Whose Educational Policy? The Decline of State Boards and State Departments of Education

• In Event: 49.039 - Moving Beyond Tradition: Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis

Abstract

The quantity and intensity of educational policy activity in the U.S. yields the impression of robust state and federal education governments. Yet, traditional, centralized and hierarchial forms of government are in decline (Eggers, 2008). Indeed the role of formal government agencies like state boards of education and state departments of education is being redefined and remade, in large measure, by a new form of networked governance representing a variety of philanthropic and business interests in education policy and service delivery. Informed by the work of Ball and Junemann (2012), this paper traces developments and changes in forms of governance in several states within the U.S. Our work, which employs critical network ethnography to examine actors within the education policy sector over the last twenty years, uses network as a method for charting and capturing relationships and as a tool for analyzing those relationships and their impact. Importantly, the shifts in educational governance represent more than structural redesign and the inclusion/exclusion of individual policy and political actors; rather, the shifts introduce new ways of knowing, values and objectives into the system. As such, the reconfiguration of educational governance has significant implications for the field of education, implications that extend beyond formal educational policy and its implementation, to issues of power, influence, problem definition, and educational practice.

Authors

• Michelle D. Young, University Council for Educational Administration

• Amy L. Reynolds, University of Virginia