ABSTRACT
There have been times and places in the past where education and big-time politics did not, or at least were not supposed to mix. Such conditions, if they ever really did exist, are certainly no longer the mode. Sometimes in contemporary settings, education is mostly politics, and, sometimes, though more rarely, politics is mostly education. In an earlier essay, we explored the economic correlates of national education reform. 1 This chapter assumes a new realpolitik of education and posits a theoretical explanation of national education-reform politics. The intent is to explore how and why education issues periodically gain prominence on the political agenda, escalate beyond the constraints of conventional special-interest group-dominated dynamics, and enter the larger realm of ‘high politics’.
