From the New Deal to the War on Schools: Race, Inequality, and the Rise of the Punitive Education State

Description

In an era defined by political polarization, both major U.S. parties have come to share a remarkably similar understanding of the education system as well as a set of punitive strategies for fixing it. Combining an intellectual history of social policy with a sweeping history of the educational system, Daniel S. Moak looks beyond the rise of neoliberalism to find the origin of today's education woes in Great Society reforms. In the wake of World War II, a coalition of thinkers gained dominance in U.S. policymaking. They identified educational opportunity as the ideal means of addressing racial and economic inequality by incorporating individuals into a free market economy. The passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965 secured an expansive federal commitment to this goal. However, when social problems failed to improve, the underlying logic led policymakers to hold schools responsible. Moak documents how a vision of education as a panacea for society's flaws led us to turn away from redistributive economic policies and down the path to market-based reforms, No Child Left Behind, mass school closures, teacher layoffs, and other policies that plague the public education system to this day. Cover Half Title Page Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Used in the Text Introduction. The Politics of the Federal Education State: Faith in Education and the Turn toward Punitiveness Part I. From Political Economy to Equal Opportunity: The Struggle over Ideas, 1932–1965 Chapter One. To Reconstruct or Adjust? The Battle within the Progressive Education Movement, 1920s–1940s Chapter Two. The Achievement of Civil Rights within the Status Quo: Race and Class in Black Political Visions, 1930s–1950s Chapter Three. Courts, Communism, and Commercialism: The Rise of the Liberal Incorporationist Coalition Part II. From Ideology to Institutionalization: The Foundations of the Federal Education State, 1965–1980 Chapter Four. The Great Society and the Ideological Origins of the Federal Education State Chapter Five. From Belief to Blame: Federal Funding and the Punitive Policy Shift Conclusion. The Enduring Legacy of the Liberal Incorporationist Education State: Persistence and Possibility in the Current Era Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z