ABSTRACT

As study of the politics of education developed after WWII, researchers investigated the play of infl uence in federal, state, and local education matters, the infl uence of interest groups on policy, the politics of teaching and curriculum, and even political infl uence in classrooms. Some probed the ways in which teaching and curriculum became occasions for political dispute, while others explored how interest groups and government decisions infl uenced teaching and curriculum. In all of these studies, researchers probed how teaching and other aspects of schools were shaped by state and local school systems and other agencies; they did little to probe the infl uence that teaching, curriculum, and other elements of education might exert on politics.