would do when they actually passed the bill. I think

they thought that this money would go out on a formula” (Mike S. Smith,

personal communication, August 6, 2014).

Given the language in the Recovery Act addressing the Secretary of Education’s discretionary spending, and the amount of money for the discretionary spending, Mike S.

Smith hypothesizes that very few people outside of the highly knowledgeable policy actors circle would have suspected that the money would not only not go out by formula, but would only go to a handful of states.

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To have so much money for non-formula spending was not only atypical, but beyond reality only a month or two prior to the drafting of the Recovery Act. Earlier in this chapter, I quoted Ms. Higginbottom as saying that even the idea of this much money for discretionary spending was beyond the reality of the Campaign Team. Because it was beyond the realm of possibility to have so much money for education at all, let alone for non-formula funding, and because the Recovery Act moved so quickly through Congress,

Mike S. Smith ruminates that most people on the Hill likely presumed the discretionary set aside for the Secretary (for what later became RTT) would be distributed by formula programs. This is because the amount of money set aside for RTT was large relative to any other historic discretionary spending stream.

When I asked Mike S. Smith if Jon Schnur and Arnie Duncan were already thinking about something like RTT even though the language in the Recovery Act does not mention RTT, Mr. Smith said, “They thought it was going to be a competition all the way” (personal communication, August 6, 2014). When I asked a follow up question regarding whether or not it was the intention that there would be only a few big winners and many more losers, Mr. Smith said:

“There are competitions and then there are other competitions, right? Arnie and

Jon may have had a competition that focuses on only a few states in mind, but I

don’t think other people had it in mind. They didn’t expect a competition to end

up sending money to only a small fraction of the states. Well, there are lots of

competitions out there, and one of the things they are designed to do is fund many

universities or school systems and try to make sure that some organization from

each state gets a taste of the money. That’s how the competitions typically work.

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If you can get it to every state or 90% of the states, you can get it to some states

that are going to come to see the congressman and the senator and say, ‘We’ve

got this great brand and we’ve got to make sure they keep giving us the money.’

The idea of a very, very large grant going to just a very few states I don’t think

was in other people’s head. It was in Jon’s head, but it wasn’t in other people’s

head until later in the game” (Mike S. Smith, personal communication, August 6,

2014).

Essentially, only a very limited, extremely small number of highly knowledgeable policy actors knew that the language in the Recovery Act would turn into RTT. The language in the Recovery Act did not mention a ‘Race to the Top’ or that the competition in mind for the money in the Recovery Act would be unlike any other Department competition. The vagueness and limited language of the Recovery Act meant that the funds did not draw the attention that it likely would have if RTT was spelled out in more detail.

In fact, if we consider the counterfactual, that Race to the Top was not vague in the Recovery Act but a very specific policy and clearly identify that only a few states would win billions of dollars, it is unclear how other factors that typically play on policy ascension would have affected RTT. Would interest groups been more involved? Would more Congressmen have opposed the amount set aside for RTT? Would there have been language that specified that some states would all be winners? It is impossible to know how the language might have been different if more people were aware of how the money would be used. I think it is fair to assume that there would have been more limitations on how the money could be spent.

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This section reviewed the role that vague language played in the genesis of RTT.

Not only was the language outlining RTT vague, but there was a limited number of people who had full knowledge of the intention for these funds. This section’s quote from my interview with Mike S. Smith touched on this point when he notes that people were quite surprised when only two states were given money in the first round. The next section will discuss how a limited number of highly knowledgeable policy actors also played a role in the genesis of RTT.

Limited number of highly knowledgeable policy actors

Another support factor that interplays with time and vague is that there were a limited number of policy actors who had knowledge of how the money set aside for discretionary spending in the Recovery Act would be transformed into RTT. In fact, most of the details of RTT in terms of how it would be run, how states would be scored, etc., commenced after Joanne Weiss joined the Department of Education in May 2009, well after the Recovery Act had been passed.

However, it was clear to a small group of policy actors that the money set aside in the Recovery Act for RTT would be competition-based, and its purpose was to ensure that the other $100 billion dollars in education funding would be spent in a way that had lasting impact (e.g., build bridges not fix potholes). Even though the details and specifics of the competition were not worked out until long after Recovery Act was passed, it was known by a small group of highly knowledgeable policy actors that the $4.35 billion dollars would be used to drive education reform through a competition-based lever.

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Cheryl Smith noted, “There was quite a bit of tension over, in effect, handing over the very, very large sum of money to the Administration for a program that wasn't flushed out and was little more than an idea in a few people's heads” (personal communication, December 12, 2014). Ms. Smith notes that very few people knew what the discretionary spending for the Secretary of Education in the Recovery Act would be used for. It is clear from my other interviews that a small, intimate group of highly knowledgeable policy actors knew that the set aside discretionary spending would be used to drive change for the larger pot education funds towards Obama policy priorities.

Interestingly, this is exactly what then Representative David Obey, who was

Chair of the Appropriations committee, did not want to see happen with the discretionary spending in the Recovery Act. Cheryl Smith notes that, while Congressman George

Miller and Senator Edward Kennedy’s staff were involved in the discussion on the four criteria (assurances),that would be emphasized in the education sections of the Recovery

Act. In addition, while there were discussions on that topic, the heated debates were really around what strings would be attached to the funding:

“The involvement of both Representative Miller's staff and Senator Kennedy's

staff was around the issues of these four criteria that I mentioned (standards and

assessments, teacher equity, supporting struggling schools and implementing

longitudinal data systems) ─what education reforms would be imposed on the

states. That's where they were involved. There was disagreement about how many

strings we should attach, with Members of staff on the education committees

wanting more strings. Congressman Obey was in the camp of fewer strings. His

posture was that the country was in a recession and states should have a general

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revenue sharing type of program with fewer strings. We had a lot of discussion

about what education reforms the states should be required to do. In the end we

landed on these four things in part because they were essentially requirements that

were made of the states in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, even

preceding No Child Left Behind. To some extent, they were requirements that

states had already been told to accomplish” (Cheryl Smith, personal

communication, December 12, 2014).

As Cheryl Smith notes, Congressman David Obey, for whom Cheryl Smith worked, did not want to see strings attached to the funding. Congressman Obey’s position was that the country was on the precipice of economic collapse and that money should be sent with fewer strings. In fact, that is how the larger section of the Recovery Act on education landed on the requirements that were already part of NCLB.

Due to Congressman Obey’s power and role as the chairman of the House of

Appropriations Committee, he had a significant influence over the amount of funds appropriated for the discretionary spending that would later become RTT. In fact, the initial request for discretionary spending was closer to $15 billion dollars, roughly three times the amount that actually ended up being included in the Recovery Act. One reason that the amount requested by the Obama Administration for discretionary spending was cut by two-thirds was because Congressman Obey wanted fewer strings attached to the money. However, another contributing factor was that the overall amount of money in the

Recovery Act was less than the initial request. Jon Schnur told me that the reason the

RTT funds were cut from the proposed $15 billion to $4.35 was because of pressure from the Republicans to cut back on the overall spending in the Recovery Act:

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“Then the Republicans wanted the much smaller one so the overall total funding

level was a compromise and therefore there was pressure on everything in it

because the President proposed something that encompassed a lot more funding”

(Jon Schnur, personal communication, September 24, 2014).

