Education policy: Recent e-books
This is a guide for those starting research on education policy and the impact of the state upon education.
Recent e-books
Teach truth: the struggle for antiracist education by Jesse Hagopian
Publication Date: 2025In the face of relentless attacks on antiracist education, a much-needed reckoning with the roots of this latest wave of censorship and an urgent call to action to defend education. In just the last few years, scores of states have introduced or passed legislation that would require teachers to lie to students about structural racism and other forms of oppression. Books have been cut from curricula and pulled from school library shelves. Teachers have been fired and threatened with discipline.The education wars: a citizen's guide and defense manual by Jennifer C. Berkshire; Jack Schneider
Publication Date: 2024A perfectly timed book for the educational resistance--those of us who believe in public schools Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are seeking to ban books, limit what educators can teach, and threaten the very foundations of public education. What's behind these efforts? Why are our schools suddenly so vulnerable? And how can the millions of Americans who love their public schools fight back? In this concise, hard-hitting guide, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider answer these questions and chart a way forward.Becoming the system: a raciolinguistic genealogy of bilingual education in the post-civil rights era by Nelson Flores
Publication Date: 2024Bilingual education is usually framed as a tool of antiracism. In Becoming the System, author Nelson Flores challenges that framework by examining the ways that institutionalizing bilingual education in the post-Civil Rights Era in the United States has served to maintain rather than challenge racial hierarchies.Exploring educational equity at the intersection of policy and practice by José. Sánchez-Santamaría (Ed.); Brenda Boroel Cervantes (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2024Exploring Educational Equity at the Intersection of Policy and Practice dives deep into the heart of the equity crisis, synthesizing innovative scholarship to illuminate the multifaceted challenges within the educational system. By critically examining the evolution and various dimensions of educational equity on a global scale, the book presents the intricate web of issues that require our attention. From this thorough analysis, this book propels readers toward a transformative journey, offering methodologically robust interventions and evidence-based insights.Deliberative policymaking: redesigning how we make education policy by Elizabeth Grant
Publication Date: 2024In Deliberative Policymaking, Elizabeth Grant advances a fresh framework for making collective decisions about US schools. Grant argues that education policy itself can be made fundamentally better by improving education policymaking methods. Informed by accounts of recent policymaking actions as well as her own considerable experience as a federal-level policymaker, she offers a keen assessment of which components of existing education policy and policymaking have been effective and which have not.Educational pluralism and democracy: how to handle indoctrination, promote exposure, and rebuild America's schools by Ashley Rogers Berner
Publication Date: 2024In Educational Pluralism and Democracy, education policy expert Ashley Rogers Berner envisions a K-12 education system that serves both the individual and the common good. Calling for education reform that will enable US public schools to fulfill the longstanding promise of American education, Berner proposes a radical reimagining of both the structure and content of US public school systems. She urges policymakers to embrace educational pluralism, an internationally common model in which the government funds diverse types of schools that deliver more universal content.What comes after lunch?: alternative measures of economic and social disadvantage and their implications for education research by Thomas Downes (Ed.); Kieran M. Killeen (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2024"A large and growing literature in learning sciences and in the field of education itself has pivoted towards studies that explore the relationship between social/emotional health and the learning of children. The growing body of research on social/emotional health and learning (e.g. Gershoff, Aber, Raver, and Lennon, 2007) suggests that more refined measures of wealth, income and hardship more fully account for the effects of economic disadvantage than does FRPL."Without a prayer: religion and race in New York City public schools by Leslie Beth Ribovich
Publication Date: 2024Without a Prayer redefines secularization and desegregation as intrinsically linked. Using New York City as a window into a national story, the volume argues that these rulings failed to successfully remove religion from public schools, because it was worked into the foundation of the public education structure, especially how public schools treated race and moral formation. Moreover, even public schools that were not legally segregated nonetheless remained racially segregated in part because public schools rooted moral lessons in an invented tradition--Judeo-Christianity--and in whiteness.Fascism on trial : education and the possibility of democracy by Henry A. Giroux; Anthony R. DiMaggio
Publication Date: 2024This book interrogates rising fascism in America. It spotlights the major facets of fascism that increasingly characterize contemporary US politics, in relation to political authoritarianism, the rise of anti-intellectualism, the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, the glorification of political street violence and state violence, rising white supremacy, and the militarization of US political discourse. Alongside this, Giroux and DiMaggio show how the assault on critical education and pedagogy is central to the fascist program.Publicization: how public and private interests can reinvent education for the common good by Jonathan Gyurko
