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See Government Grow

See Government Grow

Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan

by Gareth Davies

Sales Date: September 27, 2007

400 Pages, 6.13 x 9.25 in

Paperback
9780700618552
Published: September 2007

$29.95

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Hardcover
9780700615322
Published: September 2007

$54.95

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Praise
Table of Contents

Winner: Richard E. Neustadt Prize—American Politics Group, Political Studies Assn., UK

When Congress endorsed substantial aid to schools in 1965, the idea that the federal government had any responsibility for public education was controversial. Twenty years later, not only had that controversy dissipated, Washington’s role in education had dramatically expanded. Gareth Davies explores how both conservatives and liberals came to embrace the once daring idea of an active federal role in elementary and secondary education and uses that case to probe the persistence—and growth—of big government during a supposedly antigovernment era.

By focusing on institutional changes in government that accompanied the civil rights revolution, Davies shows how initially fragile programs put down roots, built a constituency, and became entrenched. He explains why the federal role in schools continued to expand in the post-LBJ years as the reform impulse became increasingly detached from electoral politics, centering instead on the courts and the federal bureaucracy. Meanwhile, southern resistance to school desegregation had discredited the “states rights” argument, making it easier for conservatives as well as liberals to seek federal solutions to social problems.

Although LBJ’s landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act deferred to local control, the legislation of the Nixon-Ford years issued directives that posed greater challenges to traditional federalism than Johnson’s grand ideals. As Davies shows, the new political climate saw the achievement of such breakthroughs as mandated bilingual education, school finance reform, and the Education for All Handicapped Children Act—measures that, before the seventies, would have been considered unthinkably intrusive by liberals as well as conservatives. And when Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education, conservatives worked with liberals to derail his agenda.

Davies’ surprising study shows that the distancing of American conservatism from its anti-statist traditions helped pave the way for today’s “big government conservatism,” which enabled a Republican-dominated Congress to pass No Child Left Behind. By revealing the endurance of Great Society values during a period of Republican ascendance, his book opens a window on our political process and offers new insight into what really makes government grow.

“A superb and insightful overview of federal education politics that challenges existing interpretations in several areas such as Nixon’s role in southern school desegregation and the development of bilingual education programs. . . . A readable and fascinating account that will be a model for other scholars and undoubtedly stimulate additional research.”—American Historical Review
“Makes a persuasive case that, despite the ascendancy of the anti-government right, the seeds planted by the Great Society transformed federal-state relations in education.”—Journal of American History
“Will fascinate educational practitioners.”—American School Board Journal
"A must read for those seeking to understand how U.S. education policy reached the high level of funding and regulation we see today, or those with a general interest in American political history and what happens when policy issues become interdependent to stimulate a variety of unintended consequences for decades to come."—APSA Legislative Studies Section Newsletter
"In examining Washington’s entrenchment in elementary and secondary education from its start in the Johnson administration, acceptance under presidents Nixon and Ford, and survival of the Reagan Revolution—the first revolution that was supposed to doom it—Davies explores timeless political realities that make it almost impossible to pull Washington out of the schools."—Cato Journal
"Davies brings care and precision to his study of the process that produced federal education legislation and regulation in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1980s. . . . Davies is consistently persuasive; his research is prodigious, particularly in his exploration of government archives, as well as memoirs and oral histories by policy participants."—Education Next
"This timely book adds to the growing recent scholarship on the resurgence of conservatism. Highly recommended.—Choice
“Spirited and splendidly researched, Davies’s book will force readers to revise their thinking about the course of late twentieth-century political history.”—James T. Patterson, author of Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore
“Reveals the enduring legacy of Great Society liberalism and the limits of the Reagan Revolution. Essential reading for anyone interested in politics and public policy today.”—Donald T. Critchlow, author of The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History
“Magisterial yet incisive, comprehensive but lively, scholarly and accessible.”—Chester E. Finn, Jr., coauthor of Is There Life After Big Government?