Education at High Speed: Governance, Power, and Policy in North Dakota’s Progressive Era

• In Event: Reckoning with the Impact of Policy to Understand the Present

Abstract

In 1916, North Dakota underwent a significant political shift when the Nonpartisan League, an agrarian socialist movement, won control of the state government. Within education, the state pushed for rapid modernization. and county superintendents implemented these policies to the extent allowed by their local school board. Utilizing materials from archives across the state, this research explores policy processes across multiple levels of education governance. Document analysis of communications, newspapers, and school records shows that the power dynamic between localities and the state varied based on the issue and policy solution discussed. This policy analysis challenges reductive characterizations of the local/state dynamic in rural spaces by exploring the fluidity of power across levels of governance based on the issue.

Author

• Kevin Read, University of North Dakota