The Educated State: Competing and Complementary Policy Alliances in Public Education

• In Event: The Politics of Education in Politicized Times: Democracy, Knowledge, and Policy

Abstract

Purpose
Contemporary public education policies, classroom practices, and discourse about schools reveal long-standing contestations about the political purposes of U.S. public education (Labaree, 1997). These contestations indicate the central role of ideas (Smith, 2014) and dynamic coalitions of political actors that shape the institutions governing schools. These coalitions influence how schools are structured, what should be taught, and education’s broader political purposes. This article investigates the competing and often complementary political coalitions that generate and circulate these normative ideas that drive public perception, institutional arrangements, and educational policy, and may come at the expense of other individual, civic, and transformative educational aims.

Framework and Analytical Approach
This conceptual article extends and expands the political institutional orders framework (King & Smith, 2005) to identify and theorize complementary, though often competing, “public education” policy alliances and their members (Smith & King, 2024). Drawing on historical institutionalist approaches from American Political Development (Orren & Skowronek, 2004), I analyze policy documents, congressional records, and both draft and enacted legislation. I theorize four primary and non-exhaustive “public education” policy alliances that have distinct policy aims and often overlapping membership: schooling for work; democratic flourishing; patriotic assimilation; and Christian values.

Findings and Argument
The schooling for work political institutional order—which dominates contemporary policymaking—is a public-private coalition that continually (re)positions K-12 schools as politically incontestable sites for training future workers, institutionalizing normative ideas about the central place of the economy in society and thus schools through vocationalized curriculum (Becker 1993; Goldin & Katz 2008). The democratic flourishing policy alliance is guided by ideas grounded in democratic equality and human flourishing (Brighouse, 2006; Gutmann, 1987), employing schools to enhance the harmony and cohesiveness of civil society, improve capacities for deliberation, provide the capabilities for a flourishing life, and remediate issues of formal political participation. By contrast, the patriotic assimilation policy alliance works to instill patriotism through schools and curriculum (Paglayan, 2022). The patriotic assimilation policy alliance appears concerned with the consequences of internal conflict, divisive concepts, and criticism of the (historical) nation, including the teaching of “Critical Race Theory,” or structural racism (Stitzlein 2022). Often in tandem with the patriotic assimilation policy alliance, the Christian values policy alliance works to protect and enhance the place of religion in and through public education (Greenawalt 2005; Justice & MacMacLeod, 2016). The Christian values policy alliance works to expand school choice through voucher programs for use in religious schools; protect Christian prayer in schooling spaces; advocates for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design; and censors LGBTQIA+ students and curricular materials, among other goals. I develop illustrative cases to demonstrate and evidence each of these frames, showing points of intersection and competition.

Significance
The identification and theorizing of these policy alliances illustrates how the developmental processes and institutional configurations governing public education are inextricably tied to ideas held and circulated by coalitions of organized and private interests. This article offers a portable conceptual framework with regards to “public education” policy alliances that may be used to interpret and evaluate political actors and discursive objectives.

Author

• Nora Reikosky, University of Houston