However, it is possible that, because Congressman Obey was opposed to fewer strings attached to the stimulus funds and had knowledge that the funding would be used for a competition, he was inclined to make it a smaller program. Regardless, because only a limited number of people had knowledge about how those discretionary spending funds would be spent, it did not attract the attention it would have under more typical policy ascension processes.

This section discussed how vague language was a factor in the genesis of RTT.

Vague language was an intentional choice, which was successful because of time limitations associated with the urgency of the Recovery Act, and because the relative amount for RTT was small compared to the overall funding in the legislation. The next section will discuss how the policy actors, such as David Obey, who were generally opposed to non-formula funding, were swayed by the election of new policy actors and a new administration.

New Administration

In the above paragraphs, I’ve suggested that President Obama’s education policy priorities, that education policy (1) do what’s best for children and (2) work through coercion rather than attack, were factors in the ascension of RTT on the agenda. Another important factor was a new presidential administration. New political actors and elections

124 are intertwined, but in this section, I suggest that a new administration was an independent factor from Obama’s policy priorities.

Why is this factor, a change administration, different from the prior factor,

Obama’s policy priorities? It is different because, while Obama had an education policy agenda, the structural change of a new administration enabled Obama to pursue this agenda and gave rise to RTT. RTT did not exist as a policy prior to Obama or a new administration. Certainly these factors are very much related, but they are also separate.

Perhaps their separateness is best viewed by considering the counterfactual. What if the recession had occurred during Obama’s second term or even his second 100 days? Given that this was a new administration, and that it was the administrations first 100 days, was a very important factor in the ascension of RTT on the Obama agenda. This fictional scenario helps illuminate what role a new administration, and not just what Obama’s policy agenda led to the genesis of RTT.

My interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors led to the finding that a new administration was an independent and related factor in the ascension of RTT on the Obama agenda. In my interview with Cheryl Smith, who was

Representative David Obey’s staff director on the Appropriations Committee and charged with leading negotiations regarding the education component of the ARRA, she noted that a new administration was given certain liberties:

“Then, of course, there was an incoming administration. New administrations

want their own initiatives and they want money to implement them. The fact that

the Congress would give the new Obama administration fifteen billion dollars,

unfettered, for this amorphous Race to the Top program was a pretty big deal. The

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Members, the negotiators, wanted to be helpful. We had a new, incoming

Democratic President. So everyone was very excited to have a new Democratic

President, a new African─American President, and wanted this Presidency to be

successful. I do think that the Obama administration was very smart. The

transition team realized that it had a window in which to get as much money as it

could from Congress, with as much flexibility as possible. And the team took full

advantage of the situation” (Cheryl Smith, personal communication, December

12, 2014).

Cheryl Smith’s comments illustrate how Congress was initially willing to give some liberties to a new administration to pursue their policy agendas. It is because the administration was new. It was the newness that allowed RTT to rise on the agenda.

Despite the economic crisis which was crushing the national mood, there was also a sense of excitement among Democrats on Capitol Hill with a new incoming President. There were two polar opposite moods on the hill: economic despair and possible hope. The hope arose from the arrival of a new President, a new administration, and the first

African─American president, as Cheryl Smith notes. This newness was a key factor in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda, because the administration was given liberties to develop a policy proposal like RTT.

Many of my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors echoed the sentiment that many in Congress were excited by a new administration. Jason

Furman noted how incredibly popular the President and his new administration was on

Capitol Hill:

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“The President was enormously popular. Everyone in Congress understood and

was very clear with us that, if this is the President's, plan it will pass. If it's not the

President's plan, it won't. We have to make it very clear that what they're working

on is the President's plan. Having worked on a lot of legislation before then and

since then that's usually not the case. Because he was newly elected, because he

was elected in these circumstances, there was more weight on it being the

President's plan than you'd normally have in this type of circumstance” (Jason

Furman, personal communication, March 13, 2015).

Building on the same theme, Jon Schnur noted the deference given to the new administration. He noted, “There's more deference to a President who has just gotten elected” (personal communication, September 24, 2014). The excitement about a new administration was echoed throughout my interviews with policy actors as well.

This section discussed the role a new administration played in the genesis of RTT.

Following the historic election and the enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for the new

Democratic President, there was a willingness on the Hill to give the new administration some liberty to enact their policy reforms. The genesis of RTT was predicated in part on the enthusiasm for the new administration. The next section will present a summary of my main findings and examine how this study’s findings on the genesis of RTT compare with established theories of agenda setting.

The Narrative of RTT and Theories of Agenda Setting

In this chapter, I presented findings from my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors to develop a narrative about the factors

127 that led to the genesis of RTT. Figure 4.1 (at the start of this chapter) illustrates this narrative. The recession is located at the top of the figure and, below the plus sign, are additional factors including: the Recovery Act and RTT; President Obama; relative amount of money; time; venue; vague language; and a new administration. All of these factors swirl together, leading to the genesis of RTT.

In many ways, the narrative of the genesis of RTT is consistent with theories that seek to explain policy change. However, in other respects, the genesis of RTT was unique. In this section I will explore how the narrative of the genesis of RTT compares to two theories of agenda setting; Baumgartner and Jones’ punctuated equilibrium (PE) and

Kingdon’s multiple streams’ theory (MS). These two theories served as the frameworks for the development of my case study. The use of both theories, as noted in Chapter 2, is beneficial because each of the aforementioned theories emphasizes different aspects of the agenda setting process. This section also considers how these theories were useful in generating a narrative of the genesis of RTT.

In the section on understanding policy change in Chapter 2, I presented PE and

MS and frameworks for the development of the case study, to understand how RTT arrived on the Obama administration agenda, and how the idea for RTT eventually took form in ARRA. Based on these two theories, I developed models of each theory (Figures

4.4 and 4.6). To juxtapose the difference between existing theories of policy change and the process that played out in this case, Figures 4.5 and 4.7 illustrate an application of PE and MS to the genesis of RTT. The comparison of these Figures (4.5 and 4.7) and the process that played out in the genesis of RTT in this case (Figure 4.1), visually illustrates how neither the PE nor MS theory exactly fit the case study at hand. Visually, Figure 4.1,

128 which represents my analysis of the genesis of RTT, most closely resembles the MS

Figures 4.5 and 4.7. In order to analyze the differences and similarities between PE and

MS theory and my findings, each factor identified in Figure 4.1 and how these correspond with MS and PE theory, is elaborated on in this section.

