The American educational paradox: National values, local policies

In the US, education is often viewed as the answer to national problems ranging from racial discrimination to absolute poverty. Yet, the US is an exception among advanced, industrialized nations because it does not have a strong federally-financed system of education. The primary control and funding of American public education rests not in the hands of the national government, but in the hands of state and local authorities. I explain the unique structure of the American educational system by analyzing points in history when the US federal government was poised to take on a greater role in funding and overseeing education but largely turned away from doing so. This dissertation thus provides the first systematic analysis of an important paradox in American educational policy: why does a nation that embraces education as a core value and centralizes authority for most redistributive policies have a decentralized system of public K-12 education?;The specific eras that I examine are the post-Civil War era (1865-1890), the New Deal era (1933-1943), and the War on Poverty era (1964-1969), all of which are key episodes in the development and/or extension of the very redistributive social policies that have come to define the American welfare state. Options for using federal funds to support the provision of K-12 education provided moments of real possibility in each of these eras, yet such efforts did not fully succeed. Using a historical sociological methodology, I pay particular attention to theories of the welfare state and the policymaking process, especially focusing on how interests, institutions, and ideas help explain the lack of a strong federal role in US education. The contributions of this dissertation are threefold: an examination of the American welfare state which places education at the center of redistributive inquiry into policymaking processes and outcomes, an analysis of the social and political processes that have shaped the landscape of American education, and an assessment of which social scientific theories of the welfare state and the policymaking process best explain why that landscape does not include more federal provision for K-12 education.