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The first in a five-part series

With trivial exceptions, Washington does not run schools, employ teachers, buy textbooks, write curriculum, hand out diplomas, or decide who gets promoted to 5th grade. Historically, it has contributed less than 10 percent of national K-12 spending. So its influence on what happens in U.S. schools is indirect and limited. Yet that influence can be profound, albeit not always in a helpful way.

Uncle Sam is dreadful at micromanaging what actually happens in schools and classrooms. What he鈥檚 best at is setting agendas and driving priorities. Through a combination of jawboning, incentivizing, regulating, mandating, forbidding, spotlighting, and subsidizing, he can significantly influence the overall direction of the K-12 system and catalyze profound changes in it (though the system is so loosely coupled that these changes occur gradually and incompletely).

It鈥檚 just as well that such big directional shifts don鈥檛 happen very often, because the change, however gradual, can be wrenching. And it isn鈥檛 apt to happen much more often in the future, either, because the 鈥渇ederal government鈥� is no single entity. It is, at minimum, three branches, two political parties, 535 members of Congress, innumerable judges, the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and umpteen executive-branch agencies鈥攁 list that only starts with the U.S. Department of Education. Nearly all of these stars must come into rough alignment before anything important begins to change. And that only occurs once in a while, often under extraordinary political or historical circumstances, usually when the country faces a big challenge, crisis, or widespread injustice.

Let鈥檚 look at seven examples of federal 鈥渁genda setters鈥� in K-12 education, one per decade.

1950s. One could legitimately cite Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act, but the decade鈥檚 real game-changer was the Supreme Court鈥檚 Brown v. Board of Education decision, striking down government-mandated racial segregation in Southern schools.

1960s. In the name of fostering opportunity, ending poverty, and giving needy kids a boost, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the modern era of federal aid to K-12 education via the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, and the Economic Opportunity Act, which incorporated such high-profile programs as Head Start, the Job Corps, and the 鈥渄omestic Peace Corps鈥� known as VISTA.

1970s. Enacted in 1976, and signed (with some public misgivings) by President Gerald R. Ford, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, righted another historic wrong by declaring that every youngster with disabilities is entitled to a 鈥渇ree, appropriate public education鈥� in the 鈥渓east restrictive environment.鈥� Combined with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the law meant public schools now had an obligation to educate such children in ways that responded to their needs.

1980s. Though nominally just a commission report, A Nation at Risk (1983) told Americans that we faced a crisis of educational achievement and began to nudge the country through a 90-degree change of course from the 鈥渆quity鈥� agenda of the previous quarter-century to the 鈥渆xcellence鈥� obsession of recent decades, complete with academic standards, tests, and results-based accountability systems.

1990 ushered in the first-ever state-by-state results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress as well as the first-ever reporting of NAEP results according to newly established performance benchmarks. This dual development opened a new era of awareness of academic achievement in the United States and made possible the first bona fide comparisons of state performance at a time when state-based reform was in the ascendancy and governors craved such comparisons. It also launched what amounted to the first real set of standards by which to determine just 鈥渉ow good is good enough鈥� when it comes to student achievement in various subjects.

2001 brought passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, a momentous reauthorization of the ESEA, declaring not only that every single student should become 鈥減roficient鈥� in math and reading, but also that every school in the land would have its performance reported, both school wide and for its student demographic subgroups, and that schools failing to make 鈥渁dequate yearly progress鈥� would face a cascade of sanctions and interventions. NCLB transformed the federal government from funder to would-be reformer of American public education. In the course of becoming a reformer, Uncle Sam also became a regulator as never before.

And the present decade opened with the Race to the Top, the brainchild of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, based on the bold hypothesis that sizable grants of federal dollars, disbursed via a competitive process, can induce states to jump through reform policy hoops that they likely would not otherwise have attempted.

Add them up: America desegregated its schools, with respect both to race and handicap. It inaugurated big-time federal aid to K-12 education, initially in the name of equitable opportunity, now more targeted on academic achievement and gap-closing. It devised new ways of assessing, judging, and comparing achievement across the states鈥攁nd prodded those states to make politically difficult changes to reform a system that wasn鈥檛 producing satisfactory results. And in the process, unsurprisingly, Washington evolved from funder and equalizer into enforcer and regulator.

None of this worked as well as ardent advocates had hoped. All brought unintended consequences, pushback, and sizable financial burdens. But American education is a very different enterprise鈥攁nd for the most part a better enterprise鈥攁s a result of these game-changing initiatives from Washington.

What causes some federal initiatives to function, at least for a while, as positive game-changers, while so many others almost immediately become duds? I see four conditions:

First, there needs to be a sizable, pent-up problem in need of a large solution鈥攁 lot of accumulated pressure seeking a release valve. That鈥檚 a very different thing from a notional seems-like-a-good-idea or scratch-a-minor-itch add-on to a pre-existing portfolio of programs.

Second, the problem needs to be one that affects the whole country (for example, economic competitiveness, social justice, national security), even if the solution focuses mostly on a region (the segregated South) or significant constituency (kids with disabilities).

Third, the solution needs to be something that can be crafted by implements in the federal toolkit, which is basically limited to financial incentives, regulation of state and district practices, research and data, and litigation or the threat thereof. (And, of course, the bully pulpit itself.)

Fourth, and finally, enough political stars must align鈥攁nd stay aligned long enough to make a difference.

Not all of them need to be aligned, however. (If they were, the problem would likely have been tackled already.) Congress was not about to outlaw racial segregation in 1954, for example, and plenty of prominent educators declared A Nation at Risk wrong in 1983. Lots of states dragged their heels big-time on No Child Left Behind, and any number of psychometricians denounced the NAEP achievement levels.

But there has to be enough oomph of one kind or another鈥攎oral, economic, political, judicial, even occasionally (in the case of school segregation) military鈥攂ehind these kinds of changes for them to overcome resistance and gain real traction. And when that oomph diminishes鈥攚hether because of fresh election returns, limited attention span, newfound prosperity, exhaustion, backlash, or whatever鈥攚hat remains may be a country with its education direction lastingly changed for the better. Or it may be the husk of yet another federal initiative that was promising at the start but grew stale, obsolete, or oppressive. Or both.