Figure 4.4. Illustration of Multiple Streams (MS) Theory

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Figure 4.5. Illustration of Factors in the Genesis of RTT using MS theory

Figure 4.6. Illustration of Punctuation Equilibrium (PE) Theory

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Figure 4.7. Illustration of Factors in the Genesis of RTT using PE Theory

Because the recession is the factor that is at the top of my model, I begin there. In some ways, the identification of the recession as a key factor in the genesis of RTT is consistent with agenda setting theory; in other ways, it is not. Would Kingdon identify the recession as a policy window? Kingdon (2003) argues that policy windows are “an opportunity for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions, or to push attention to their special problems” (p. 165). In some scenarios:

“Advocates lie in wait in and around government with their solutions at hand,

waiting for problems to float by to which they can tach their solutions, [and]

waiting for a development in the political stream they can use to their advantage.

Sometimes the window opens quite predictably. At other times, it happens quite

unpredictably. Policy entrepreneurs must be prepared, their pet proposal at the

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ready, their special problem well-documented, lest the opportunity pass them by”

(p. 165).

Retrospectively, it seems relatively easy to identify the recession as a policy window.

However, using Kingdon’s theory of policy windows would also imply that policy actors were at the ready with a competition-based education reform program. On this point, whether or not policy entrepreneurs were in the wings with a policy solution at the opening of a policy window will be evaluated during the examination of other factors that influenced the ascension of RTT on the Obama agenda.

A focusing event, according to Kingdon (2003), is an event like a crisis or disaster that comes along to call attention to a problem. Certainly, the recession was a focusing event for the economy, but it was not a focusing event for education policy. In my model of RTT based on MS (Figure 4.5), the implementation of NCLB would be the focusing event because it would call attention to the problem of allowing states to set disparate

(and in some cases, subpar) standards to meet NCLB mandates (as discussed in Chapter

2). Using the Kingdon model, it is not clear if the recession is a policy window, the focusing event, neither of the two, or a combination of the two. The recession played the role of the catalyst in setting the other factors in motion.

In describing the policy making process, Kingdon describes how the political stream converges with the policy and problem streams to bring a policy to forefront. The political stream is comprised of the public mood, election results, and changes in the administration (Figure 4.5). Certainly, the national mood was strongly affected by the recession. With regard to education, the national mood was focused on teacher layoffs and diminished state budgets to support schools. These are all school inputs (e.g.,

132 funding). The national mood was not focused on school outputs, (e.g., achievement).

While there was fear about teachers’ jobs and layoffs, the specific national fear was not related to the nations underperforming schools. While states and localities had lost billions of dollars in property tax receipts resulting in cutbacks, especially in areas like education and Medicaid, the SFSF was targeted to address this policy problem, not RTT.

The recession caused chaos in both the financial and political worlds, and it was a somewhat random (and chaotic) event on the agenda setting process in 2008. Kingdon’s

MS theory posits that chaos can sometimes be the cause of random policy changes. The theory of thinking about policy change and policy ascension in the framework of chaos is quite applicable to the analysis of the factors that led to the ascension of RTT on the policy making agenda.

Kingdon (2003) acknowledges that some scholars have criticized his inclusion of randomness in the MS theory because it prevents any use of the theory for prediction purposes. Kingdon writes:

The fluidity has led some…to conclude that the [policy making] processes are

essentially random, that separate streams that run through the system are joined

fortuitously, and that the results come together by sheer dumb luck…There is

actually quite a bit of structure in the process. [While] the model…is structured,

there is also room for residual randomness, as it is true of the real world. But is

not true that the model developed. (p. 222)

Kingdon (2003) acknowledges that random acts, like the recession, play a role in the agenda setting process. In this regard, Kingdon’s theory of randomness and policy windows is useful in understanding the role the recession played in the ascension of RTT

133 on the agenda setting process. This contrasts with Baumgartner and Jones’ model of policy movement between equilibriums. In retrospect, it is obvious that the recession was a window of opportunity and a major factor in the ascension of RTT on the Obama agenda. It was, perhaps, not so evident that the recession was a policy window for education policy makers.

In the Baumgartner and Jones’ model (Figure 4.7), the recession can be viewed as an event that helped overcome inertia. Generally speaking, however, the Baumgartner and Jones’ model is more difficult to use to understand the role the recession played in landing RTT on the decision-making agenda. Thus, the recession is not shown on Figure

4.7.

While it may seem obvious that the recession was a focusing event or policy window, and that the state of the economy was a policy problem, RTT was not a direct policy solution to that problem. What is novel is why and how education, specifically

RTT, ended up on the policy agenda due to the recession, because it was not a solution to the economic crisis. I start with the recession as a major factor in Figure 4.1 because, without it, there would not have been a Recovery Act, and thus, no RTT on the agenda.

A final note on the Recession as a factor in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda is that due to the economic situation, there was an awareness among the transition team that there might not be any money in the near future to promote any of the

President’s policy objectives. Mike S. Smith notes:

“[The Obama administration] realized [that they] would not have basically any

discretionary money at all in the next couple of years” (Mike S. Smith, personal

communication, August 6, 2014).

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Because the transition team thought they might not have discretionary funding at their disposal to promote their education reforms due to the recession in the years following, the transition team saw the stimulus bill as an opportunity to promote their policy agenda.

This can be considered a Kingdon “policy window.”

In summary, both Kingdon and Baumgartner and Jones’ theories of agenda setting were useful frameworks for identifying and considering the recession as a factor in the narrative of the genesis of RTT. Specially, they were useful in thinking about policy windows or events that help overcome inertia. However, the relationship between RTT and the recession is unique because RTT was not a direct policy solution to the policy problem of the recession.

The next section in my narrative of the genesis of RTT focused on the relationship between the Recovery Act and RTT. I found, through my interviews, that RTT and RTT in the Recovery Act, was not considered prior to President Obama securing the nomination in November. The relationship between the recession and the Recovery Act and RTT is somewhat unique to the narrative of RTT that isn’t well captured in either MS or PE theory.

Specifically, RTT was not floating around as policy solutions in the Kingdon’s

“primordial soup.” It was not as though the education campaign team or the transition team were considering RTT as a policy proposal and just waiting for the opportunity to arise. In Chapter 2, I noted how RTT continued many of the policies promoted in IASA and NCLB. In this regard, the assurance (goals) promoted by RTT can be viewed as incremental changes. The policy vehicle, and the design of how to accomplish these goals, was not in development during the campaign and not ‘floating around.’ Thus, it is

135 difficult to identify how the Recovery Act fits into the Kingdon model. Is the Recovery

Act the policy window? Is the Recovery Act the focusing event? Just earlier, we tried to pigeon-hole the recession into either, or both, of these roles (policy window and focusing event) as well. That is why my figure of the factors shows the recession sitting on top of the Recovery Act and RTT, with arrows swirling around to indicate the interplay between these factors.

Kingdon’s theory of policy making suggests that policy proposals have the best chance of becoming a part of the decision-making agenda if they are ready before the opportunity arises. In the ascension of RTT onto the decision-making agenda, RTT was not floating around as a policy idea prior to the Recovery Act. RTT was born in a particular place in time to respond to a policy need for another piece of legislation.

