Reading the Future of Education Policy
Recent efforts to read the tea leaves for insights into education policy bring to mind a somewhat unsettling analogy to Sovietologists of the Cold War era. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, expert commentary focused on divining the inclinations of top leaders by poring over speeches and public documents, looking for nuance in inflection, finding clues in who said what to whom and where.
Today's hyperfocus on President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a few key members of Congress similarly tries to distinguish feints from genuine commitments, hints from tactical spin.
And, with education having played a relatively minor role in the 2012 campaign, with Arne Duncan expected to continue as secretary (at least for now), and with federal budget battles, health care, and other national concerns likely to divert attention from education issues, it's easy to see why most projections suggest—with a few minor changes in nuance and inflection—essentially...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or start a 2-week FREE trial.
Subscribe to Education Week
You Save 20% or More!
Access selected articles, e-newsletters and more!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
Sponsored Whitepapers
• Best Practices in Information Management, Reporting and Analytics for Education
• Smart infrastructure report to get your district ready for future IT needs.
• Integrating Social and Emotional RTI to Improve Student Performance
• Taming the wild west: How America’s third largest school district manages PCs, Macs, and iPads
• Overcoming the Odds: Getting Every Student to College YES Prep Shares Its Success Story
- Superintendent
- Ann Arbor Public Schools, Ann Arbor, MI
- Superintendent
- Round Rock ISD, Round Rock, TX
- Chief Academic Officer
- Maryland State Department of Education, MD
- Superintendent
- Portola Valley School District, Portola Valley, CA
- Principal
- Roaring Fork School District, Carbondale, CO