Davies on Government Regulation of Schools

This post reviews Gareth Davies, See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan(U Press of Kansas, 2007).

Not so long ago conservatives wanted the federal government out of education entirely, yet it was the Bush administration and a Republican Congress that gave us No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a revision of Lyndon Johnson’s original great society education legislation that vastly increases federal intrusiveness into local educational issues.  Why?  Davies, a Lecturer in American History at Oxford University and author of the award-winning From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism, here describes the steady growth of federal regulation of public education in the United States from its tentative beginnings in the mid 1960s to its full flourishing under the Reagan administration, showing throughout that both liberals and conservatives have used big government to accomplish their educational agendas. 

Read Full Post »