Understanding Education Policy Making and Policy Change in the American States

Writing only a few short years ago, two of this chapter’s authors commented on the vast policy changes that seemed to have engulfed America’s K-12 and higher education sectors since the mid-1980s (McLendon & Cohen-Vogel, 2008). In K-12 education, we noted, states had adopted new curriculum standards, embarked on innovative teacher certification regimens, established new assessment and accountability regimes, experimented with incentives programs linking teacher compensation with student performance, litigated hundreds of school finance lawsuits, and witnessed the ascendancy and retreat—and re-ascendance—of countless other “reform” initiatives at the local, state, and national levels.