Four Key Themes in Perkins III Reauthorization: A Political Analysis

Contemporary standards-based educational reform has been touted by a number of U.S. presidents in the past thirty years, particularly at a time when the nation first was awakened to the charge that schools were doing a mediocre job in preparing students for the global workforce. The federal role in educational policymaking over that time has been guided by a conservative sensibility among a centrist accord of Republican and Democratic legislators that focuses upon accountability through higher standards and testing, privatization efforts including vouchers and choice plans, and the reduction of funding governmental social services including education.Apple (1996)has described this trend in education as theconservative restorationformed by a right-leaning hegemonic alliance among two groups: neoliberals and neoconservatives. The former group, neoliberals, embraces market values maximizing individuals’ choices and desire a weakened federal role in the funding and direction of educational affairs. The latter group, neoconservatives, view the moral authority of an idealized past and wish to maintain a strong federal presence in the control and management of public schooling. Although legislators in Washington DC exhibit an uneasy alliance of competing views on the role of the state in educational affairs, they are unified in the call for business-like managerialism: “a perspective that considers restructuring, accountability, performance or ‘performativity,’ and measurement of educational activities as solutions to both social and educational problems” (Stromquist, 2002, p. 40).