Most politicians would agree that American society is innovative when every man, woman and child is afforded an equal opportunity to succeed. A message that espouses openness is more likely to win over hearts and minds than exclusionary rhetoric. From before colonies became states, important voices inside politics valued self-improvement. Across the country, elementary-age students learn about the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson declared “the pursuit of happiness” an inalienable right endowed to all. We extended that ideal to foreigners interested in climbing the economic ladder. Imprinted on a 305-foot tall copper structure located in New York Harbor, a statue named Liberty bares the inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Still, messages of acceptance and optimism rarely survive in Congress because partisan bickering, electoral strategizing and countless institutional restraints plague the legislature. A centuries-old debate over federal involvement in communities inevitably arises to impede productive deliberation. Ideological factions retreat to separate corners leaving legislative measures deadlocked and constituent demands tabled until election season.

Since immigration and education are both social issues, public phenomenon that affect the demographic and intellectual composition of society, we would expect them to experience similar outcomes in Congress. In fact, they encountered divergent end results. While the above progression roughly describes what became of comprehensive immigration reform in 2013-14, a Senate-led reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act flew through both chambers last year, successfully overturning unmet performance mandates established under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In this paper I will rationalize these divergent outcomes. I argue that House Republicans reframed immigration as a matter of national security by forwarding misinformation about immigrants and false economic estimates. Eight senators joined together and persuaded a supermajority of their colleagues to pair a gradual pathway to citizenship with border security enhancements. Despite personal sacrifices, their legislation failed because they pursued bipartisanship without bicameralism. Cornered by newly-elected Tea Party conservatives, Speaker John Boehner never called S.744 to vote. Comparatively, Senator Lamar Alexander [R-TN], after jointly crafting the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) with Patty Murray [D-WA], negotiated an adequate compromise with House Education Committee Chair John Kline. Implementation and expiration of NCLB led most lawmakers to consensus, that excessive federal intervention in school districts produced unintended consequences detrimental to teachers, children and communities. And so, only five weeks after assuming speakership, Paul Ryan approved a landmark education bill, which President Obama signed a day later into law.

Prior to analyzing each respective bill, I want to highlight a key distinction between them. When members of Congress discuss systemic problems affecting American education, they never blame children. Instead they might point to areas of contention such as school choice, Title 1 allocations and standardized testing requirements, more topical and less personal debates. With this said, why are foreign nationals regularly labeled criminals and job thieves when statistical evidence proves otherwise? Later on I will precisely identify when anti-amnesty rhetoric deteriorated into attacks against immigrants. At this point, however, we should set aside that timely question and shift gears to understanding some important developments which preceded passage of ESSA.

State-control over education supported by Democrats: Bidding goodbye to NCLB

Similar to other institutions, United States schools gradually evolved from being decentralized establishments to being highly dependent on federal grants and guidelines. Government involvement in education first escalated when Massachusetts created their Board of Education – the first of its kind – in 1837. State officials appointed a well-respected state senator, Horace Mann, as secretary. Instead of enforcing communal norms from a distance, Mann personally visited various private schools throughout New England to observe pedagogical methods. After examining normal operations, Mann published a report, audacious in scale and unprecedented in content, that outlined recommendations to improve quality of education statewide. Public schools, Mann determined, should specialize in three essential subjects: reading, writing and arithmetic. Accordingly, teachers ought to attend regular training sessions to ensure their proficiency. And most importantly, Mann felt these classrooms should be open to everyone, sustained free of charge by public taxation.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson further amplified federal control over education during a rare period of unified party control. This political leverage allowed Democrats to institute a sweeping series of reforms intended to reduce poverty. Among these, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), signed into law on April 7, 1965, attempted to nullify regional differences in quality of education. An indispensable provision of this landmark law, Title 1, determines whether underperforming school systems are eligible to receive federal funds based on four distribution formulas. Generally, districts that service at least 35 percent low-income students are eligible for grant money. Johnson envisioned a society in which children, regardless of race, family income and other points of distinction, are equally able to succeed academically and professionally. To ensure students from less fortunate means receive sufficient support services, Congress is expected to reauthorize ESEA every five years.

No Child Left Behind, a recent reauthorization of ESEA, sought to adapt American education to twenty-first century demands. President George W. Bush proudly declared education reform an immediate priority in his first one hundred days in office. Enacted less than a year later, on January 8, 2002, NCLB tried to increase exam performance by tying Title 1 allocations to student academic improvement and regular administration of standardized tests. While states were given relative leeway with devising their own curriculums, schools were required to submit adequate yearly progress reports, or AYPs, to demonstrate that students were learning. Fourteen years of NCLB created a pedagogical environment that determined teacher job security and school stability based on these student test scores. Though theoretically sensible, in actuality, NCLB promoted a “teach for the test” mentality which resulted in inferior academic results, and further divisions in the standard of schooling available to students from disparate backgrounds.