However, as discussed in Chapter 2, the growing EIC and education reform movement did have growing influence, and some actors did have experience with competition-based reform. Education reformers like Jon Schnur and Robert Gordon were important members of the transition team. When the economic crisis occurred and the new administration was in a position to influence the Recovery Act, these reformers had an opportunity to develop RTT.

When Rahm Emanuel came back to the economic transition team and said it would hard to convince Congress to just give money to the state with no strings attached and no exciting worthwhile purpose attached to it, the economic team suggested education. RTT was then included in the stimulus because it fit with the larger policy objective of building bridges, not just fixing potholes. Both Baumgartner and Jones

(2009) and Kingdon (2003) explain how new policy actors, in this case President Obama,

136 can disrupt the policy status quo. In the Baumgartner and Jones PE model, new participants help overcome the incremental movement of policy in a conservative system.

When actors are kept constant, it reinforces policy equilibrium. In the Kingdon model, elections and new policy actors are part of the change in the political stream which creates a change in the “primordial soup” and contributes to policy disruption.

President Obama also played a large role in the genesis of RTT. The President’s agenda is a signal of what the President believes are the most important issues (Light,

1982). The President makes choices about what to advance on their agenda – the agenda is not written down and is constantly in flux (Light, 1982). Paul Light (1982) writes that

Presidential power is affected by both internal and external resources. The internal resources include time, expertise, and energy. The external resources include political capital made up of party support in Congress, public approval, electoral margin, and patronage. Following the election, President Obama had strong internal and external resources to advance his agenda. Further, by advancing his agenda incredibly early into his candidacy, he capitalized on those resources to the extreme. While much has been written about the first 100 days, as noted earlier, the Recovery Act was passed 28 days after the President was sworn into office.

Timing is often key to the success of any domestic policy agenda item (Light,

1982). The Obama team was able to act quickly, recognize and take advantage of the

Recovery Act to advance domestic policy reforms. The selection of education as one of the major focus areas of the Recovery Act reflects the President’s goals and beliefs.

Specifically, President Obama’s views that the Recovery Act should build bridges, not just fix potholes, and that a competition would be an able driver of reform as opposed to

137 mandates, were pillars of the narrative of the genesis of RTT. In addition to the President, the genesis of RTT is based in part on the relative amount allocated for RTT compared to the overall amount for Education in the bill.

In the Kingdon model, the fact that RTT was small in the context of the overall spending is what Kingdon calls “softening up.” Kingdon (2003) describes that softening up is the same as the common expression “greasing the skids” and “getting your ducks in a row” (p. 128). Because the overall funding for education was so large, the inclusion of the set aside for RTT did not attract a lot of attention at the time. However, the relative amount of money for RTT is not the traditional softening up that Kingdon describes in his book. In his theory, softening up involves getting policy makers used to a certain idea.

The overall spending on education in the stimulus bill may have softened policy makers in terms of the amount of money set aside for RTT. However, it wasn’t as though years had passed in which policy makers could get used to giving the department of education such a large pot of discretionary funding.

RTT as a federal education policy lever was born outside of the confines of the

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee and the House

Education and Labor Committee. The fact that the ascension of RTT to the Obama policy agenda occurred outside these traditional committees, and the fact that it was negotiated by the appropriations committees, made RTT unique both in its inception and development. In addition, education was not originally a large part of the original concept of the Recovery Act. This was confirmed in in interviews with other highly knowledgeable policy actors. Many members of the Hill were quite surprised to see such a tremendous amount in education.

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When major federal education laws are constructed in traditional settings, (e.g., the Senate HELP Committee) they are influenced by many factors, such as interest groups that often stall, muddy, or subvert policy. The drafting of the RTT in

Appropriations thwarted traditional strangleholds to policy ascension. Baumgartner and

Jones’ (2009) “policy venue” (mobilization stymied in one venue may be successful in another or multiple venues) is somewhat helpful here. However, it isn’t so much that

RTT was stymied elsewhere, it is just that such a large competition was beyond comprehension or conception. The factor “venue” is an example a factor is dependent on other factors. In this case, “venue” is dependent on “time” and “recession.”

Kingdon’s MS theory does not posit how a change in venue fits into the policy making process. In this regard, Baumgartner and Jones’ PE does a better job of generating a framework for understanding how a change in venue from HELP to

Appropriations led to the ascension of RTT on the agenda. Baumgartner and Jones argue that a policy venue change can create mobilization. While a policy may be stymied in one venue, it may be successful in another.

It seems that neither Baumgartner and Jones’s theory of Punctuated Equilibrium nor Kingdon’s theory of Multiple Steams would have identified vague as an important factor in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda. Yet vague is a key sub-factor in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda. It is because the language describing RTT was vague and not detailed that it did not draw any additional scrutiny for being a competition that would only reward a few winners. I want to highlight here that I am not discussing the attention paid to what would be included in RTT in terms of the issues that would be given merit, such as teacher evaluations (etc.), but on the nature of how the funds would

139 be given, (e.g., a competition that rewarded only a few). This project focuses on a policy that was a competition unlike any other competition, (i.e., big winners and many more losers). As Mike S. Smith notes, “There are competitions and then there are other competitions, right?” (personal communication, August 6, 2014)

RTT was a unique policy because of this design feature and the historic amount of money for the winners in terms of federal education policy. How a billion dollar competition that only rewarded a few states ascended on the policy agenda is the focus of this project. In many ways, the fact that the language in the Recovery Act was vague and did not specify what this competition would be led to the policy ascension. Exiting political theories do not really identify how vague language can be a critical factor in a policies ascent. In the case study of the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda, vague language is a critical factor.

Both Kingdon (2003) and Baumgartner and Jones (2009) discuss the role actors’ play in the policy making and agenda setting process. However, the discussion of policy actors and interest groups focuses on how these individuals bring attention to an issue or policy, not how the limited number of actors draws less attention to an issue, enabling it’s ascension on the agenda.

In Kingdon’s MS theory it seems the political stream encompasses both the national mood, political mood, and election. However, in the ascension of RTT on the political agenda, I argue that the national mood (the recession), the political mood (a new administration and election) are related, but separate factors. A new administration and the first 100 days of a presidential term can also be viewed as a policy window. However, the election and new administration may have opened the window, it likely wasn’t

140 enough absent the other factors to entirely open the policy window. In the case study of the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda, there were many factors which smashed together to metaphorically open the policy window.

The Baumgartner and Jones PE model does a better job of explaining how policy change can be caused by changes in leadership in democratic elections. And while they have noted that found that elections are a source of policy change, in a study of major laws, Baumgartner and Jones (2006) found that fewer than half were passed absent a major political party change. Nevertheless, elections are a source of policy change.

Certainly elections and a new administration played a role in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda. However, I would argue that it is doubtful that absent the other factors

(recession, recovery act, and the President’s policy priorities) that elections alone would have led to RTT. It was the dynamic confluence of these factors that led to RTT.

Baumgartner and Jones’ punctuated equilibrium theory does present a framework for how time factors into policy development. Specifically, time is a factor that pushes against the regime and perpetuates incremental policy movement. In the case study of

RTT, time was limited, and everything was moving at break-neck speed. Time could not operate as a normal control on limited policy change, thus disrupting the equilibrium.

