Education Advocacy Organizations: An Overview
Our guest author today is Ken Libby, a graduate student studying educational foundations, policy and practice at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Education advocacy organizations (EAOs) come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some focus on specific issues (e.g. human capital decisions, forms of school choice, class size) while others approach policy more broadly (e.g. changing policy environments, membership decisions). Proponents of these organizations claim they exist, at least in part, to provide a counterbalance to various other powerful interest groups.
In just the past few years, Stand for Children, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), 50CAN, and StudentsFirst have emerged as well-organized, well-funded groups capable of influencing education policy. While these four groups support some of the same legislation - most notably teacher evaluations based in part on test scores and the expansion of school choice - each group has some distinct characteristics that are worth noting.
One thing’s for sure: The proliferation of EAOs, especially during the past five or six years, is playing a critical role in certain education policy decisions and discussions. They are not, contrary to some of the rhetoric, dominating powerhouses, but they aren’t paper tigers either.