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Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a thirty year old policy whose implementation continues to be debated today among all three institutions of government in the United States. Although the focus of these current Title IX debates surrounds the issue of gender equity in athletics, Title IX legislation as originally written and debated did not reference sport. Title IX states that: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. (P.L. 92-318 sec. 901) Title IX arrived on the agenda as a means of combating sex discrimination in education. In particular, those who fought for Title IX’s passage focused on issues such as equal pay, tenure track opportunities, and sex bias in school texts. So how and when was it that Title IX’s focus shifted from gender equity in education to gender equity in sport? What factors led to this shift in the agenda? Some would argue that Title IX’s policy focus shifted to sport because that’s where outside interest groups and lobbyists chose to focus their attention. This may be true to a certain extent, as there is a plethora of evidence that illustrates that interest groups were in fact focusing their arguments on gender inequity in athletics when Title IX’s proposed regulations were released; however, the question concerning agenda change is still left unanswered. Why did these groups shift and narrow their focus from larger issues of gender discrimination in education to gender equity in athletics at that particular time? Some would argue that discrimination in athletics was more easily quantifiable than discrimination in education in general; therefore, those groups fighting for equity in education used sport as a focal point. This paper, however, argues that Title IX’s history reveals the importance of political timing among all three institutions of government in understanding policy agenda change. As John Kingdon argues in his work, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, policy change is most likely to occur when problems, solutions and political events align themselves to open policy windows, which create opportunities for change. This paper goes a step beyond Kingdon by discussing the importance of all three institutions of government and their institutional processes for understanding policy change. Title IX’s history also reveals that the policy agenda within the institutions of government shifted to athletics within a political and social context that enhanced thed development of this policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002, 28 states have shown opposition through a variety of responses including producing legislation, turning to the judicial system for recourse, and passing symbolic resolutions. This paper completes a cross-state analysis to determine why so much opposition exists and how states’ responses have influenced Congress’s inability to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, under which NCLB was created. States showing opposition vary tremendously, including by size, average family income, political ideology, and academic achievement prior to passage. By analyzing policy feedbacks due to implementation concerns of states, this paper adds to current scholars’ theories about the implementation process. By recognizing how excluded actors from the adoption of NCLB have influenced previously supportive actors of the law this paper combines elements of both top-down and bottom-up implementation approaches discussed in the literature to provide a richer and more accurate understanding of the implementation process. The starting point for such a study comes from understanding the response of those who have struggled with implementing NCLB. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will argue against the implementation of public policies which require or encourage individual teacher bonuses based on student test scores. Teacher incentive programs as they are now conceived and implemented in Public Education Policy are unable to produce higher levels of student success. Student achievement is often characterized as job skills learned in comparison to other students worldwide. Success and failure in student achievement should no longer be measured in terms of standardized test scores. Due to outsourcing, an increasing number of jobs in the United States require applicants to acquire advanced degrees. The traditional basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to keep American students competitive with advanced international students. Standardized testing, because it evaluates only basic skills, is not an adequate measure of student success. In order to better account for worldwide competition, measures of student achievement should compare job skills between American and international students in terms of human capital. Programs which link teacher pay to test scores will only stagnate the intellectual development of students. Public policy and education literature argues that incentive-based pay for teachers encourages instructors to focus on test-taking skills and basics without developing the critical and analytical skills of students. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the politics in the early 1970s of the legislative and policy development of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. We argue here that Title IX was originally conceived and represented as a regulatory reform and that stealth politics were the strategic and discursive approach to the policy development. By stealth politics we refer to how both the tactics employed to gain support for this new policy as well as the normalizing language used to legitimize its claims served to downplay the transformational character of the policy and in general to keep the discussion about this legislative initiative unsullied by either partisan or street politics. Tracing the path dependence of the strategic and discursive development of Title IX, we uncover the policy shift from a regulatory effort to one that ultimately addressed issues of redistribution. The recognition that Title IX was redistributive not surprisingly catalyzed an opposition into action and forced the proponents into an open debate that both shifted the terms of the policy and transformed their strategies and the policy process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan piece of legislation which introduced several new policies into education. The privatization of education has been one of the most controversial and this paper argues one that negatively impacts democratic aims. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra-district public school choice is a dominant educational reform in the US. Its proponents argue that it will increase allocative efficiency, productive efficiency, and equity. This paper uses a multi-method approach to test these propositions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their importance in formulating education policy, and their symbolic importance as the best instance of classical democratic theory, little is known about local school board elections. Between 1998 and 2001, voter turnout in Missouri averaged 22.7 percent but varied across school districts and across elections. Often school districts within the same county have vastly different turnout rates. Voter turnout is a result of at least four factors: demographic, electoral, cultural, and policy performance. Using official election results obtained from Missouri county clerks and school district demographic, resource and policy performance characteristics, I estimate the importance of demographic (SES, size, population density), school performance (standardized test scores and graduation rates), electoral competition (number of candidates per seat), cultural (turnout in other elections), incumbency, and ballot-measures for a 40-percent sample (N = 207) of school districts in Missouri. Preliminary findings from OLS regression analysis indicate that voter turnout is related to population, candidate competition, education and poverty characteristics of a district, and to school performance. I will use pooled-time series analysis to better understand these influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon the research of Hero and Tolbert (1996), this paper examines the relationship between representational politics, social diversity, and policy outcomes. Hero and Tolbert (1996), examine policy outcomes in the states of the U.S. by evaluating the composition of racial and ethnic diversity. The authors assert that racial diversity provides a theoretical and empirical explanation for policy variations in the states. The authors conclude that when policy outcomes, such as education, are disaggregated by race, graduation ratios for blacks are especially poor in homogeneous states (i.e., states with limited diversity). As such, this paper is a preliminary analysis of the representational factors, within and outside a state's legislature, which may be associated with poor graduation rates for black males in homogeneous states. Indices are used to measure a state's level of black diversity. Using regression analysis, several measures of political representation are examined according to graduation rates for black males. Although subtle, our preliminary findings suggests that it's premature to conclude that poor graduation rates for black males in states with a small black population are not influenced by descriptive representation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narcissism has increased over the last 30 years culturally in America. This has affected the education establishment, and the system itself exhibits strong signs of this disorder as an individual entity and a corporate body. Because narcissism is difficult to "cure," the contention here is that narcissistic tendencies will only become more imbedded in the education establishment as time progresses. This paper will discuss the signs of narcissism based on scholarly research journals and compare these traits to the behavior and policies of the American education establishment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the factors that have shaped the federal higher education funding agenda in the last sixty-five years, identifying five factors that have provided the impetus behind the passage of funding policies since WWII. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the political origins and consequences of education rights’ inclusion in state constitutions. It asks how these provisions have been used to influence state policy and describes the changes and continuity in their use. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses a series of questions of significance: What are the political forces behind the accountability movement? Why have some states been quicker to seek accountability in their universities' than others? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs have gained popularity in many institutions of higher education. The goal of many programs is to encourage higher-level thinking, instead of rote memorization of facts. In addition, many WAC advocates point out that WAC assessments may more closely mirror real-world applications of skills. Despite the prevalence of WAC programs, little research exists on the relative strengths and weaknesses of WAC compared to other assessment tools, especially in political science. This paper begins to fill this gap. The study follows four sections of an Introduction to World Politics class, in two separate academic years. Two sections followed a traditional syllabus, which included a few short writing assignments, several quizzes, and a final exam. The other two sections used a more WAC-based syllabus, with more writing assignments, a constitution-writing project, and the same final exam. At the end of the semester, students completed a survey to gauge their sense of preparedness for the final.This research attempts to compare the outcomes - both qualitative and quantitative - of the different instruction methods. Thus, the final exam scores of the sections were compared and contrasted, as well as whether students felt they had learned, and whether they believed they could use these skills later in life. Aside from the assessment tools, all other variables affecting learning were controlled as much as possible. Thus, the students used the same textbook and took classes from the same professor. While no two class sessions ever follow exactly the same discussion, the lecture outlines and planned class activities remained the same for both sections. This study should therefore provide a good indication of the effect of WAC on student learning. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general public often expresses that education is a "main problem" facing the country and the recent federal education legislation, No Child Left Behind, has focused the country on "failing schools." While many polls report the public's discontent with public schools, few have asked what the public expects from its public education system. Using original polling data collected via a random sample of the general public and a constant sum allocation methodology, we estimate public preferences for eight commonly held goals of education (such as basic academic skills, critical thinking and problem solving, citizenship and community responsibility, physical health and preparation for skilled work). While previous surveys only required respondents to rate the importance of various goals in isolation, which commonly results in everything being very important, this survey required respondents to provide the relative importance of each goal. This aspect is unique to this survey and especially important for policy considerations. Of particular interest for our research is how different demographic characteristics affect one's beliefs about the priorities of public education. This paper will examine preference differentials and show that one's own educational attainment and income levels have a significant impact on the prioritization of educational goals. We find that contrary to the popular image of wealthy communities protesting emphasis on basic skills, those with higher educational attainment and higher income levels actually place more emphasis on basic academic skills and place less emphasis on social skills, emotional health and physical education. Drawing upon rational choice theory, we offer a tentative explanation for these unexpected findings using a second data source. Because upper income and more highly educated individuals are often purchasing other educational activities which enhance social skills and physical education privately, they rationally choose to maximize the returns from education by making academic skills the top priority for public schools. We examine this hypothesis using data collected from the 2003 National Household Education Survey's Parent and Family Involvement survey which asks about outside of school activities. Demographic trends in after-school activity participation lend support to our hypothesis that individuals with higher incomes and education levels have rational preferences that maximize their returns to education. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of standards and accountability has transformed American educational policy since 1980. This paper draws on extensive federal case study evidence and the literature on ideas and politics to explain this transformation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines which factors make states most likely to pass legislation or begin litigation opposing NCLB. It finds that states with larger Hispanic populations, less developped standardized testing systems prior to NCLB's enactment, and fewer residents living in poverty are more likely to resist NCLB ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divergent thinking, reflective of local environments, is a cornerstone to a healthy democracy. It encourages inquiry, acceptance and respect that self-governing people must have. Essentialist educational policies in America promote convergent thinking. Since control of information and resources originates from a centralized entity the program undermines professed American democratic ideals..x000d.The primary responsibility of the school is to educate the members of its community to be competent citizens of a just and democratic society. This includes the emphasis of critical thinking, respect for self and others, the courage to question all information and its source, imagination, empathy and a passion for excellence..x000d.It is not the business of state or federal government to dictate what to know or how to teach. The primary responsibility of the federal government is to preserve and promote the pluralistic, just and democratic society established when the United State was born. This is upheld when the federal government protects of the rights, health and safety of its citizens fairly and with adequate resources. Otherwise citizens cannot participate adequately in a just and democratic society, putting the society at risk. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature and extent of policy change in American politics is a central concern to scholars of the policy process. Research at the federal level suggests that 'widespread disruptions' can impact multiple policy subsystems simultaneously. Given the nature of lateral disruptions, which flow from one subsystem at the federal level to another, what may we learn from considering vertical disruptions, moving from states to the federal level and vice versa? This study considers the interactive influence of federal and state attention to education on the disruption of a long-standing, stable policy regime that organized federal activities in education in the decades following the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. This study makes two contributions to the scholarship on policy regimes and the development of federal education policy. First, it represents an initial attempt to examine the intergovernmental processes underlying regime change and issue evolution. Second, I examine the nature and stability of regime change in intergovernmental policy areas like education. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual use dilemma in the life sciences presents many issues of first impression. The U.S. is taking the lead in addressing this issue, but efforts within the U.S. are slow in coming. Therefore, several recommendations are offered to help jumpstart the awareness, confidence and consensus building efforts for domestic and international stakeholders. To this end it is suggested that analysis of dual use move from an emphasis on the concept of intent, which is often associated with the popular risk-benefit approach, to a lethality analysis. A focus on the lethal use gradient would help clarify the risks and duties associated with dual use science which supersede intent. By focusing on the lethal use gradient it will be easier to get past the hurdle of raising awareness within the national and international communities. Stakeholders appear to be avoiding use of the lethality gradient for fear of raising alarm, but upfront and responsible communication of this unavoidable information will help inoculate from unnecessary alarm in the face of future biosecurity threats or scares. It is likewise offered that using the most extreme peak of the lethality gradient, i.e. destabilizing science, although hypothetical will help build consensus and advance the development of the important but elusive details of a comprehensive oversight system. The emerging nomenclature is analyzed in an attempt to unify the concepts necessary to develop a well reasoned oversight system. Finally, the outline for a new Jurisdiction for Education Compact is introduced to build permanent alliances with foreign students who come to the U.S. to study. These are individual trilateral compacts between nations and students that would provide assurances that students retreating to home territories will be held to the same laws and codes on dual use science to which their educational cohort and mentors in the U.S. are bound. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The No Child Left Behind Act (2002) serves as a case study for why bipartisan bills are not always optimal. The desire for bipartisanship over the reauthorization of ESEA traded off with concerns over implementation and the involvement of necessary actors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal democratic education must create citizens capable of exercising rights and duties through critical thinking; workers capable of economic competency; and persons capable of moral choice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this presentation the author discusses how present day public school accountability have become problematic. The presentation will also show how linking a bureaucratic and professional norms may help improve the practice of school accountability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Case of Middle States Accreditation Association v. Baruch College provides a dramatic illustration of the legislative and legal confusion that can occur when government authority is delegated into private hands. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Our Founding fathers believed an educated populace is necessary for a vibrant participatory democracy. We rely on our educational systems to impart knowledge and critical reasoning skills to our future citizens. But are we truly educating our children to make good judgments via Plato's 'divine reason'?If we lack Plato's 'divine reason', we will be trapped on Bacon's utopian island ignorant of Bacon's hazards, believing what we sense is 'real' and 'good'. Cyberspace can pose such a Baconian challenge to one's judgment.The informational power of cyberspace can be dominated by the human will and quest for knowledge. However, cyberspace may also clutch those journeying without Plato's 'divine reason' and be deceived by the 'illusions and fallacies' promulgated via cyberspace.James Madison warned of controlling for the effects of the passions of men. Does cyberspace exacerbate those who do not possess theinternal compass of 'divine reason'?The Internet has ushered in the Information Age of the 21st century. The dearth of information one can receive is astounding. But some websites and bloggers may conceal what they think 'fit' to keep secret for their own purposes, purporting what they perceive as universally accepted general 'truths'. Some may tap into mankind's emotions or passions to arouse them. Misinformation can charade as information. Plato's 'divine reason' is required as a compass for our travel through cyberspace. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates state compliance to the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act to discover if noncompliance is due to public education's roots in federalism and the corresponding prominent value of localism. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consideration of the politics of education in Washington, DC where the tax base has lead to surplus. Are schools being utilized politically as a redevelopmental pool? This is considered in the context of the Captiol Hill neighborhood. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Garbage can processes in U.S. and Japanese education agenda formation have 1) facilitated the spread of trendy administrative reforms, 2) prevented rational planning and coordination, and 3) prevented pressing education problems from being addressed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) to compare how educational attainment impacts the likelihood that an eligible individual will cast a ballot in an election across nations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]