Kingdon’s model does not provide as much of an explanation of how time could factor in. Time as a factor in the genesis of RTT is distinctly different from the policy window because it is not that the opportunity to use the window that was short, but how a forced short period of time (the stimulus bill needed to be passed quickly to prevent catastrophic consequences) played a role in the ascension of RTT on the agenda.

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Summary

In this chapter, I presented findings from interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors to develop a narrative of the factors that led to the genesis of RTT on the Obama decision-making agenda. The recession, the Recovery Act,

President Obama, the relative amount appropriated for RTT, time, venue, vague language, and a new administration were all factors that led to the genesis of RTT. In many ways, the narrative of the genesis of RTT is consistent with established theories that seek to explain policy change. For example, policy windows, election, policy entrepreneurs, and venue were all important factors in the genesis of RTT. In addition to these factors, the narrative of RTT developed in this chapter found that speed, vague language, and a small, tight, limited group of actors were key factors in the genesis of

RTT.

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

The first chapter of this dissertation presented an overview of the study. The second chapter considered the background and research on federal education policymaking and offered, based on this research, an analytical framework for understanding the factors and conditions that led to the genesis of RTT. The third chapter presented the study’s methodology. The fourth chapter developed a narrative of the ascension of RTT on the Obama policy agenda, based on interviews and secondary research. This concluding chapter presents: (1) a summary of the main findings, (2) contributions to theory and policy, (3) commentary on the genesis of RTT, (4) a statement about the limitations of this work, and (5) a comment on the future of federal education policy making.

Summary of the main findings

When President Obama assumed office on January 20, 2009, the United States was roiled in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. It was under these conditions that, within 28 days of assuming office, on February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. Within the $840 billion dollar bill, slightly less than $5 billion dollars was set aside for state incentive grants program that would be awarded based on adherence to criteria outlined for a formula based education recovery program funds and by other criteria the Secretary of Education deemed appropriate. The state incentive grants program, later known as Race to the Top

(RTT), would become the largest competitive grant in the history of U.S. education

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(Nicholson-Crotty and Staley, 2012) and one of the major legacies of the Obama administration.

Summary of Findings from Interviews

The most dominant factors identified through interview and underscored by information from secondary source materials included:

1. The recession was the linchpin in the genesis of RTT because the state of

the economy tied together, and set in motion, the other factors. While it

might appear as though the recession is an obvious policy window

(Kingdon) or inertia (Baumgartner and Jones’), the economic crisis was

not a policy problem tied to the policy problem RTT was seeking to

address.

2. The Recovery Act was essential to the genesis of RTT. The policy

priorities for the Recovery Act, that the stimulus money not just fix

potholes but build bridges, was the reason RTT was conceived. RTT fit

the policy priorities for the Recovery Act. RTT was not on the policy

agenda during the campaign because the possibility of such a large amount

of resources was inconceivable.

3. President Obama’s personal views on education reform influenced the

choice of education as one of the major areas of the Recovery Act as well

as the assurance areas in the Recovery Act. Further, Obama’s childhood

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and his work as a community organizer shaped his views on education

policy. As a Senator, Obama showed an affinity for the policies promoted

by the increasingly more powerful Democrats for Education Reform

(DFER). Further, because the EIC supported Hillary Clinton, Obama may

have felt less beholden to EIC causes. Last, President Obama was

personally vested in approaches that engaged stakeholders, rather than

attacked stakeholders.

4. The amount of money appropriated for RTT relative to the overall amount

appropriated for education, or relative to the overall Recovery Act, was a

factor in the genesis of RTT. In addition, given the push to pass the

Recovery Act swiftly, most of the time spent discussing the education

component of the act was devoted to the assurance areas, which were

appropriated significantly more money and were expected to have much

more of an impact.

5. Time played a significant role in the genesis of RTT. Because of the

economic crisis and the fear that the United States was on the precipice of

a 1929 crash, the Recovery Act was a modern day, unparalleled path to

passage. Because RTT was embedded in the Recovery Act, it was carried

along at a similar rate.

6. RTT was drafted in a venue unique to education policy: the

Appropriations Committee. In addition, RTT was never sent to either the

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House or Senate committees, which typically work on education policy,

because of the short period of time and the nature of the Recovery Act.

7. Both a conscious choice and as a result of venue and time, the language

describing RTT was incredibly vague. While the idea of a large scale

competition to drive change was the clear intention of the funding, and

that the money would be given to a limited number of states, this was not

discernable from the language in the Recovery Act.

8. In fact, there was a limited group of actors who knew the sketch for how

RTT would be used. By keeping this knowledge to a small set of policy

actors, and, because of time, traditional factors such as interest groups, had

less of an opportunity to oppose the intended purpose of the funds.

9. Finally, the election of President Obama brought with it a wave of

enthusiasm. Democratic members of both the House and Senate were

inclined to show support for the President’s policy proposals. This

explains why, despite the fact that Congressman Obey would have

preferred all the Recovery Act funding be appropriated by formulas, he

was inclined to allow this (relatively) small amount for the President’s

personal policy goals in education.

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Contributions to Theory and Policy

Was it necessary to conduct research and interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors to identify to generate a narrative of the genesis of RTT?

Further, could one have used only theory of agenda setting to generate the narrative of

RTT absent this study’s interviews? The answer is both yes and no. First, absent my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors, the identification of the key factors in the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda would be hypothetical as illustrated in

Figures 4.5 and 4.7, which hypothesize the ascension of RTT onto the policy agenda, based on MS and PE theories. While these hypothetical figures do contain attributes that explain the genesis of RTT, neither one would predict the final model (Figure 4.1). The figure that explains the genesis of RTT is distinctly unique from the application of PE and MS models to the genesis of RTT.

Through interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors, I was able to see the genesis of RTT through the lens of those individuals were involved with its ascension. Interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors allowed me to examine the processes, sequences of causations, and a nuanced and richer interpretation of the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda. Through my interviews, I was able to gain insight into the nuances of how RTT came to fruition. Although these factors may be somewhat obvious, like the recession, how they actually came together with concrete, not hypothetical evidence was the major contribution of this research project.

Was the narrative of genesis of RTT surprising? Who is surprised by these findings? Are these findings systematic evidence for what might have been suspected all along? The answer to these questions is also both yes and no. This dissertation found the

147 policy windows, elections, new actors, venue, and a new administration were factors in the genesis of RTT. The identification of these factors is consistent with established theories of agenda setting. The identification of factors consistent with established theory is a contribution to theory in that it makes it stronger. The goals of research should not be only to disprove, but also re-affirm where previous theories work.

What was unique about the narrative of the genesis of RTT is the concept of time.

