Principals, Power, and Policy: Enacting “Supplemental Educational Services”

Abstract

Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), schools that do not make adequate yearly progress must offer afterschool tutoring, entitled “Supplemental Educational Services” (SES). Drawing on 40 months of ethnographic research and utilizing actor–network theory, this article shows principals co-opting the SES provisions to do what they determine is required for their schools, often in defiance of NCLB. It demonstrates how, within an increasingly centralized governance of public schools and heightened private intervention, principals emerge as powerful policy actors. [principal, policy, actor–network theory, NCLB, SES]