Over the past 50 years, the state role in education policy has expanded to an extent that would once have seemed unbelievable. Indeed, it is now more accurate to speak of state roles in education policy rather than of “the state role.” State legislatures and state boards of education enact policies that set the general framework within which local school districts operate. The states are the key guarantors of equal educational opportunity in the U.S. federal system. Since the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the states have stood in the center of the complex intergovernmental network that governs public education. As state education policy has expanded, so has state education policy research.