Time was unique in this dissertation in several ways:

1. RTT was not a policy on the campaign trail.

2. Time constrained debate on the Recovery Act.

3. Time dictated the venue where the legislation was written.

4. Time limited the actors involved.

5. Time limited the language in the Recovery Act describing RTT.

The question then becomes, are these findings on the genesis of RTT and policy change a once in a lifetime occurrence? How generalizable are the lessons from this case study? A simple answer is that recessions are rare events and, hence, this was a once in a lifetime occurrence. However, I believe the right answer is much more nuanced. While recessions may be rare, there narrative of the genesis of RTT is both generalizable and unique.

RTT was unique because it was a confluence of factors brought together in a unique period of time─the confluence of an election, new administration, recession, the increasing power of DFER was a “perfect storm.” But that in no way did the confluence

148 of those factors make the ascension of RTT a certainty─a different President, different policy priorities, even a different Democratic President, would have led a different outcome. This dissertation also found that the ascension of RTT was in many ways consistent with established theories of agenda setting, particularly that venue change, policy windows, and new actors can propel change. The finding that the narrative of the genesis of RTT echoes many theories of agenda setting supports theory of policy change.

While this dissertation confirmed some of our intuitions about the narrative of

RTT, the specific insight about timing was only revealed through discussions with highly knowledgeable policy actors. Was political science theory, in this case PE or MS, necessary to make sense of the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda? The answer to this question is also yes. As a student of political science, it is hard to imagine the scenario where I investigated my research question absent PE and MS theories. However, despite that I cannot “un-know” these theories, political science theory did help in coding and identifying key pieces of my interviews with highly knowledgeable policy actors.

Commentary on the Genesis of RTT

One of the major findings of this study was the role that time played in the ascension of RTT onto the Obama agenda. As noted above, time constrained the debate on the Recovery Act, time dictated the venue where the legislation was written, time limited the actors involved, and time limited the language in the Recovery Act. Now that it has been seven years since the Recovery Act was passed, we can begin to ask the normative question of whether it is good or bad to make policy quickly after a crisis. I want to start by reminding readers that I used RTT to describe the policies written into

149 the Recovery Act that described how the state incentive grants were to be dispensed by criteria as the Secretary of Education deemed appropriate. In the Recovery Act, RTT was not in any way a flushed out program. Much, if not all, of the detailed work on RTT began after Joanne Weiss joined the Department of Education to serve as the Senior

Advisor to the Secretary and Director of the Race to the Top Fund. The discretion and leeway the Department had to work out the details of RTT was possible because of the state incentive grants construction in the Recovery Act. It was also a function of time and vague language. Was this is a good or bad thing?

Flexibility in the political process is a unique occurrence. In our system of government, interest groups and stable venues provide a set of checks and balances.

Often these checks and balances can thwart, hinder, impede, and slow down policy change. Does this make checks and balances a bad thing or a good thing? Similarly, if unique crises or events, such as the recession, allow policy change to occur dramatically, move policy forward in an entirely new direction, and do so by subverting checks and balances, is this a good or bad thing? I do not think there is a simple or easy answer to these questions.

To live in Democracy often means that policy will move forward incrementally and slowly. While slow policy change can frustrate policy makers or those who seek to change policy, the slow process is an intentional function of our policy making process.

However, it is easy to empathize with interest groups who do not hold power and find their influence in government limited. Such was the case for education reformers against the powerful EIC. However, in moving quickly with the state incentive grants in the

Recovery Act, the administration risked disenfranchising key stakeholders who were not

150 involved in the policy making process. The risk─reward calculation must be considered if policy makers choose to push through radical policy changes rather than incremental policy changes.

Making policy quickly may be one of the few ways radical policy change can occur. Since ESEA had been the primary vehicle for education policy making since 1965, the education policy community was beginning to question if its power hold could or would ever be disrupted. If not, how could any major change continue to occur? The recession provided an opportunity that the Obama administration seized. I believe that a democratic society should desire that quick policy making be the exception rather than rule. This is because quick policy making can disenfranchise the public and, in doing so, actually threaten the principals of democracy. However, to see policy make radical changes is both exciting and also key to knowing that democracy works. It is ironic that policy change is the linchpin of democracy and that this change is often done quickly.

However, radical and quick policy change can threaten that very democracy if it is done at the expense of checks and balances. It will be interesting to examine the effects of RTT under a historical lens in another decade to consider the advantages and disadvantages of making policy quickly. This study provides important background information for future researchers who wish to consider this question, both within and outside of education policy.

Study Limitations

This study was not an attempt to describe the implementation or effectiveness of

RTT in meeting the Obama administration’s goals, nor was this study designed to explain

151 the Obama administration’s focus on the four assurances in the SFSF. While I have touched on how the Obama administration selection of the four assurance areas did build on the reforms of IASA and NCLB, and noted that the reforms promoted in RTT could be considered an example of incremental policy making, this study did not explore this topic as it has been written about quite extensively by Manna and Ryan (2011) and Weiss

(2013). The aim of this study was the identification of the factors that led to the ascension of RTT on the policy agenda.

This study was also limited by the factors typically associated with qualitative studies, including the list of actors interviewed to generate this narrative. This study is limited by participant recall as well as non-response bias. An obvious limitation was that

I was not able to interview all of the key actors. Another limitation is that the data gathered by this research project may have been interpreted differently by another researcher. Although the presentation of direct quotes and the preservation of the original interviews sought to minimize this limitation, the findings from this study may not be exactly replicated.

Future of Federal Education Policy Making

In 2009, Cohen and Moffit were unsure of, and questioned, whether reauthorizations of ESEA would ever be able to change the politics of education given the structural limitations of ESEA that stretched back to the compromises made in 1965.

In allowing states to draft their own plans to meet the assurance areas of RTT, and by drafting a competition with points that reflected the administration’s priorities, the

Obama administration was able to change the politics of education by acting outside of

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ESEA. RTT was both a policy and a political tool because states wrote their own proposals. By giving states ownership, RTT tried to avoid the criticism that NCLB was too coercive and the general sense that the Obama administration was mandating the way forward. RTT was designed to make more states more invested. It was also designed to bring together state education agencies, governors, empower new actors, and create new political alliances (McGuinn, 2010).

The success of RTT as a policy and the public mood surrounding RTT were not the focus of this dissertation. Future policy makers and future researchers should consider the aftereffects of RTT when evaluating the possibility of making policy quickly. Success could be measured by the number of states that made reforms or by the public response to the “races.” Future researchers should consider how RTT has been portrayed by the media as well, including how Common Core has been linked to RTT. While the effects of

RTT are not the focus here, these are important ideas to consider.

The Obama administration has used RTT as a model for some its most significant education policy reforms. In 2011, a Race to the Top Early Learning Competition allowed states to compete for $500 million to improve the quality of their state’s early learning programs. There were nine winners in this first preschool RTT. There was a second Race to the Top Early Learning Competition in 2012 for states that had strong showing in the initial Race to the Top Early Learning Competition. In this second preschool RTT, five states were awarded $133 million. In 2013, the U.S. Department of

Education distributed another $89 million to the Race to the Top Early Learning

Competition. In 2013, there was a RTT “Personalized Instruction” competition that required districts to come up with plans to customize instruction to particular students’

153 abilities and interests. In this competition, there were 16 winners who were awarded $400 million. There was also the RTT “Personalized Instruction” round two that awarded $120 million to five states. There was also a third RTT Early Learning Grant in 2013 that awarded $281 million to six states.

