Wave of the future or passing fancy?

This dissertation focuses on the expanded federal oversight and enforcement role in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001(NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA). Using the theoretical framework of the multiple streams model of policy development developed by John Kingdon (1995), it presents a comparative analysis of data derived from an extensive document review and thirty-two interviews with "key" education policymakers and researchers. This analysis focuses on the sources of the expanded federal oversight and enforcement mechanisms in the laws' accountability models and assesses their implementation and prospects. Findings indicate that, despite differences in the laws' oversight and enforcement mechanisms, there are many similarities between policymakers' perspectives on their sources, goals, implementation and prospects. Key policymakers attribute similar goals to the Congressional architects of the laws, including improving student achievement. At the implementation level, their characterization of the U.S. Department of Education as being focused on procedural compliance and heavily influenced by political opposition mirror respondents' perception of the Department's record of oversight and enforcement of IDEA. For both laws policymakers focused more attention on the problems produced by the law's accountability mechanisms, the Department's performance of its oversight and enforcement responsibilities, and state and local responses than the expansion of the federal role itself. While these findings raise concerns about the ability of the expanded federal role to achieve the goals of the laws' architects, they indicate that this expansion is unlikely to be reversed.

In addition, the many similarities between the sources, goals and implementation of the federal role in the laws' oversight and enforcement models provide evidence of the increasing integration of the federal special and general education policy processes.