Education is intimately connected to many of the most important and contentious questions confronting American
society, from race to jobs to taxes, and the competitive pressures of the global economy have only enhanced its
significance. Elementary and secondary schooling has long been the province of state and local governments; but
when George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, it signaled an unprecedented expansion
of the federal role in public education.
This book provides the first balanced, in-depth analysis of how No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law. Patrick
McGuinn, a political scientist with hands-on experience in secondary education, explains how this happened despite
the country's long history of decentralized school governance and the longstanding opposition of both liberals
and conservatives to an active, reform-oriented federal role in schools. His book provides the essential political
context for understanding NCLB, the controversies surrounding its implementation, and forthcoming debates over
its reauthorization.
Using education as a case study of national policymaking, McGuinn also shows how the struggle to define the federal
role in school reform took center stage in debates over the appropriate role of the government in promoting opportunity
and social welfare. He places the evolution of the federal role in schools within the context of broader institutional,
ideological, and political changes that have swept the nation since the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, chronicles the concerns raised by the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, and shows how education became a major
campaign issue for both parties in the 1990s. McGuinn argues that the emergence of swing issues such as education
can facilitate major policy change even as they influence the direction of wider political debates and partisan
conflict.
McGuinn traces the Republican shift from seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education to embracing federal
leadership in school reform, then details the negotiations over NCLB, the forces that shaped its final provisions,
and the ways in which the law constitutes a new federal education policy regime-against which states have now begun
to rebel. He argues that the expanded federal role in schools is probably here to stay and that only by understanding
the unique dynamics of national education politics will reformers be able to craft a more effective national role
in school reform.