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This chapter focuses on the period between 2003 and 2011, which encompasses reaction against No Child Left Behind as well as the Obama administration's ambitious initiatives. It begins by describing the political backlash against the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, showing how it worked to limit the scope of reforms favored by business entrepreneurs, civil rights entrepreneurs, and their allies. Analyzing the agendas of business entrepreneurs, civil rights entrepreneurs, educational liberals, educational conservatives, and state leaders during the failed reauthorization of 2007–8, it argues that the proposals of business entrepreneurs and civil rights entrepreneurs anticipated many of the initiatives of the Obama administration. The chapter then discusses the Obama administration's Race to the Top initiative, illustrating how it extends the logic and principles of the NCLB in an effort to shore up standards-based reforms at the state and local levels. The final section speculates on education policy in the Obama administration in light of the 2010 elections.

This chapter focuses on the period between 1995 and 2002, which was bookended by the “Republican Revolution” against big government and by the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. It begins by reviewing how the so-called Republican Revolution affected the progress of standards-based reforms in Congress and the states between 1994 and 2000. It then shows how these developments shaped the ideas and advocacy of business entrepreneurs, civil rights entrepreneurs, and their allies in Congress. After tracing the various threads that contributed to the reemergence of support for federal leadership of standards-based reform, it examines the politics surrounding enactment of NCLB, both to explain why the legislation passed and understand how it accommodated existing interests and institutions. Finally, the chapter considers how enactment of NCLB set the stage for subsequent intergovernmental struggles over authority in education—in particular, how it influenced presidential candidate Barack Obama's education agenda in the 2008 election campaign.

Following his controversial ascendancy to the presidency, George W. Bush promised to be a ‘uniter, not a divider’. In the field of education, he fulfilled this promise by successfully shepherding the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) into law. Despite the highly charged partisanship of that time, he courted and won the support and co-operation of leading Democrats. Even more extraordinarily, Bush retained the support of his own party in Congress for an education bill that expanded significantly the federal government's influence and involvement in education at the state and local levels. NCLB increased federal education funding to states but reduced states' control over how they spent it. This chapter discusses the politics and policy of education reform in the United States under the Bush administration, focusing on the NCLB. It first looks at the country's previous federal education policy and then considers the passage of NCLB as well as the implementation and future of NCLB.

This chapter examines the Discovery Institute’s aggressive cultivation of political influence at the state and national levels. Its maneuverings in Washington State, Kansas, and Ohio are discussed in detail. The discussion of Kansas includes the establishment of the Intelligent Design Network as a de facto arm of the Discovery Institute and the two organizations’ attempt to insert intelligent design into Kansas’s state science standards. The effort to insert intelligent design into Ohio science standards includes the Discovery Institute’s adoption of terms such as “teach the controversy” to disguise its true aims. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the Discovery Institute’s “Santorum amendment,” an episode in which stealth creationist language was inserted into the legislative history of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001.

This chapter discusses the various policies and educational reforms that have unsettled rural communities in Arkansas. It focuses on Senator Jim Argue's view regarding district consolidation and his argument that investment in schools should be about students and not the community. Another policy arises out of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which requires schools to test students' proficiency and report back their scores. If schools fail to make adequate yearly progress, they are subjected to harsh sanctions, such as school closure.

This chapter describes the work of Les Hanna, principal at George Washington Elementary School in Union City, New Jersey. Not long ago, the job of the principal was to run the school—ordering supplies, balancing the budget, patrolling corridors, and filling out paperwork. That scutwork hasn't gone away, but now principals are expected to be academic leaders as well. They're supposed to know what's being taught and how to teach it effectively; how to interpret ever more sophisticated information about students' performance, using it to help teachers reach the youngsters who haven't caught on; and enlisting parents and local talent in the shared enterprise of supporting the kids. The Principal of George Wahington Elementary chool, Hanna, has focused her efforts into creating a welcoming environment for both students and their parents. She is also dedicated to improving the performance of her students in the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge tests, which effectively define success for the school.

This book comments on and details what it believes are ill-conceived, deceptive, fraudulent practices in education today that, although ostensibly attempting to solve educational problems, are, in actuality, impeding, hindering, distorting and even thwarting the very goals we seek to accomplish, namely, a sound education for every student. In 2002, No Child Left Behind Act became the most dramatic expansion of the federal government's role in public education since the passage of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965, part of Johnson's war on poverty, another war not won. This spuriously written, defective dictum was inflicted on America by former U.S. education secretary Roderick R. Paige and former President George W. Bush in January 2002. It is essential to know the history behind this law that is dismantling and demolishing and demoralizing our public education system today.

This book is dedicated to Bronx students and to all urban students across the United States who not only have had to endure very difficult home problems but also have had to overcome abysmal school conditions that were beyond their control. They were (and still are) subjected to overcrowded classrooms, decaying buildings, and grossly underfunded schools. New York City waited for thirteen years, beginning in 1993, to receive $4.7 billion more a year owed to them as a result of New York State landmark court decisions stating that its financing system denied city students the opportunity to get a sound, basic education. Sadly, after waiting for thirteen years, New York City did not receive the needed funds. In the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, the federal government was supposed to improve failing schools, but just like New York State, it has not provided adequate funding to do the job.

In April 2010 George Carney found himself stacking and banding wooden boards to be made into roof and barn trusses. His new workplace was Roberts and Dybdahl, a lumberyard in Milan, Illinois. Carney was paired with a partner, an automated cutting machine with five enormous shark-toothed saw blades that bit loudly into lumber and dropped boards onto the tray below. Now 51, Carney was using his body to earn a living again, even if the job paid only $9 an hour, a shade above the Illinois minimum. The first week he put in 60 hours. “It was a hard job. It was perfect for me.” On April 29, his ninth day on the job, Carney’s life changed forever, again. Two days after an unremarkable Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection, a two-by-six shot out of the saws like “a ball out of pitching machine.” Its long side smacked right into Carney’s skull, and in an instant his world went dark. In the previous year Carney had been bartending while he lived in his son’s extra bedroom in Matherville, Illinois. He served “fancy, high falutin” drinks at the Oak View Country Club starting in late May 2009, after being unemployed for a couple of months. Members liked Carney because he would remember their names and favorite drink. The “whisky-beer man” learned to make cosmopolitans, martinis, manhattans, and other country club mixes. “I always told myself I was shy, but everyone tells me I’m not. I feel uncomfortable with it, but I seem to be fairly sociable.” In August he added a day job at Milan Lanes, a bowling alley and bar, and was working almost every day. Still, it was a “pretty low point” to be a working-age man living in his son’s extra room. It was a role-reversal that neither of them relished. “You don’t feel like you got anything,” Carney said of the year after leaving the Town Tavern. Then Carney’s father succumbed to cancer in March 2010.