Education Interest Groups and Congress: Using an Advocacy Coalition Framework to Investigate Policy Change

Elizabeth DeBray

The proposed project examines recent changes in the education interest group sector in Washington, D.C. that attempts to influence federal education legislation for elementary and secondary schools. How well are educators, and education researchers, represented in the legislative process for elementary and secondary education? Which organizations drive the content of policies considered in Congress? These questions are central to understanding the content and direction of federal education policy, yet there have been no recent systematic investigations of them.During the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act between 1998 and 2001, the groups representing professional educators and researchers saw their influence diminished as newer, more conservative coalitions formed. With a Republican-controlled Congress and President in 2005, the hypothesis is that more conservative coalitions and think tanks will increasingly gain access to the legislative process. The study utilizes an advocacy coalition framework from political science to investigate the composition and beliefs of education interest groups during the 109th Congress. Questions to be investigated include what constitute the core beliefs of education interest group coalitions and how they pursue their policy objectives. The methodology employs interviews with leaders across interest group coalitions, as well as with selected staff to congressional education committees.

About Elizabeth DeBray

Elizabeth DeBray is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, & Policy in the College of Education at the University of Georgia. She is also a Fellow in the Advanced Studies Fellowship Program on Federal and National Strategies of School Reform at Brown University. Her major research interests are how federal and state policies affect elementary and secondary schools and the politics of education. She teaches courses in the areas of educational policy analysis and politics of education. Dr. DeBray worked in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, United States Department of Education, from 1992 to 1996 and served as a research assistant with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education from 1997 to 2001. She is co-editor, with Gary Orfield, of Hard Work for Good Schools: Facts Not Fads in Title I Reform (The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, 1999). Her forthcoming book, Politics, Ideology and Congress: The Formation of Federal Education Policy During the Clinton and Bush Administrations (New York: Teachers College Press) is a political and institutional analysis of the politics of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in Congress between 1999 and 2002.