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fundamentally different from earlier eras and has produced an unprecedented level of
federal involvement in schools.
Conclusion
The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act signaled the beginning of a new era of
federal education policy and a significantly transformed and expanded national role in our
country’s schools. NCLB was fundamentally a response to the perceived failure of lower
levels of government—despite considerable expenditures and reform activity—to improve
student performance, particularly in the nation’s urban schools and for its most disadvantaged
students, since the release of A Nation at Risk in 1983. But NCLB and the new performance
regime enshrined in it would not have been possible without major changes in the politics of
education that encouraged liberals and conservatives to abandon their longstanding opposition
to an active reform-oriented federal role in education. While much of the debate over the new
federal role has focused on the efficacy of the specific policies contained in NCLB, the law’s
long term success depends in equal measure on developments in the political realm, and in
particular on the sustainability of the new bipartisan consensus around standards and
accountability. In this context, understanding how and why the politics of federal education
policy and the federal role in schools have evolved over time is crucial.
In studying policy change, it is necessary to place political and policymaking
developments in their broader historical context, to create a moving picture.44 Policymaking
44 As Paul Pierson has noted, the attempt to isolate causal variables in political science research has been
somewhat problematic because “the significance of such variables is frequently distorted when they are ripped
from their temporal context. While most contemporary social scientists take a ‘snapshot’ view of political life,
there is often a strong case to be made for shifting from snapshots to moving pictures. This means
systematically situating particular moments (including the present) in a temporal sequence of events and
processes stretching over extended periods. Placing politics in time can greatly enrich our understanding of
complex social dynamics.” Paul Pierson, Politics in Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) 1.
Convention