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

2001年《不让一个孩子掉队法案》(NCLB)的通过被认为是自1965年联邦政府参与教育政策以来最重要的联邦教育立法。到目前为止，NCLB是20多年来相互关联的立法改革的顶峰，这些改革已经慢慢地将教育政策从基本上属于地方和州的领域转变为对联邦政治至关重要的政策。这一运动还反映了对教育目的(增加个人在标准化考试中的成绩)和实现这一目标的手段(国家标准、考试和基于成绩的问责)的特殊愿景。本文试图回答关于教育政策转变的两组问题：1)鉴于历史上美国人对教育目的的看法存在多种观点，标准、测试和责任是如何成为主导教育范式的？哪些理念、利益和制度是推动这一转变的核心，谁的利益和理念在这一过程中被边缘化？2)联邦政府如何成为一个自建国以来一直属于州和地方的地区的合法和核心参与者？在一个权力下放在其他方面如此突出的时代，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。我追踪了20世纪80年代两个有代表性的州的关键发展，并研究了联邦参与和基于标准的改革运动中的三个关键事件的案例研究。对于这些案例中的每一个，我收集了一系列的档案数据，并对政策制定者、工作人员、利益集团参与者、州教育部门官员以及知识渊博的记者和学者进行了大约100名关键线人的采访。除了这种以事件为导向的方法外，我还对这一时期主要行为者关于教育的声明和文章进行了内容分析，试图了解关键的“问题”和“解决办法”是如何随着时间的推移而发展到成为政策辩论中重要的主导假设的。我的研究试图为政治社会学和政治学中关于思想、利益和制度如何相互作用以产生重要政策结果的理论辩论做出贡献，并建立一个政策范式如何随时间变化的模型，这是当前思想政治学术中的一个关键缺陷。该项目的更广泛影响包括以下几个方面。这项研究旨在促进关于学校教育的目的，它对实现教育公平和社会正义意味着什么，以及如何最好地实现这些目标。为此，我致力于在一本书以及专栏和杂志文章中发表这项研究的结果，以便接触到广泛的利益攸关方群体，包括公众，他们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，为他们提供一个姗姗来迟的解释，为什么标准和问责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.