Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Transformation of American Educational Policy, 1980-2001

2001年通过的《不让一个孩子掉队法》（NCLB）是自1965年联邦政府参与教育政策以来，联邦教育立法中最重要的一项。NCLB是二十多年来相互关联的立法变革的顶峰（到目前为止），这些变革已经慢慢地将教育政策从主要是地方和州的领域转变为联邦政治的核心。这一运动还反映了对教育目的（提高个人在标准化考试中的成绩）和实现这一目的的手段（国家标准、考试和基于成绩的问责制）的特殊看法。本文试图回答两组问题的这种转变的教育政策：1）鉴于多元的愿景，历史上一直支配着美国人的教育目的的看法，如何标准，测试和问责制成为占主导地位的教育范式？什么样的思想、利益和制度是推动这一转变的核心，谁的利益和思想在这一过程中被边缘化了？2)联邦政府是如何成为一个合法的和核心的球员在一个地区，因为国家的成立属于国家和地方？在一个权力下放如此突出的时代，在共和党政府的领导下，这种情况是如何发生的？我试图用历史的方法来回答这些问题。我跟踪在20世纪80年代的两个有代表性的国家的关键发展，并检查案例研究的三个关键事件的运动走向联邦参与和标准为基础的改革。 对于每一个案例，我都收集了一系列档案数据，并辅以大约100个关键的线人采访，采访对象包括政策制定者、工作人员、利益集团成员、州教育部门官员以及知识渊博的记者和学者。我补充这种事件驱动的方法与内容分析的关键行为者的声明和著作在这一时期的教育，旨在了解关键的“问题”和“解决方案”如何随着时间的推移，他们成为重要的管理假设的政策辩论。我的研究旨在促进政治社会学和政治学的理论辩论，关于思想，利益和制度如何相互作用，以产生重要的政策成果，并制定一个模型，政策范式如何随着时间的推移而转变，在当前的学术思想的政治的关键空白。该项目的广泛影响包括以下方面。 这项研究的目的是促进学校教育的目的，它意味着什么，以实现教育的公平和社会正义，以及如何最好地实现这些目标。为此，我致力于在一本书中发表这项研究的结果，以及在专栏和杂志文章，以达到广泛的利益攸关方，包括公众，谁应该参与这样的对话。至少，我的工作将阐明管理数百万学生和教师日常生活的政策的根源，向他们解释为什么标准和问责制是目前普遍存在的学校改革方法。

The passage of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was by all accounts the most significant piece of federal education legislation since the federal government became involved in education policy in 1965. NCLB is the capstone (thus far) of more than two decades worth of inter-related legislative changes that have slowly transformed education policy from a largely local and state domain to one that is central to federal politics. This movement also reflects a particular vision of both the purpose of education (increased individual achievement on standardized tests) and the means for accomplishing this end (state standards, testing and performance-based accountability). This dissertation seeks to answer two sets of questions about this transformation of educational policy: 1) Given the plurality of visions that have historically governed Americans' views of the purpose of education, how did standards, testing and accountability become the dominant educational paradigm? What ideas, interests, and institutions were central in pushing this transformation, and whose interests and ideas were marginalized in this process? 2) How did the federal government become a legitimate and central player in an area that had since the nation's inception belonged to states and localities? How did this happen under a Republican administration in an era where devolution is otherwise so prominently featured? I seek to answer these questions using a historical approach. I trace key developments in two representative states during the 1980s, and examine case studies of three key events in the movement toward federal involvement and standards-based reform. For each of these cases I am collecting a range of archival data, complemented by approximately 100 key informant interviews with policy-makers, staffers, interest group actors, state education department officials, and knowledgeable journalists and academics. I supplement this event-driven approach with a content analysis of key actors' statements and writings on education over this period that seeks to understand how key "problems" and "solutions" developed over time to the point that they became important governing assumptions in the policy debates. My research seeks to contribute to the theoretical debate in political sociology and political science about how ideas, interests, and institutions interact to produce important policy outcomes, and to develop a model of how policy paradigms shift over time, a critical lacuna in the current scholarship on the politics of ideas. The broader impacts of this project include the following. This research is intended to stimulate about the purpose of schooling, what it would mean to achieve equity and social justice in education, and how best to accomplish these objectives. To that end, I am committed to publishing the results of this research in a book, as well as in op-eds and magazines articles, in order to reach the broad group of stakeholders, including the public, who should be involved in such a conversation. At the very least, my work will illuminate the roots of the policies that govern the daily lives of millions of students and teachers, offering to them a long overdue explanation for why standards and accountability are currently the ubiquitous method of school reform.