The Politics of the Federal Education State

Abstract

The introduction gives an overview of the purpose of the book, mainly to uncover how K-12 education policy became dominated by punitive policies aimed at schools, teachers, and students. The introduction also outlines the approach of the book, which relies on a broad array of archival data to trace ideological and institutional changes in federal education policy since the 1930s. This chapter introduces the argument that as mid-twentieth century policymakers abandoned the structural approaches to tackling economic inequality, they looked to investment in education as an alternative way to combat unemployment, poverty, and racial inequality. This ultimately set federal education policy on a path of punitive reforms, as schools were unable to solve these problems.