Russel Sage Foundation

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, a key component of President Johnson's War on Poverty, was designed to aid low-income students and to combat racial segregation in schools. The newest iteration of ESEA, now titled the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), was just reauthorized on December 10, 2015, with bipartisan support. The ESEA has long served as the federal government's main source of leverage on states and school districts to enact its preferred reforms, including controversial measures such as standardized testing.

In a new open-access issue of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, an esteemed group of education scholars examine the historical evolution of the ESEA, its successes and pitfalls, and what they portend for the future of education policies. Edited by David A. Gamson (Pennsylvania State University), Kathryn A. McDermott (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and Douglas S. Reed (Georgetown University), the nine articles include an investigation of how the ESEA helped accelerate desegregation in the South in the 1960s; a study of the ESEA's effects on high school graduation rates for low-income students; and several explorations of how renewals of the ESEA—including the No Child Left Behind Act—have reshaped public education, sometimes to the detriment of English-language learners and disadvantaged students. This issue serves as an excellent foundation for developing a better understanding of the new ESSA of 2015.

Click here to view the new open-access issue in full.