Political Spectacle and the Fate of American Schools (Critical Social Thought)

The authors argue that the most influential and well-known educational policy programs in the past 30 years are not based on democratic consensus, but are instead formulated by the political community as symbolic efforts meant to generate personal partisan gain. Library Journal No Child Left Behind. A Nation at Risk. School choice. Tennessee's STAR program and the Texas Assessment and Accountability System (TAAS). Yes, all of these educational policy programs deal with school reform, but, as the authors of this book assert, they have something else in common: politics. Smith (education leadership & policy studies, Arizona State Univ., Phoenix) and her coauthors here explore our nation's political climate and show its relationship to educational policy. They describe situations in which politics directly affects educational philosophy at specific schools and explain the role played by the media in this "political spectacle." They also show how research can be manipulated to produce the desired results and explain why the business world is so interested in educational policy. In the final chapter, attention is drawn to key problem areas in our society, with the authors showing, e.g., that disparities in wealth mirror disparities in school populations. Although the focus on today's political climate will quickly date this book, it is nonetheless recommended for academic and larger public libraries as a revealing discussion of our current dilemmas.-Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. This timely and important book is both critical and constructive. As educational policy becomes one of our major political backgrounds and the connection between politics and policy is both underscored and criticized, Mary Lee Smith and her associates take their criticism one decisive step further, examining the transitive relation between politics and actual classroom practice. They show that educational policy serves as political propaganda directed at an electorate desperate for change. They refocus current educational debates, casting them in their true partisan light while demonstrating how the public can recognise symbolic policies and participate in the creation of policy that truly serves the public good