Publication Date: 2024How public are America's public schools? They may be tax funded and free, but the effects of market-based policies, exclusionary governance, insufficient funding, and structural inequities impair schools' ability to prepare future citizens, workers, neighbors, and stewards of the planet. Gyurko offers a fresh look at the "publicness" of American education through historical accounts, scholarly research, first-hand reporting, and political analyses.Horace's hope, Friedman's folly: the purpose and promise of public common schools in a democratic republic by Curtis J. Cardine
Publication Date: 2024Horace's Hope, Friedman's Folly explains the forces behind the current efforts to privatize education. It also works to debunk the idea that public education should be based on a capitalistic model of action that places education of our youth into the hands of corporations.Defending public education: when partisanship, anarchic dissent, and universal singularity attack by Jeff Swensson
Publication Date: 2024Throughout this discussion, the tactics and intentions of the foes of public schools are called-out for their devastating impact on teaching, learning, and social reality. This book is a clarion call to defend traditional public schools and their role as the launching pad for the intellectual autonomy and open futures that all US students deserve.Culturally sustaining policymaking in indigenous communities: partnering to promote lasting change by Aprille J. Phillips
Publication Date: 2024The author scrutinizes how leaders and intermediaries in Nebraska, involved at various tiers of policy development and reform, conceptualized and implemented school accountability policy in Indian country. In particular, Phillips explores state-directed reform efforts in a school on the Santee Sioux Reservation consistently labeled as failing and persistently experiencing intervention from outsiders presented as experts. The book interrogates who gets to define educational quality, who counts as an expert on improving schools, and what improvement actually looks like. Additionally, the text highlights the way local educators and members of the community employed everyday tactics and incognito acts of improvement to reshape school turnaround efforts.Disrupting the teacher opportunity gap: aligning 12 processes for high-expertise teaching by Jon Saphier
Publication Date: 2024The missing element in 70 years of school reform is a surround-sound focus on High-Expertise Teaching. We could have it in any district, regardless of zip code, if we reengineered the twelve processes that impact teachers' knowledge and skill.
2023
The arc of educational change: how the collaboration of philosophers, activists, teachers, and policymakers has transformed education by Donald Parkerson; Jo Ann Parkerson
Publication Date: 2023This book takes a look at American educational history and focuses on the collaboration between teachers, policymakers, philosophers, and activists.Duck and cover: confronting and correcting dubious practices in education by Rick Ginsberg; Yong Zhao
Publication Date: 2023In the 1950s and 1960s, students practiced ducking under their desks in case of an atomic bomb attack. We know that this was silly and provided no protection and many school practices that are popular today are equally silly. This book explores a wide range of what the authors label "duck and cover" policies--ideas that may have started for good reasons but whose usefulness has declined over time, ideas that may lack sound theoretical foundations or long-term evidence, ideas that violate basic logic and reasoning or cause serious and proven damage.Educational accountability and American federalism: moving beyond a test-based approach by John Portz
Publication Date: 2023Develops the concepts of educational accountability and American federalism. Moves beyond the traditional, text-based model of accountability Describes accountability practices at the local, state, and federal levels.The education debate: what everyone needs to know by David Kirp; Kevin Macpherson
Publication Date: 2023In The Education Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know, nationally recognized education authority David Kirp and Kevin Macpherson provide a balanced, accessible overview of the key policy and practice issues in pre k-12 education today. They expose the fault lines of the major debates--what values should guide education and how can those values best be incorporated in policy and practice. They focus on equity and equality of opportunity as well as the tension between market and bureaucratic mechanisms as drivers of school improvement.Emerging trends in education policy: unapologetic progressive conversations by Theodore S. Ransaw, Brian Boggs
Publication Date: 2023"The purpose of Emerging Trends in Education Policy: Unapologetic Progressive Conversations, is to highlight impactful policies, strategies, initiatives, and approaches to educational reform globally, nationally, as well as locally through an edited volume. "It's all about learning: the struggle in choosing traditional public education or privatization by Jeff Swensson
Publication Date: 2023This book examines the purpose, intentions, and consequences of the perspectives battling for control of learning and teaching. This book makes it clear that the time has come for traditional public educators to bypass the marketplace of privatization education and prioritize student-centric learning in traditional US public education.The malfunction of US education policy: elite misinformation, disinformation, and selfishness by Richard P. Phelps
