Abstract
The United States is at a crossroads in its education system. Policymakers have spent decades debating how best to improve school quality and bridge large gaps in student achievement. Other reforms have focused on investing in professional learning and equalizing funding and curriculum opportunities as strategies for closing the achievement gap. The United States has employed two main economic theories in the past two centuries: liberalism and Keynesianism. The Great Society era, under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s, began to tackle long-standing educational inequalities in the United States. The malaise of stagflation opened the door for the main proponent of 'free-market' economics, Milton Friedman, to influence policy. The head of the American Federation of Teachers, Shanker originally thought that charter schools could foster innovation in the public school sector. The younger Bush, previously governor of Texas, proposed major changes to ESEA, the major federal education act.
The United States is at a crossroads in its education system. Policymakers have spent decades debating how best to improve school quality and bridge large gaps in student achievement. Other reforms have focused on investing in professional learning and equalizing funding and curriculum opportunities as strategies for closing the achievement gap. The United States has employed two main economic theories in the past two centuries: liberalism and Keynesianism. The Great Society era, under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s, began to tackle long-standing educational inequalities in the United States. The malaise of stagflation opened the door for the main proponent of 'free-market' economics, Milton Friedman, to influence policy. The head of the American Federation of Teachers, Shanker originally thought that charter schools could foster innovation in the public school sector. The younger Bush, previously governor of Texas, proposed major changes to ESEA, the major federal education act.