Activists fed up with school closures, masking policies, and curricular choices interrupted school-board meetings around the nation. The parental protests, together with school responses to the COVID pandemic, acquired a partisan edge. Republican and Democratic governors regularly disagreed about the necessity of mask wearing, social distancing,…

The 15th annual "Education Next" survey, conducted in June 2021, yields a host of specific results that reveal one large fact about the current state of public opinion on American education: The public is cautious--extremely cautious. In the presence of a still-circulating COVID-19 virus, a large percentage of parents and the broader…

Discusses the busing controversy, the increasing demand for community control of schools, and the general discontent with the public school system through an analysis of school desegregation in Chicago. (Author)

Summarizes the organizational process and political bargaining models of policy change, and considers the rational decision-making model as an alternative. Models are interrelated with each other to show how each reveals a dimension of the politics of school decentralization. (Author/AM)

Interest groups have historically contributed more to the maintenance of existing national educational policies and programs than to the creation or shaping of new ones. The uncertain political acceptance of the recently increased federal role in education complicates attempts to predict the degree of change in policy development to expect during…

The utility of incorporating organizational needs of political elites into explanations of ideological innovation is demonstrated in a case study analysis of the rise of Black Power in the late 1960s. (Author)