Building the Federal Schoolhouse

The federal government’s role in public education over the past fifty years has dramatically changed the notion of localism in American schools. Seeking to construct the federal schoolhouse—an educational system with common national expectations and practices—has meant the creation of new modes of education within local institutions. The creation of this “education state” has also meant that federal educational initiatives have collided with—or reinforced—local political regimes in cities and suburbs alike. Building the Federal Schoolhouse examines how increasing federal authority over public education in the United States changes the practices of “operational localism” in education Through an in-depth, fifty-year examination of federal educational policies at work within one community—Alexandria, Virginia— the book focuses on four policy areas: racial desegregation and integration, special education, English-learners and accountability politics. These policy initiatives have aimed to create greater equality in education, but they have also challenged and changed the political regimes within Alexandria, at times forcing the local regime to a breaking point, and at times bolstering its reconstruction. Through an extensive use of local archives, school data, and interviews, the work paints an intimate portrait of the conflicts that accompany the creation of the federal schoolhouse and documents the successes and failures of the federal commitment to greater educational opportunity. In so doing, it also highlights the complexity of the American education state, the changing nature of educational federalism, and the centrality of local regimes and local historical context to federal efforts to reform education.