Publication Date: 2023"Policy formation" should be an objective process. However, US education policy is formed by opportunistic "strategic scholars" promoting only their own work. Wealthy foundations, political parties, and celebrity-obsessed journalists sustain this information degradation. The Malfunction of US Education Policy examines how education suffers for it.Our children can't wait: the urgency of reinventing education policy in America by Joseph P. Bishop (Ed.; Becky Pringle (Foreword)
Publication Date: 2023Our Children Can't Wait urges readers to reconsider what education policy is, what it could be, who it is for, and who should be directly shaping it at all levels of government. Experts present a new equity roadmap by bridging scholarship, ideas, and original thinking on education policy as a vehicle for setting a redemptive path forward for reckoning with race in America.Reforming the reform: problems of public schooling in the American welfare state by Susan L. Moffitt; Michaela Krug O'Neill; David K. Cohen
Publication Date: 2023Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate problems created by earlier reforms or existing injustices, all while introducing new complications. In Reforming the Reform, political scientist Susan L. Moffitt, education policy scholar Michaela Krug O'Neill, and the late policy and education scholar David K. Cohen take on a wide-ranging examination of the many intricacies of school reform. With a particular focus on policymakers in the spaces between legislation and implementation, such as the countless school superintendents and district leaders tasked with developing new policies in the unique context of their district or schools, the authors identify common problems that arise when trying to operationalize ambitious reform ideas.Schools of opportunity: 10 research-based models for creating equity by Adam York (Ed.); Kevin Welner (Ed.); Linda Molner Kelley (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2023The National Education Policy Center's Schools of Opportunity project was designed to highlight public high schools that are using research-based practices for closing opportunity gaps in student learning. The project recognizes schools working to address the needs of all students, whether or not those schools have high average test scores. This approach thus embraces a shift away from the nation's myopic focus on outcomes.The school voucher illusion: exposing the pretense of equity by Kevin Welner (Ed.); Gary Orfield (Ed.); Luis A. Huerta (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2023In this book, scholars and national experts untangle this complex story to show how law and policy have aligned to dramatically alter the likely future of American schooling. They offer recommendations for modifying current policies with the goal of capturing more of the originally stated vision of voucher programs--equitable access to quality schooling, protection of all students' civil rights, and advancement of the wider societal goals of a democratic educational system.Sustainable education policy development in China: challenges and strategies by Jian Li
Publication Date: 2023This book serves as a reference for scholars and researchers who are interested and work in research on China's sustainable education policy development, administrators, and stakeholders in China's education system and graduate students who major or minor in the field of comparative and international education.Towards rural education for the common good: resisting capitalist and neoliberal priorities in rural schooling in the United States by Jason A. Cervone
Publication Date: 2023This book examines the current and future state of rural education in North America through the lens of Franco Berardi's Futurability. Through critical examination of examples and current trends toward corporatization and privatization of rural education, the volume highlights how future possibilities and social imagination in rural spaces have been limited by neoliberal forces, capitalist interests, and workforce education. Cervone demonstrates how Berardi's concept of creating future can be embraced to foster critical thought, challenge injustices, and open opportunity.Vouch for this!: Defunding private interests, defending public schools by Thomas S. Poetter, editor
Publication Date: 2023Vouch for This! Defunding Private Interests, Defending Public Schools (A Call to Action) is an effort by doctoral students in Educational Leadership and their professor to understand and challenge the voucher and charter school movements in Ohio and beyond.
2022
Education restated: getting policy right on accountability, teacher pay, and school choice by Elliot Regenstein
Publication Date: 2022Education Restated takes a pragmatic approach to policy change, recognizing that the forces that created today's policies have not gone away--and that on complex issues there are legitimate competing interests. This book harmonizes the best ideas of opposing policy camps and identifies opportunities to strengthen connections between K-12 and early childhood.Finnish early childhood education and care: a multi-theoretical perspective on research and practice by Heidi Harju-Luukkainen (Ed.); Jonna Kangas (Ed.); Susanne Garvis (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2022This book highlights contemporary questions around Early Childhood Education in Finland. It explores a range of issues relating to policies and practices in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). The book features many aspects of the so-called Nordic model that is evident in different practices and policies of the Finnish ECEC system. Among others topics, it discusses playful learning, storycrafting, scientific literacy, pedagogical leadership, family-related variables, and Sami language learning.From the New Deal to the war on schools: race, inequality, and the rise of the punitive education state by Daniel S. Moak
