Jack Jennings 
Presidents, Congress, and the Public Schools [EPUB ebook] 
The Politics of Education Reform

CONTENTS
Foreward by Michael Feuer ix
Introduction 1
PART 1 EQUITY AND THE ORIGINS OF ESEA
CHAPTER 1 
The Road to ESEA 15
CHAPTER 2
The Evolution of Title I, 1965-1978 29
CHAPTER 3
Regulatory Burdens Lead to Change, 1978-2015 43
CHAPTER 4
Was Title I Effective? 55
PART II STANDARDS, TESTING, AND ACCOUNTABILITY 
CHAPTER 5 
Standards, Testing, and Accountability Under Four Presidents 65
CHAPTER 6
Has the Standards, Testing, and Accountability Movement Been Effective? 81
PART III OTHER FEDERAL POLICIES, AND A SUMMARY
CHAPTER 7 
IDEA and Bilingual Education 105
CHAPTER 8
School Busing, Title IX, and Free Speech in Schools 119
CHAPTER 9 
Lessons Learned from Federal Involvement in Schooling 141
PART IV FRESH THINKING ABOUT THE FEDERAL ROLE IN EDUCATION
CHAPTER 10
The Greatest Problems in Schooling 159
CHAPTER 11
Federal Aid to Improve Teaching and Learning 185
CHAPTER 12
Constitutional and Legal Guarantees of a Good Education 205
Conclusion 219
Appendix: Chronology of Major Events, 1948-2013 223
Notes 227
Acknowledgments 241
About the Author 243
Index 245
 

John F. ‘Jack’ Jennings founded the Center on Education Policy in January 1995 and was its CEO and president until he retired in 2012. According to a poll of national leaders conducted by
Education Week, that Center was one of the ten most influential organizations affecting school policy in the United States.

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 reauthorizations 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.

Mr. Jennings served on the board of trustees of the Educational Testing Service, the Title I Independent Review Panel, the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, the Maryland Academic Intervention Steering Committee, and the Maryland Visionary Panel. Mr. Jennings is currently a member of the National Academy of Education, and serves on the board of governors of the Phi Delta Kappa Foundation. He also served as chair of the PDK Foundation board.

Over the years, he has received awards from dozens of organizations, and recently was the recipient of awards for distinguished public service from the American Educational Research Association and from Phi Delta Kappa. Most recently, he has been honored with the Education Visionary Award by the Learning First Alliance (a coalition of the country’s major national public education organizations), the Outstanding Friend of Public Education Award from the Horace Mann League, and the Meritorious Service Award from the National Association of Federal Education Program Administrators.

Mr. Jennings’s book
Why National Standards and Tests? Politics and the Quest for Better Schools was published by Sage Publications in 1998. He has also edited four volumes on National Issues in Education which were published by Phi Delta Kappa:
The Past is Prologue (May 1993),
Community Service and Student Loans (June 1994),
Goals 2000 and School-to-Work (January 1995), and
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (July 1995).

Mr. Jennings writes a blog for the
Huffington Post. He has also written numerous articles, including twelve for the
Kappan, more than any other single contributor for that prestigious magazine. He is one of the authorities on education most cited in the news media. For example, he was quoted in
Education Week more than 500 times from 1995 to 2011.

He holds an AB from Loyola University and a JD from Northwestern University School of Law, and has been a member of several legal bars, including the U.S. Supreme Court.