In an era where many states' postsecondary education governance dynamics are evolving, we set out to understand whether state-level governing boards with centralized governance functions affected institutions' decisions to engage in in-person instruction during the fall of 2020, the first fall of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined sociopolitical…

This article examines the shift in the locus of decision-making authority across more than 25 years of policy efforts to improve teaching effectiveness. Previously the province of local government, states assumed the lion's share of authority for teaching policy during the 1980s and 1990s. As states and the federal government rose to education…

The Race to the Top (RTTT) program, announced by the Obama Administration in 2009, represented the largest competitive grant in the history of U.S. education. Despite the amount of money available and the dire condition of most state budgets in that year, however, some states chose not to apply for funding and the remainder submitted applications…

Given that education is a highly politicized institution whose benefits are shared inequitably among its supporters, it should be evident that educational reforms fail (or succeed) more often for political reasons than because of technical or programmatic differences. To illustrate, this article examines a large international assistance project,…