Publication Date: 2022In an era defined by political polarization, both major U.S. parties have come to share a remarkably similar understanding of the education system as well as a set of punitive strategies for fixing it. Combining an intellectual history of social policy with a sweeping history of the educational system, Daniel S. Moak looks beyond the rise of neoliberalism to find the origin of today's education woes in Great Society reforms.Pedagogy of resistance: against manufactured ignorance by Henry A. Giroux
Publication Date: 2022Henry A. Giroux argues that education holds a crucial role in shaping politics at a time when ignorance, lies and fake news have empowered right-wing groups and created deep divisions in society. Education, with its increasingly corporate and conservative-based technologies, is partly responsible for creating these division. It contributes to the pitting of people against each other through the lens of class, race, and any other differences that don't embrace White nationalism.Policy and practice challenges for equality in education by Theresa Neimann (Ed.); Jonathan J. Felix (Ed.); Elena Shliakhovchuk (Ed.); Lynne L. Hindman (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2022Policy and Practice Challenges for Equality in Education takes a multifaceted look at issues of equality and inequality in education as related to policy, practice, resource access, and distribution. As such, this book explores the potential practices in education that serve to mitigate and transform unproductive practices which have left societies scarred by social and educational inequalities. The chapters provide a critical analysis of the manifestations of inequalities in various educational contexts and discerns how broader social inequalities are informed by education-related matters.Policy regimes: college writing and public education policy in the United States by Tyler S. Branson
Publication Date: 2022Author Tyler S. Branson argues that education reform initiatives in the twentieth century can be understood in terms of historical shifts in the ideas, interests, and governing arrangements that inform the teaching of writing. This book reopens the conversation between policy makers and writing teachers, empirically describing the field's institutional/historical relationship to policy and the ways teachers work on a daily basis to carry out policy.Reclaiming democratic education: student and teacher activism and the future of education policy by Christopher D. Thomas
Publication Date: 2022The book looks at a history of student and teacher activism that aligns with the democratic purposes of public education. This history is now colliding with current policies that privilege the economic aims of education and restrict civic agency. By situating contemporary activism within these conflicting traditions, Thomas demonstrates how these activities constitute a rejection of the currently dominant policy paradigm in U.S. education. Thomas concludes with a discussion of how activism provides a foundation from which concerned teachers, school leaders, and policymakers can develop a new model for American education, one that reclaims an education for citizenship.The right to higher education: a political theory by Christopher Martin
Publication Date: 2022The move from educational provision for children to educational provision for adults marks a troubling transformation in this public conversation: from one about how it can improve the lives of all individuals, to one preoccupied with fairness, competition, merit, personal responsibility, and the sharing of benefits and burdens. Problems of status, stratification, and selectivity capture as much, if not more, of our attention than the question of what higher education institutions should aim to achieve.
2021
Building teacher quality in India: examining policy frameworks and implementation outcomes by Alexander W. Wiseman (Ed.); Preeti Kumar (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2021In an era of educational globalization, teacher quality is heralded as a key factor to improve education quality worldwide. Since the 1980s, global, national, and local education policies and reforms have consistently focused on improving teacher quality in order to improve student learning outcomes. In India, which has one of the largest student populations and fastest growing economies in the world, the quality of teaching is blamed for the poor performance by Indian students on internationally-comparative assessments. As a result, Indian national policy documents and curriculum frameworks have repeatedly called for drastic improvements in teacher preparation and performance, but with few widespread results.Disabling the school-to-prison pipeline : the relationship between special education and arrest by Laura Vernikoff
Publication Date: 2021Young people who have received special education services in the United States are vastly overrepresented in juvenile and adult criminal justice systems relative to their numbers in the general population. Although much existing research blames individual kids for getting arrested, school-level policies and practices affect a variety of student outcomes, including involvement with the justice system.Private education policy in China: concepts, problems and strategies by Eryong Xue; Jian Li
Publication Date: 2021This book concentrates exploring the landscape of private education in contemporary China, including pre-schools, compulsory education, high schools, and higher education. Both the developmental opportunities, problems, and strategies in regard to shaping the promotion of China's private education are examined in this book.
