The Trump administration’s rhetoric about returning power to the states has triggered a wave of interest in, well, states. But watching the broader education ecosystem suddenly “discover” states has felt a bit like watching TikTok-obsessed middle schoolers convince themselves they invented hacky sack.
At W/A, we’ve seen this movie before. In fact, the firm that would ultimately become W/A grew out of a remarkably similar moment.
In the early 2000s, scholars and policy hands described what they saw as the “new federalism”: a devolution of influence from Washington back to statehouses that took shape across 16 successive years of former governors in the White House. First Clinton. Then Bush. Both had run states. Both understood, in ways that federal policymakers often don’t, where the real levers of policy actually sit.
And when it comes to education, states don’t tend to sit around waiting for permission from Washington.
Long before there was a national standards and assessment movement, there was a state-based shift toward standards and accountability—not because of a federal mandate, but because states understood the fundamental connection between education, opportunity, and economic competitiveness. The urgency, too, originated from statehouses and governors, who have always been far more proximate to the immediate needs, realities, and concerns of learners, employers, parents, and educators
The Charlottesville Education Summit of 1989 was, after all, a governors’ project—convened by former President George H.W. Bush and organized by then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in his role as chair of the National Governors Association. The summit placed “responsibility for this system squarely in the hands of state leaders,” and from it emerged six National Education Goals—a product of governors who had spent years watching their states’ economies lag behind the demands of a changing workforce.
Clinton took the goals formulated by governors at the summit with him to the White House, where they served as inspiration for his administration’s education policy priorities. Once again, federal policy evolved from state experience, not the other way around.
Years later, NCLB was packaged and branded federally, but its DNA was state-grown. Jeb Bush’s Florida reforms demonstrated that choice, accountability, and transparency could move the needle on student achievement. In a recent interview with Michael Horn, he reflected on the ways in which states are now learning from each other as new types of choice programs emerge.
Many of NCLB’s architects had prior state experience and federalist instincts. Margaret Spellings, long before her appointment as secretary, brought a state-level perspective to bear on her crucial White House role after serving as George W. Bush’s senior advisor on education policy while he was still the governor of Texas.
During the Obama era, when the department was led by a big-city superintendent turned Secretary of Education and later a former education commissioner, federal education policy was likewise predicated on state primacy—whether it said so out loud or not. Race to the Top was a competition among states. The Obama administration’s waiver program handed states an off-ramp from NCLB’s more untenable requirements with the goal of fueling innovation.
In recent years we’ve seen that sometimes, when Washington steps back, states step up. The “Southern Surge” is the result of consistent, courageous, and sustained leadership at the state level. As AEI’s Rick Hess put it: “A decade ago, would you have guessed that the nation would be looking to Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee to serve as our K-12 torchbearers?” Mississippi is now the only state in the country to show gains across all performance levels over the last decade.
This isn’t just a K-12 story, either. Ohio and Tennessee’s performance-based funding models for higher education (which ties state appropriations for colleges and universities to student outcomes like retention and degree completion) is precisely the kind of innovation that emerges when states are empowered to experiment.
More than half of states have now adopted some version of performance-based funding for higher education, not because Washington told them to, but because they saw the logic. Today, these models have evolved considerably, with many now focused beyond just college completion and on workforce and career outcomes—a move the federal government is just now embracing, with institutions set to be on the hook for workforce earnings starting July 1.
To be sure, the concept of states rights in education has a troubled history that long predates the early aughts. And federal investments, regulation, and research have played (and, IMHO, should continue to play) an important role.
But states are, and always have been, the most powerful force in American education because they actually have to live with its consequences. The question for this moment isn’t whether states can handle the responsibility. History has already answered that. The question is whether they’ll wield their power wisely—and whether the rest of us are paying close enough attention.
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