The Evolution of a Transparent School: The History of Curriculum Transparency in Legislation

Curriculum transparency is a complex label for a simple policy in public education. Curriculum transparency is a service provided by districts to allow reasonable access of instructional plans and learning materials to students, parents, and the community. Furthermore, it is the basis for policymakers to mandate reporting of academic achievement, screening of curriculum, and assessing a school’s financial capabilities.  

With the amount of publicity that curriculum transparency has received in the last several years, it seems as though policy makers have expedited the legalization of public-school requirements without the needed deliberation. However, educators may be shocked to learn that this type of expansive transparency has been in the works for decades. To understand how policy on transparent curriculum has expanded so quickly, it is first necessary to start at the very beginning of its history.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Transparency can be traced back to 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law. This policy was part of President Johnson’s “War on Poverty”, the political and legislative campaign during his 1964-1968 term. The law pushes for “equal access to quality education” by funding primary and secondary schools while promoting high academic standards and accountability in public education.  

The 1965 version of this act was authorized for five fiscal years and remained unchanged until 1969. It was during its renewal that President Richard Nixon signed the 1969 ESEA amendments. These amendments mandated that funding be used for children of refugees and households, something which previously had not been upheld on morale alone. By 1984, President Ronald Reagan passed the ESEA amendments that emphasized bilingual education programming and eventually facilitated the ESEA financial focus on student achievements. This set the foundation for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.  

The No Child Left Behind Act

Replacing ESEA in 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) “increased accountability from schools” through the establishment of annual standardized testing, annual report cards, and assessment systems approved on the federal level.  

The NCLB Act's mission was to highlight and expand education opportunities for four underprivileged groups of students: “Students in poverty, students of color, students receiving special education services,” and “those who speak and understand limited or no English.” However, federally regulated corrective actions through funding cause unanticipated consequences in education.  

The NCLB act inadvertently created an incentive for states to “lower their standards, emphasized punishing failure over rewarding success, focused on scores instead of growth and progress, and prescribed a pass-fail, one-size-fits-all series of interventions for schools that miss their state-established goals.”  

The Every Student Succeeds Act

In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) became the final federal legislation in public education and is active to this day. Like the NCLB act, the ESSA works to improve the same four groups of disadvantaged students while boosting the quality of all students’ education. It also worked to bring parents and guardians back into a child’s education. This is accomplished through state plans that include a description of “academic standards, annual testing, school accountability, goals for academic achievement, plans for supporting and improving struggling schools,” and “state and local report cards,”

Finally, the ESSA provided states with the flexibility to forgo some of the law’s complex requirements. For states to qualify for this option, however, they must have proven that they adopted “college and career-ready standards and assessments, implemented school accountability systems that focused on the lowest-performing schools and those with the largest achievement gaps, and ensured that districts were implementing teacher and principal evaluation and support systems.”  

Curriculum Transparency Today

The establishment of curriculum transparency legislation has been in the works since 1965. It is due to the development of these acts that state law has been able to pass policies that include curriculum transparency. While recent events have sped up the process, the surveillance of public education under the government's eye has been in a gradual development since the Elementary and Secondary Education act of 1965. Because states are taking steps to expand transparency in public education, it is vital that educators adopt a process that considers regulation without taking priority away from their students’ education.