More recently, in 2013, the Obama administration proposed a $1 billion RTT program to help states improve their higher education outcomes. However, Congress was not interested in taking up this initiative. After Congress rejected the higher education

RTT, a new early childhood RTT was agreed to. However, the Department of Education has yet to announce details of the competition, only that it will be different from the earlier pre-school RTTs. Finally, the Obama administration’s 2015 budget includes additional competitions for developing data systems and attracting and retaining teachers.

This list of Obama administration multiple races is listed to illustrated the lasting impact competition-based education funding has had during Obama’s tenure.

Competition-based funding has been one of two major policy levers the Obama administration has used to exert influence at the state and local levels (the other being

NCLB waivers). As McGuinn (2010) writes:

RTT is under tremendous political fire for three different reasons. First, many do

not like the particular policy reforms RTT promotes. Second, many congressmen

do not like competitive grants since they involve losers. Third, Congress does not

like to see discretionary power over federal education funding and policy shift

from the legislative branch to the executive. Ultimately, it is the same feature of

competitive grant programs — the fact that they have winners and losers — that

makes them both effective at driving reform and difficult to sustain politically.

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This is why formula grant programs have historically been the dominant

mechanism for the distribution of federal funds in education and other areas. It is

also why the original ESEA — which was intended to be a redistributive program

that focused money on high poverty areas — ended up as a largely distributive

program that sent federal money to virtually every congressional district. (pg. 15)

Competitions are effective drivers of reform, but politically unpopular because their very nature implies there will be winners and losers. Those political constraints may handicap future federal education policy makers from using this lever anytime in the near future to influence state education reforms.

However, the take away from the genesis of RRT is that future education policy makers can act quickly if they recognize when policy windows open up. Policy vehicles and levers can and do change in democracies. Although it may involve chaos and a perfect storm for the opportunity to arise, it occasionally does. Policy actors must act quickly, before that window shuts.

That being said, many of the highly knowledgeable policy actors and policy actors

I interviewed for this study were quite surprised by RTT’s impact. Sometimes, it is only retrospectively that one can analyze what led to tremendous policy change. It is the goal that the study of the genesis of the RTT, the purpose of this study, will be an important contribution to the canon of literature on education policy making by an administration.

Understanding the genesis of the seminal “race” is fundamental to examining the entire body of education policymaking that the Obama administration pursued. This study will also be an important contribution to academics interested in ARRA, agenda setting, and policy making during the Obama administration.

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Conclusion

This study examined the factors that led to the rise and eventual adoption of the state incentive grants program, later known as Race to the Top in the American Recovery

Act of 2009. This concluding chapter presented: (1) a summary of the main findings, (2) contributions to theory and policy, (3) a statement about the limitations of this work, and

(4) a comment on the future of federal education policy making. It is hoped that this study is an important contribution to the study of education policy, agenda setting in general, and policy makers.

One reason I was drawn to study this topic was because of my interest in how policy change happens in a democracy. Many political science theories describe policy change in the United States as conservative, favoring long periods of relative stability over change, with major policy change occurring only sporadically and reactively.

Democracy, however, is hinged on the possibility that policies can and do change. What drew me to the study the genesis off RTT, was a deep interest in understanding how and why RTT arrived on the agenda when ESEA had been the prevailing lever in education policy for decades. I hope this study’s examination of policy change is not only is useful to policy makers and researchers, but also inspires students to consider how policy change happens in the United States.

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Chapter 6: Appendices

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Appendix A: Initial Contact Letter/Email and Interview Participant Consent Form

Project: Dissertation Research (George Washington University IRB #061447) Topic: The Genesis of Race to the Top: A Case History of Policy Change Investigator: Dr. Steve Balla, George Washington University Sub-investigator: Rachel Dinkes, George Washington University

Dear:

Race to the Top represents a monumental shift in the policy lever employed by the federal government to exert influence in state and local education policy and practices. Because Race to the Top is such a recent event, much work remains to be done to understand the factors that shaped its genesis. As a part of my research at the George Washington University, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, I am conducting a study to address this question.

I am writing to request your participation in the study. The study will examine the contextual, political and structural influences on the genesis of Race to the Top. To construct a picture of the forces at play on this issue, I seek the opinions and insights of a select group of approximately 10 key policy actors, such as you.

If you choose to take part in the study, the interview would take approximately 20-30 minutes and would be recorded. To give credit to those involved in the policy process, I intend to publish interviewees’ identities; however, if you would prefer the interview to be confidential, every effort will be taken to keep your information confidential and the recording will be erased at the end of the study. Your participation is completely voluntary, meaning you are free to withdraw at any time.

I will contact you within the next few days to determine your interest and the best time for us to talk.

I should also note that I am currently employed as a Senior Researcher at American Institutes for Research (AIR). I am conducting this dissertation research solely for the purposes of my graduate work, and it is no way affiliated with AIR.

Your thoughts and perspectives are critical to the success of this study and, ultimately, to document the factors and individuals that shaped the major education policy lever of the Obama administration. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 202-403-6942 or email me at [email protected]. I thank you in advance for your time and assistance.

The Office of Human Research of George Washington University, at telephone number (202) 994-2715, can provide further information about your rights as a research participant. Further information regarding this study may be obtained by contacting Dr., Steven Balla, my dissertation advisor, at 202-994-4811 or [email protected].

Sincerely,

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Rachel Dinkes Doctoral Candidate George Washington University, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration (Under the Guidance of Steve Balla, Ph.D.)

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Documentation of Informed Consent – To be read aloud at the start of the interview recording

Your willingness to participate in this research study is implied if you proceed with the oral interview.

I have discussed this study, its risks and potential benefits, and my other choices with Rachel Dinkes. My questions so far have been answered. My willingness to participate in this study is implied by my participation, and I understand that I can withdraw at any time. I understand that this study will be publish my identity unless I have asked that this interview be kept confidential, in which case, every effort will be taken to keep my information confidential.

______

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Appendix B: Interview Guide for Highly Knowledgeable Policy Actors

Interview Date: Interview Mode ((e.g., Phone, In-person, Email): Interview Number: Name: Position and Organization: Position and Organization (in 2008-2009, if different): Telephone Number: Email Address:

Before we start our brief interview, I want to thank you for taking the time and your willingness to lend your insights into factors that shaped the development of Race to the Top.

If you don’t mind, I would like to tape record our conversation so I don’t miss anything you say. If at any time you would like me to stop recording, please let me know.

First, I would like to confirm some information: • The purpose of the study • Your willingness to participate in the study (signed consent form or agreement on recording) • Verify your name, position and organization • Did your organization publish any documents related to adolescent literacy that should be reviewed as part of this study?