Though NCLB expired in 2007, its full effects were not felt until 2014, when President Obama began distributing waivers to overlook states that were unable to match yearly gains on standardized mathematics and ELA tests. A replacement was desperately needed. Introduced in the Senate by Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the Every Student Succeeds Act flipped the approach entirely, favoring case-by-case, localized grade expectations rather than a one-size-fits-all testing model. In other words, ESSA placed control over failing schools in the hands of their own communities rather than Washington overseers. Under this reform package, factors other than test scores will be considered before state government intervenes, such as student surveys. A diverse coalition supported the bill, everyone from education advocacy coalitions to civil rights groups. Ultimately both sides of the aisle accepted ESSA: the House voted in favor by a 359-64 roll, while the Senate also overwhelmingly approved the initiative 85-12. President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act into law on December 10, 2015. Having given a prehistory of education policy, let’s proceed to discussing why ESSA succeeded.

Partisan consolidation: A successful compromise

This bill is rooted in a libertarian logic, that communities understand their needs better than the federal government. Since its core idea aligns with Republican ideals, the fact that Title 1 portability did not make it into the bill was okay. Title 1 portability is the idea that children from low-income communities can carry their grants over to charter schools. On the other side, initially there was some internal disagreement within the Democratic party between more progressive members and its base. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker both rejected an initial draft because they felt the bill overlooked minority-populated systems. Their qualms subsided after their amendment passed. Washington Post opinions writer Michael Gerson expressed a similar complaint in an op-ed written after passage, which indicates that the Senators’ concerns arguably never was fully satisfied.

A major component of this legislation was championed by Patty Murray, Democratic Senator from Washington state. Following some major cities in America including New York, Murray wanted to implement preschool funding into the reauthorization bill. She felt that Fundamental to every piece of legislation is the compromise. As spearheaded by New York City mayor Bill de Blasio after other cities throughout the country,

Electoral benefits: Replace a “punitive law”

David R. Mayhew famously declared members of congress “single-minded seekers of reelection.” Every MC saw in NCLB an unworkable bill, something that – if revised – could positively impact their chances of reelection. Even though incumbency reelection rates hover nationally around 90 percent, as Mayhew says, congresspersons will first and foremost act in their own self-interest to ensure they keep their job. Public opinion on NCLB was weak by 2015. In fact, years earlier consensus was in. In a 2010 book, Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, called NCLB a “punitive law based on erroneous assumptions about how to improve schools” (p. 110). NCLB felt that “lazy teachers and lazy principals” caused low scores and needed to be threatened with losing their jobs to improve. Ravitch said, “good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools” (p. 111).

Institutional success: A productive conference committee

John Kline, Republican chair of the House Subcommittee on Education, was able to get his education bill passed in July 2015, though without party crossover. Almost exclusively supported by conservatives, his Student Success Act ultimately became partly merged in conference into ESSA. What Kline wanted more than any other provision was for schools to have flexibility with deciding where there federal money goes, whether that be to improving technology in the classroom, revising lesson plans, or hiring more teachers. Effectively, he amended Title 1 to become a block grant which places looser limits on where money goes. No longer was receiving these funds dependent on student scores. It is unique when a congressperson actually steps down from the mantle and accepts the next-best-thing. Kline very well could have refused to cooperate, stuck by his bill and stalled in conference, where ESSA could have died, but he did not. He prioritized and made a conscious effort to merge the best aspects of each piece of legislation into ESSA.

Republican disinterest in extending amnesty to undocumented immigrants: A security dilemma

A bipartisan “gang of eight” led by Senator Chuck Schumer [D-NY] drafted the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act almost three years ago now. These senators sought to overhaul an immigration system that failed to issue visas to competitive candidates for emigration, and to keep in check the illegal immigration rampant along the Mexican border. This comprehensive bill proposed a pathway to citizenship for illegal residents employed in the States who pay their fair share in taxes and follow the law.

However, conservative representatives insisted that enforcing existing laws come before any changes to bureaucratic procedure. With this in mind, despite passing the Senate on June 27, 2013 by a 68-32 vote, former Speaker John Boehner refused to bring the immigration bill to debate inside the House of Representatives. A year of stalemate led President Barack Obama in November 2014 to unveil executive actions that would have made millions of undocumented immigrants eligible to work without fear of deportation. Federal courts since disrupted the process following challenges from Texas and 25 other states.

Congress has failed to act on immigration reform for decades. In 2006, Senator John McCain [R-AZ] paired with Ted Kennedy [D-MA] to try and tackle the issue. Critics felt they were to soft on border security and were insulted with Kennedy’s calling the illegals “undocumented immigrants.” This misconception is pervasive throughout civil society and warrants statistics to refute it.Based on recent trends, each year roughly 1 million individuals obtain green cards to hold lawful permanent residence inside the United States (Monger & Yankay, 2014). Almost 42 million people residing inside the United States are foreign-born, according to a Pew Research Center report (2015), a near-record segment of the population at-large.

Competing interests produce plenty of misinformation surrounding the naturalization and citizenship process. Some conservative commentators support repealing the practice of birthright citizenship, an action that even right-leaning journals say would produce unintended consequences.False notions that Immigrants steal American jobs and bring crime to streets prevail when evidence exists that low-skill foreign workers choose distinct fields compared to native workers. According to an Urban Institute from last year, non-native low-skill workers generally flock towards positions as housekeepers, cooks and agricultural workers, while their native citizen counterparts turn to sales jobs, working as janitors and freight movers (Enchautegui, 2015).

