The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has generated considerable buzz in education circles and the general media. But how much has really changed, and what does this mean for states as they begin the process of implementing a new federal education law? In this article, we apply principal-agent theory to explore intergovernmental relations under…

The notion of intervention strategies is introduced in this paper to explain why and when certain change efforts are successful. It is argued that the choice of control points and the selection of control linkages are determined by characteristics of the task in the implementing agency. Many implementation failures can be attributed to the…