This article develops a framework, drawn from earlier work by education scholars, as well as broader theoretical insights on advocacy and policymaking developed by political scientists, for thinking about education politics in the post-No Child Left Behind era. The authors use this framework to examine the evolution of the national education policy arena over the past ten years. The authors describe the key political dynamics and actors which drove education policymaking at the national level for forty years after the passage of ESEA in 1965; and then explain the forces which transformed this educational status quo in the 1990s and led to the passage of NCLB in 2001. Finally, the article analyzes how the law itself has altered the national politics of education, including the growth and diversification of the think tank sector in the inter-reauthorization period. Implications for the future of federal education policy and politics are considered. (Contains 6 notes.)