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Building the Federal Schoolhouse: Localism and the American Education State by
Over the past fifty years, the federal government's efforts to reform American public education have transformed U.S. schools from locally-run enterprises into complex systems jointly constructed by federal, state, and local actors. The construction of this federal schoolhouse-an educational system with common national expectations and practices-has fundamentally altered both education politics and the norms governing educational policy at the local level. Building the Federal Schoolhouse examines these issues through an in-depth, fifty-year examination of federal educational policies in the community of Alexandria, Virginia, a wealthy yet socially diverse suburb of Washington, D.C. The epochal social transformations that swept through America in the past half century hit Alexandria with particular force, transforming its Jim Crow school system into a new immigrant gateway district within two generations. Along the way, the school system has struggled to provide quality education for special needs students, and has sought to overcome the legacies of tracking and segregated learning while simultaneously retaining upper-middle class students. Most recently, it has grappled with state and federally imposed accountability measures that seek to boost educational outcomes. All of these policy initiatives have contended with the existing political regime within Alexandria, at times forcing it to a breaking point, and at other times reconstructing it. All the while, the local expectations and governing realities of administrators, parents, politicians, and voters have sharply constrained federal initiatives, limiting their scope when in conflict with local commitments and amplifying them when they align. Through an extensive use of local archives, contemporary accounts, school data, and interviews, Douglas S. Reed not only paints an intimate portrait of the conflicts that the federal schoolhouse's creation has wrought in Alexandria, but also documents the successes of the federal commitment to greater educational opportunity. In so doing, he highlights the complexity of the American education state and the centrality of local regimes and local historical context to federal educational reform efforts.
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The Fight for Local Control: Schools, Suburbs, and American Democracy by
Throughout the twentieth century, local control of school districts was one of the most contentious issues in American politics. As state and federal regulation attempted to standardize public schools, conservatives defended local prerogative as a bulwark of democratic values. Yet their commitment to those values was shifting and selective. In The Fight for Local Control, Campbell F. Scribner demonstrates how, in the decades after World War II, suburban communities appropriated legacies of rural education to assert their political autonomy and in the process radically changed educational law. Scribner's account unfolds on the metropolitan fringe, where rapid suburbanization overlapped with the consolidation of thousands of small rural schools. Rural residents initially clashed with their new neighbors, but by the 1960s the groups had rallied to resist government oversight. What began as residual opposition to school consolidation would transform into campaigns against race-based busing, unionized teachers, tax equalization, and secular curriculum. In case after case, suburban conservatives carved out new rights for local autonomy, stifling equal educational opportunity. Yet Scribner also provides insight into why many conservatives have since abandoned localism for policies that stress school choice and federal accountability. In the 1970s, as new battles arose over unions, textbooks, and taxes, districts on the rural-suburban fringe became the first to assert individual choice in the form of school vouchers, religious exemptions, and a marketplace model of education. At the same time, they began to embrace tax limitation and standardized testing, policies that checked educational bureaucracy but bypassed local school boards. The effect, Scribner concludes, has been to reinforce inequalities between districts while weakening participatory government within them, keeping the worst aspects of local control in place while forfeiting its virtues.
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School's In: Federalism and the National Education Agenda
Today, many Americans have become more convinced that the U.S. government and the states should play an increasingly important role in the nation's schools. Paul Manna looks over forty years of national education policymaking and asserts that although Washington's influence over American schools has indeed increased, we should neither overestimate the expansion of federal power nor underestimate the resiliency and continuing influence of the states.
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Spin Cycle: How Research Gets Used in Policy Debates--The Case of Charter Schools by
One important aim of social science research is to provide unbiased information that can help guide public policies. However, social science is often construed as politics by other means. Nowhere is the polarized nature of social science research more visible than in the heated debate over charter schools. In Spin Cycle, noted political scientist and education expert Jeffrey Henig explores how controversies over the charter school movement illustrate the use and misuse of research in policy debates. Henig's compelling narrative reveals that, despite all of the political maneuvering on the public stage, research on school choice has gradually converged on a number of widely accepted findings. This quiet consensus shows how solid research can supersede partisan cleavages and sensationalized media headlines. In Spin Cycle, Henig draws on extensive interviews with researchers, journalists, and funding agencies on both sides of the debate, as well as data on federal and foundation grants and a close analysis of media coverage, to explore how social science research is "spun" in the public sphere. Henig looks at the consequences of a highly controversial New York Times article that cited evidence of poor test performance among charter school students. The front-page story, based on research findings released by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), sparked an explosive debate over the effectiveness of charter schools. In the ensuing drama, reputable scholars from both ends of the political spectrum launched charges and counter-charges over the research methodology and the implications of the data. Henig uses this political tug-of-war to illustrate broader problems relating to social science: of what relevance is supposedly non-partisan research when findings are wielded as political weapons on both sides of the debate? In the case of charter schools, Henig shows that despite the political posturing in public forums, many researchers have since revised their stances according to accumulating new evidence and have begun to find common ground. Over time, those who favored charter schools were willing to admit that in many instances charter schools are no better than traditional schools. And many who were initially alarmed by the potentially destructive consequences of school choice admitted that their fears were overblown. The core problem, Henig concludes, has less to do with research itself than with the way it is often sensationalized or misrepresented in public discourse. Despite considerable frustration over the politicization of research, until now there has been no systematic analysis of the problem. Spin Cycle provides an engaging narrative and instructive guide with far-reaching implications for the way research is presented to the public. Ultimately, Henig argues, we can do a better job of bringing research to bear on the task of social betterment.
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Whats Ahead in Education?: An Analysis of the Policies of the Obama Administration
Illuminates the educational views of President Barack Obama by studying his life to date, his writings and speeches, as well as his initiatives thus far, in the field of education. By studying his early steps in developing the stimulus package, the Race to the Top, and a blue print for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, readers can better understand the likely future of the President's education initiatives.
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