ABSTRACT
This chapter gives attention to the elements of what appears to an altered policy and political landscape around educational equity in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) era. With ESSA, legislators promised that the states would regain authority in public education from the federal level. Interestingly, very shortly after its passage, ESSA was followed by President Obama's proposed budget for the US Department of Education for fiscal 2017–wherein there were clearly some efforts to fit budgetary support for the implementation of ESSA into advances in educational equity and opportunity. Under ESSA, a newly redesigned structure of intergovernmental relationships was just one among a number of significant changes in the policy context with implications for the politics of equity and opportunity in public education. A massive academic literature explores policy-related inequities in educational opportunity, going back to the seminal work of James Coleman. ESSA offers a substantial increase in individual states' authority and responsibility for achieving both equity and accountability objectives.
