Ruling Out Rules: The Evolution of Deregulation in State Education Policy

In the late 1980s and mid-1990s, states began working to decrease the level of regulation of public education. Operating under the assumption that greater school autonomy is an important spur to school improvement, policymakers tried a variety of approaches to regulatory flexibility. This article examines the evolution of deregulation from limited waiver programs to charter programs and new performance-based accountability systems that include broad-scale deregulation. Early deregulation programs were so limited in design that they had very modest results, but policymakers are finding expanded efforts very difficult to achieve. Many of the same political forces and habits of practice that limited early efforts continue to pose barriers to deregulation. Underlying the barriers is a historic, continuing uncertainty about the state role and about how states should relate to districts of varying types.