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

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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.