This is an assessment of the reluctance of American education institutions to undergo change and reform at a time when it is considered necessary. The lack of public confidence in educational institutions is discussed along with the subsequent consequences.

Shaping Education Policy is a comprehensive overview of education politics and policy, which provides conceptual guideposts for future policy development and strategies for change. Leading scholars explore the interacting social processes and the dynamics of power politics as they intersect with democratic ideals and shape school performance. Chapters cover major themes that have influenced education, including the Civil Rights Movement, federal involvement, the accountability mov...

Disciplining the Poor explains the transformation of poverty governance over the past forty years—why it happened, how it works today, and how it affects people. In the process, it clarifies the central role of race in this transformation and develops a more precise account of how race shapes poverty governance in the post–civil rights era. Connecting welfare reform to other policy developments, the authors analyze diverse forms of data to explicate the racialized origins, operati...

One of the major dilemmas facing the administrative state in the United States today is discerning how best to harness for public purposes the dynamism of markets, the passion and commitment of nonprofit and volunteer organizations, and the public-interest-oriented expertise of the career civil service. Researchers across a variety of disciplines, fields, and subfields have independently investigated aspects of the formidable challenges, choices, and opportunities this dilemma poses for go...

In this timely and important new book, Gary Anderson provides a devastating critique of why a managerial role for educational leaders is counterproductive, especially for improving opportunities for low-income students and students of color, and instead proposes ways of re-theorizing educational leadership to emphasize its advocacy role. Advocacy Leadership lays out a post-reform agenda that moves beyond the neo-liberal, competition framework to define a new accountabilit...

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda. The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's univer...

We live in an age dominated by the cult of efficiency. Efficiency in the raging debate about public goods is often used as a code word to advance political agendas. When it is used correctly, efficiency is important: it must always be part of the conversation when resources are scarce and citizens and governments have important choices to make among competing priorities.Even when the language of efficiency is used carefully, that language alone is not enough. Unilingualism will not...

A sweeping assessment of the state of higher education today from former Harvard president Derek BokHigher Education in America is a landmark work--a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the current condition of our colleges and universities from former Harvard president Derek Bok, one of the nation's most respected education experts. Sweepingly ambitious in scope, this is a deeply informed and balanced assessment of the many strengths as well as th...

Long a fruitful area of scrutiny for students of organizations, the study of institutions is undergoing a renaissance in contemporary social science. This volume offers, for the first time, both often-cited foundation works and the latest writings of scholars associated with the "institutional" approach to organization analysis.In their introduction, the editors discuss points of convergence and disagreement with institutionally oriented research in economics and political science,...

THE JOSSEY-BASS READER ON Contemporary Issues in Adult EducationWith contributions from leading experts in the field, The Jossey-Bass Reader on Contemporary Issues in Adult Education collects in one volume the best previously published literature on the issues and trends affecting adult education today. The volume includes influential pieces from foundational authors in the profession such as Eduard C. Lindeman, Alain Locke, and Paulo Freire, as well as cu...

The growth of what some academics refer to as 'the policy analysis movement' represents an effort to reform certain aspects of government behaviour. The policy analysis movement is the result of efforts made by actors inside and outside formal political decision-making processes to improve policy outcomes by applying systematic evaluative rationality to the development and implementation of policy options. This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the many ways in which the policy ana...

This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our ...