2020
America's voucher politics: how elites learned to hide the state by Ursula Hackett
Publication Date: 2020What explains the explosive growth of school vouchers in the last two decades? In America's Voucher Politics, Ursula Hackett shows that the voucher movement is rooted in America's foundational struggles over religion, race, and the role of government versus the private sector.Cases on strategic partnerships for resilient communities and schools by Ursula Thomas (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2020Cases on Strategic Partnerships for Resilient Communities and Schools is uncovers the problems and pitfalls of creating strategic partnerships between schools and other members of the community in which the schools are situated that include for-profit businesses, not-for-profit entities, and private organizations. The book reveals that schools that are thriving effectively do not do so in isolation but as vibrant members and centers of the communities in which they serve students and families.Catastrophe and higher education: neoliberalism, theory, and the future of the humanities by Jeffrey R. Di Leo
Publication Date: 2020Catastrophe and Higher Education argues that the future of the humanities is tied to the fate of theory as a form of resistance to neoliberalism in higher education. It also offers that the fate of the academy may very well be in the hands of humanities scholars who are tasked with either rejecting theory and philosophy in times of catastrophe--or embracing it.The co-opting of education by extremist factions: professing hate by Sarah Gendron
Publication Date: 2020The Co-opting of Education by Extremist Factions: Professing Hate is a study of the ways in which various extremist groups have appropriated education for social manipulation in order to gain political power, and, in some cases, to incite violence.Codeswitching in the classroom : critical perspectives on teaching, learning, policy, and ideology by Jeff MacSwan (Ed.); Christian Jan Faltis (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2020This volume provides an original and wide-ranging discussion of theoretical, pedagogical, and policy-related issues and obstacles in classroom settings--the pedagogical consequences of codeswitching for teaching and learning of language and content in one-way and two-way bilingual classrooms.Educational politics for social justice by Catherine Marshall; Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin; Mark Johnson; Enrique Alemán (Foreword by)
Publication Date: 2020Employing a social justice framework, this book provides educational leaders and practitioners with tools and strategies for grappling with the political fray of education politics. The framework offers ways to critique, challenge, and alter social, cultural, and political patterns in organizations and systems that perpetuate inequities. The authors focus on the processes through which educational politics is enacted, illustrating how inequitable power relations are embedded in our democratic systems.The enduring legacy: structured inequality in America's public schools by Mark Edward Ryan
Publication Date: 2020Enduring Legacy describes a multifaceted paradox--a constant struggle between those who espouse a message of hope and inclusion and others who systematically plan for exclusion. Structured inequality in the nation's schools is deeply connected to social stratification within American society.Multiculturalism and multilingualism at the crossroads of school leadership: exploring leadership theory, policy, and practice for diverse schools by Jon C. Veenis (Ed.); Sylvia Robertson (Ed.); Jami Royal Berry (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2020This volume builds upon emergent understandings about educational leadership and policy in hopes of continuing to refine our understanding of what effective leadership means in linguistically and culturally diverse school contexts. The volume seeks to entrench a deeper understanding of the broader leadership policies and practices that promote the success of linguistically and culturally diverse students, while also recognizing that effective leadership can be highly dependent on context.Schoolhouse burning: public education and the assault on American democracy by Derek W. Black
Publication Date: 2020The full-scale assault on public education threatens not just public education but American democracy itself. Public education as we know it is in trouble. Derek W. Black, a legal scholar and tenacious advocate, shows how major democratic and constitutional developments are intimately linked to the expansion of public education throughout American history.School reform and democracy in East Asia by Masamichi Ueno (Ed.)
Publication Date: 2020This book discusses how East Asia has introduced school and curricular reform to reflect democratic citizenship and globalized skills, knowledge, dispositions, and competencies in the 21st century. It also focuses on the tendencies and reasons students from Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore receive the highest scores in international students' assessment such as PISA and TIMSS; yet their curiosity and motivation for learning are the lowest internationally.Slaying Goliath: the passionate resistance to privatization and the fight to save America's public schools by Diane Ravitch
Publication Date: 2020Diane Ravitch writes of those who have privatized the schools, the Disrupters, who believe America's schools should be run like businesses, with teachers incentivized with threats and bonuses, and schools that need to enter into the age of the gig economy in which children are treated like customers or products.Surrendered: why progressives are losing the biggest battles in education by Kevin K. Kumashiro; William Ayers (Series ed.); Therese Quinn (Series ed.)
Publication Date: 2020In this dynamic book, Kevin Kumashiro offers a necessary intervention to help progressive educators and advocates take back public education. This book highlights how the broader Left (progressives, liberals, Democrats, teacher unions, civil rights organizations) are often talking about the "problem" in ways that were framed by forces contrary to the goals of democracy and justice, and in so doing, are advancing "solutions" that cannot help but be counterproductive.A wolf at the schoolhouse door: the dismantling of public education and the future of school by Jack Schneider; Jennifer Berkshire
Publication Date: 2020A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways--and how to fight back. Betsy DeVos may be the most prominent face of the push to dismantle public education, but she is in fact part of a large movement that's been steadily gaining power and notching progress for decades--amassing funds, honing their messaging, and crafting policies. While support for public education today is stronger than ever, the movement to save our schools remains fragmented, variable, and voluntary.
- Last Updated: Feb 7, 2025 10:38 AM
- URL: https://guides.library.stanford.edu/ed_policy
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