Left at the Altar? The Bush Legacy on K-12 Education

With a new administration taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and George W. Bush's centerpiece No Child Left Behind Act up for reauthorization, Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at AEI, and Michael J. Petrilli, vice president of national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, consider the education legacy of the Bush administration in their forthcoming article "Left at the Altar." They note that the administration found common cause with progressive reformers by pursuing ambitious policies focused on narrowing achievement gaps--but often at the expense of its own conservative principles. They also find that the political environment created in the past eight years presents not only challenges, but also surprising opportunities for reform.

Petrilli and Hess will be joined at this event by Williamson M. Evers, the Bush administration's assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation, and policy development; Dianne M. Piché, the executive director of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights; and Andrew J. Rotherham, the codirector of Education Sector, an education policy think tank. Hess will moderate.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess



  • An educator, political scientist and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including “The Same Thing Over and Over,” “Education Unbound,” “ Common Sense School Reform,” “ Revolution at the Margins” and “Spinning Wheels,” and he pens the Education Week blog, Rick Hess Straight Up. His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, National Affairs, The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic and National Review. He has edited widely cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public School Charters as well as on the boards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.


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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Lauren Aronson
    Phone: 202-862-5904
    Email: lauren.aronson@aei.org
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