The purpose of my research study is to determine what factors influenced the genesis of Race to the Top. As you were one of the most knowledgeable key policy actors at that time, I seek your views about what forces led to the issue’s rise on the legislative agenda. If you would like, your answers to these questions will be kept confidential and will be identified only by type of policy actor ((e.g., governor’s staff, researcher). Would you kindly state if you would like this interview to be kept confidential?

Before I begin asking you questions, I would like to take a moment to refresh your memory about some of the important dates around this period.

• On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama, then a junior Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for presidency. • On November 4th, 2008, he was elected the 44th President of the United States. • He was sworn in on January 20, 2009. • Four weeks later, on Tuesday, February 17th, he signed ARRA into law.

Because work on the bills started before President Obama officially took office on January 20, 2009, top aides to President-elect Obama held multiple meetings with committee leaders and staffers to write both the Senate and House versions of the ARRA. This study is specifically interested in how the Obama administration viewed and developed their education priorities,

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specifically, the decision to include an allocation for the secretary to have discretionary power with some amount of funding, which eventually became known as Race to the Top.

Race to the Top was designed to encourage states to develop reform plans in four areas: 1. Adopting standards and assessments that align with college and career readiness; 2. Building data systems that measure student growth; 3. Teacher development, recruitment, and rewarding ; 4. School turnaround.

Begin with an open-ended question: Can you describe the evolution of the idea, and eventual policy, for Race to the Top? What was your position and/or relationship with Barack Obama during his campaign? What sort of discussions were you having about education policy objectives for his administration? Did discussions about the education policy objectives change after Obama secured the presidency? [If yes, please describe]. In what ways to you think RTT reflected Barack Obama’s policy objectives? What role did political factors play in shaping the design of RTT? What role do you think NCLB played in the development of RTT? Were alternative policy solutions proposed and/or developed? What elements of RTT appealed to those in the Obama administration? Is there anything else you think I might be interested in? Are there any other people who would suggest I contact about my research? If I have any follow-up questions as I review my findings, would you be willing to participate in a very brief, follow-up phone call or email exchange? If so, what is the best way for me to reach you?

I thank you for your time and insights. While these questions will serve an initial roadmap in the interviews, I will ask different follow- up questions particular to each interviewee’s special area of expertise.

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Appendix C: Extract of the Recovery Act as it relates to RTT

TITLE XIV—STATE FISCAL STABILIZATION FUND DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION STATE FISCAL STABILIZATION FUND

For necessary expenses for a State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, $53,600,000,000, which shall be administered by the Department of Education.

GENERAL PROVISIONS—THIS TITLE SEC. 14001. ALLOCATIONS.

SEC. 14001. ALLOCATIONS.

…………

(c) RESERVATION FOR ADDITIONAL PROGRAMS.—After reserving funds under subsections (a) and (b), the Secretary shall reserve $5,000,000,000 for grants under sections 14006 and 14007.

SEC. 14005. STATE APPLICATIONS.

(1) submit an application for consideration;

(2) describe the status of the State’s progress in each of the areas described in subsection (d), and the strategies the State is employing to help ensure that students in the subgroups described in section 1111(b)(2)(C)(v)(II) of the ESEA (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(2)(C)(v)(II)) who have not met the State’s proficiency targets continue making progress toward meeting the State’s student academic achievement standards;

(3) describe the achievement and graduation rates (as described in section 1111(b)(2)(C)(vi) of the ESEA (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(2)(C)(vi)) and as clarified in section 200.19(b)(1) of title 34, Code of Federal Regulations) of public elementary and secondary school students in the State, and the strategies the State is employing to help ensure that all subgroups of students identified in section 1111(b)(2) of the ESEA (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(2)) in the State continue making progress toward meeting the State’s student academic achievement standards;

(4) describe how the State would use its grant funding to improve student academic achievement in the State, including how it will allocate the funds to give priority to high-need local educational agencies; and

(5) include a plan for evaluating the State’s progress in closing achievement gaps.

SEC. 14006. STATE INCENTIVE GRANTS.

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(a) IN GENERAL.—

(1) RESERVATION.—From the total amount reserved under section 14001(c) that is not used for section 14007, the Secretary may reserve up to 1 percent for technical assistance to States to assist them in meeting the objectives of paragraphs (2), (3), (4), and (5) of section 14005(d).

(2) REMAINDER.—Of the remaining funds, the Secretary shall, in fiscal year 2010, make grants to States that have made significant progress in meeting the objectives of paragraphs (2), (3), (4), and (5) of section 14005(d).

(b) BASIS FOR GRANTS.—The Secretary shall determine which States receive grants under this section, and the amount of those grants, on the basis of information provided in State applications under section 14005 and such other criteria as the Secretary determines appropriate, which may include a State’s need for assistance to help meet the objective of paragraphs (2), (3), (4), and (5) of section 14005(d). H. R. 1—170

(c) SUBGRANTS TO LOCAL EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES.—Each State receiving a grant under this section shall use at least 50 percent of the grant to provide local educational agencies in the State with sub-grants based on their relative shares of funding under part A of title I of the ESEA (20 U.S.C. 6311 et seq.) for the most recent year.

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Appendix D: RTT Points System

Great Teachers and Leaders (138 total points)

• Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance (58 points) • Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals (25 points) • Providing high-quality pathways for aspiring teachers and principals (21 points) • Providing effective support to teachers and principals (20 points) • Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs (14 points)

State Success Factors (125 total points)

• Articulating State's education reform agenda and LEAs' participation in it (65 points) • Building strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain proposed plans (30 points) • Demonstrating significant progress in raising achievement and closing gaps (30 points)

Standards and Assessments (70 total points)

• Developing and adopting common standards (40 points) • Supporting the transition to enhanced standards and high-quality assessments (20 points) • Developing and implementing common, high-quality assessments (10 points)

General Selection Criteria (55 total points)

• Ensuring successful conditions for high-performing charters and other innovative schools (40 points) • Making education funding a priority (10 points) • Demonstrating other significant reform conditions (5 points)

Turning Around the Lowest-Achieving Schools (50 total points)

• Turning around the lowest-achieving schools (40 points) • Intervening in the lowest-achieving schools and LEAs (10 points)

Data Systems to Support Instruction (47 total points)

• Fully implementing a statewide longitudinal data system (24 points) • Using data to improve instruction (18 points) • Accessing and using State data (5 points)

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In addition to the 485 possible points from the selection criteria above, applicants were assessed based on six priorities, including the prioritization of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education which is worth another fifteen points for a possible total of 500.

• Priority 1, Absolute Priority: Comprehensive Approach to Education Reform • Priority 2, Competitive Preference Priority: Emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) (This priority was worth 15 points, bringing the "selection criteria" total to 500 points) • Priority 3, Invitational Priority: Innovations for Improving Early Learning Outcomes • Priority 4, Invitational Priority: Expansion and Adaptation of Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems • Priority 5, Invitational Priority: P-20 Coordination, Vertical and Horizontal Alignment • Priority 6, Invitational Priority: School-Level Conditions for Reform, Innovation, and Learning

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