Partisan polarization: Defending honor

To a certain extent we must acknowledge how public opinion on immigration is considerably more contentious than that surrounding education. Again, nobody wants to speak malice of children, but immigrants are often the brunt of fighting words. What about immigrant children, then? In 2010 Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch were delighted when the Senate heard their DREAM act, a proposal to extend relief, education and possibly permanent residency to longtime alien minors contingent upon them completing high school or obtaining a GED, pass a series of background checks to ensure they never committed a felony, and either attend a higher ed institution or serve for two years in the military. Despite these lengthy requirements, despite the endorsement of then Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates, the legislation stalemated when a few senators filibustered it.

What do I mean, though, by defending honor? Well, I think that national security is so core to the Republican identity that they essentially fell back to this framing when they realized that a pathway to citizenship was core to the bill. Immediately, a switch went off, and Republican started throwing around the word “amnesty.” Simply, it was too central to the GOP identity that immigrants harm American small businesses and bring crime to communities. A few years later with comprehensive immigration reform, Republican strategists, notably Ted Cruz of the Senate, riled up a greater amount of House members to express vocal opposition to this legislation on grounds that it would be granting “amnesty” to illegal immigrants. A popular story which Cruz would forward at this time was the the death of Kathryn Steinle, a young San Francisco woman who was murdered by an undocumented ex-convict who crossed back into the United States on five different occasions according to the Los Angeles Times (Romney et al., 2015). This story perfectly exemplifies how Republicans mobilized around immigration as a security threat. This is playing out again with candidates suggesting a temporarily ban on Muslims from coming into the country. Evidence suggests that illegal immigrants largely keep to themselves and find jobs unfulfilled by native peoples.

Electoral motivation failed: Attempt to broaden GOP appeal rejected

One compelling reason to pursue comprehensive immigration reform that included a pathway to citizenship, according to Senator Marco Rubio, was to attract Latino voters to the GOP, a party which at times struggles to appeal to minority voters. Rubio claimed a policy change a political necessity in 2013. Rubio regularly would express the sentiment that limited government and free enterprise are core to individual growth. Additionally, Rubio likely had in mind the potential down-ballot upside of crafting a cooperative, accessible message on immigration. It would allow rank-in-file Republicans to be associated with getting something done in Congress rather than being the party that shut down the government, an action which still might breed danger for the GOP.

Ryan Lizza (2013) discusses at length the arduous process of finding the perfect team to tackle immigration. Maybe there were too many cosponsors and too many conflicting interests for this legislation to succeed unilaterally. It only barely passed the Senate, and while each gang member committed to defending the bill regardless of political consequences, that made achieving a complete compromise particularly challenging. Nobody was the figurehead who can negotiate with Boehner. It ultimately became impossible for each player to back the legislation when they had to keep their own political futures in mind.

Institutional collapse: Behind the Tea Party revolt

Over time, the House of Representatives turned into a faction-dominated chamber in which committee assignments and issue representation required members of Congress to maintain strong connections with their party leader. John Boehner assumed the position of Speaker in 2011, and never handled the job correctly. Particularly, we should consider why Boehner acted with “pointless cowardice” on immigration (Toobin, 2015). Midterm elections dramatically altered the composition of both chambers. While five incumbent Democratic senators lost seats, the House experienced a revolt, wherein conservative candidates ran against long-established Republican representatives. These candidates coalesced around strict social policy stances and gained a number of seats. As a result, a coalition formed as comprehensive immigration arose in the Senate, a group vocally outspoken against amnesty and pro-border control: the Tea Party. Boehner struggled to appease them from early-on, reprimanding members when they voted outside party lines, and acting incompatible with their albeit restrictive policy preferences. So while immigration reform would have been a nice notch to put in Boehner’s belt, he felt cornered by this emerging alliance and submitted to their demands. In stark contrast, Paul Ryan seemingly walked into Congress with a bipartisan education bill pressed neatly on his desk.

Another common rationalization for why immigration reform failed is that Republicans were opposed to another expensive government program. In actuality, though, this legislation, according to Congressional Budget Estimates, would have saved billions of dollars over a ten-year-span. By allowing those without documentation to leave the shadows, they are more likely to find stable work, and will – in turn – contribute actively to and benefit from the domestic economy.

In conclusion, we can see that comprehensive immigration reform and a reauthorization of ESEA experienced divergent outcomes, though they were both Senate-led social policies. What best explains this result is that Republicans in the House of Representatives, particularly newly-elected Tea Party conservatives, opposed the legislation as amnesty for illegals. They framed their opinion on national security grounds by mischaracterizing immigrants as largely violent criminals and job thieves, when evidence suggests that foreign nationals are less prone to acting out and being discovered, and find work in areas where natives without a high school diploma do not. On the other hand, we understand that the Every Student Succeeds Act flew through Congress because a small list of cosponsors sought a fair compromise and successfully brought in their House equivalent at conference committee to patch things up. They replaced a punitive law to mutually benefit their chances at reelection, allowing a fresh Speaker to experience success.