scholarly journals Education Policy Think Tank Models and Mission

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Callie McLean ◽  
Lily Robin
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Disadvantaged Students ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Heritage Foundation ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Topic Choice

This paper explores how two advocacy think tanks—the Heritage Foundation (Heritage) and Center for American Progress (CAP)—engage in research on K-12 education and attempt to influence education policymaking. Through our research, we discovered both expected and surprising differences and similarities between the think tanks. Differences included topic choice, particularly around school choice and disadvantaged students, the use of data analyses to underpin positions, and the volume of publication. Similarities included the mix of output type. Our most notable finding was that the model and mission of each think tank drove topic choices and how each conducted research and interacted with the policy world and media.

scholarly journals Education Policy Trump Style: The Administrative Presidency and Deference to States in ESSA Implementation

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-445
Author(s):  
Kenneth K Wong
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Elementary And Secondary Education ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Public School Choice ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Every Student Succeeds Act

Abstract Since the 1960s, U.S. presidents have used their executive, administrative, and political power to pursue policy goals in elementary and secondary education. This article analyzes the K-12 education policy strategies pursued during the first three years of the Donald Trump presidency, focusing on two main aspects of Trump’s approach to education policy. First, I analyze Trump’s heavy reliance on executive and administrative tools and his use of these tools to promote state flexibility, diminish federal direction on civil rights issues, and expand private and public school choice. Second, I examine the Trump administration’s approach to implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), especially in reviewing state plans pursuant to the ESSA. The administration took a highly deferential approach as states sought approval for their ESSA plans and in a way that suggests the Trump presidency is shifting federal involvement in K-12 education policy away from prioritizing equity and oversight.

A Transatlantic Network

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stedman Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The United States ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Heritage Foundation ◽  
Cato Institute ◽  
Set Up

This chapter explores how a transatlantic network of sympathetic businessmen and fundraisers, journalists and politicians, policy experts and academics grew and spread neoliberal ideas between the 1940s and the 1970s. These individuals were successful at promoting ideas through a new type of political organization, the think tank. The first wave of neoliberal think tanks were set up in the 1940s and 1950s and included the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education in the United States, and the Institute of Economic Affairs in Great Britain. A second wave of neoliberal think tanks were established in the 1970s, including the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in Great Britain, and the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute in the United States.

Washington View

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (8) ◽  
pp. 72-73
Author(s):  
Maria Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Intention To Change

In the first few months of the new administration, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have made a number of dramatic statements about their plans for K-12 education, including their intention to change certain education laws and promote specific kinds of school choice. Not only have those statements prompted a great deal of concern among many Americans, they have also invited a great deal of confusion about who has the power to make what sorts of decisions about education policy. This article offers a primer on some of the ground rules.

Tennessee Education Savings Account: Tipping the Scales From Equity to Choice

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 98-110
Author(s):  
Erin Curtin
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
School Choice ◽  
State Level ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Comprehensive Education ◽  
Policy Window ◽  
Federal Poverty Line ◽  
Scholarship Program ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
K 12

This article provides an analysis of Tennessee’s newly signed Education Savings Account policy, a school choice initiative. The policy provides vouchers, in the form of a debit card, to students in grades K-12 who are at or below 200% of the federal poverty line and are zoned to attend a Nashville, Shelby County, or Achievement School District school. Using the Policy Window Framework the author uncovers that the policy was created in a federal and state-level political convergence, which attempted to place equity at the forefront of the issue. However, using Levin's Comprehensive Education Privatization Framework, we can see that neoliberal ideals of choice and efficiency conquer equity in the finalized policy. The author predicts the outcomes of this new policy using this framework in tandem with 3 case studies: Louisiana Scholarship Program, DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, and Tennessee’s Individualized Education Accounts.

Case study 2

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Significant Potential ◽  
Key Stakeholders

This chapter analyses the role of think tanks in generating a distinctive mode of policy knowledge, pragmatically orientated to inform and shape issues of importance to civil society. Drawing on political science literature, we argue that think tanks exploit niche areas of expertise and influence to actively mobilize policy analyses and recommendations across diverse stakeholders. Through our exploratory mapping of think tanks, geographically concentrated within London, we characterize their influence as significantly boosting knowledge intensity across the regional ecosystem. In particular, we study the empirical case of one London-based think tank which powerfully mobilized policy knowledge through its formal and informal networks to build influential expert consensus amongst key stakeholders. We conclude that such organizations act as key knowledge producers and mobilizers, with significant potential to influence policy discourses and implementation.

Lessons learned from a search for common ground

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (5) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Rick Hess ◽  
Pedro Noguera
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Social And Emotional Learning ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Education Leaders ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Common Understanding

In 2020, Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera engaged in a long-running correspondence that tackled many of the biggest questions in education — including topics like school choice, equity and diversity, testing, privatization, the achievement gap, social and emotional learning, and civics. They sought to unpack their disagreements, better understand one another’s perspectives, and seek places of agreement or points of common understanding. Their correspondence appears in their book, A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K-12 Education (Teachers College Press, 2021). In this article, they reflect on the exercise, what they learned from it, and what lessons it might offer to educators, education leaders, researchers, and policy makers.

Masking Attendance: How Education Policy Distracts from the Wicked Problem(s) of Chronic Absenteeism

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Childs ◽  
Richard Lofton
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
School Attendance ◽  
Wicked Problem ◽  
Chronic Absenteeism ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Comprehensive Education ◽  
Opportunity Gaps

Traditionally, education policy focuses on reforms that address class size, teaching and learning within classrooms, school choice, and changes in leadership as ways to improve students’ educational outcomes. Although well intentioned, education policy can distract from the multi-layered causes that impact achievement and opportunity gaps, and how students’ life circumstances can affect their school attendance. Students who miss school frequently are less likely to be impacted by even the most robust and comprehensive education reforms. This paper discusses how the root causes of chronic absenteeism are complex and that policy distractions can stifle solutions to solve school attendance issues. As a wicked problem, chronic absenteeism, requires a conceptual framework that helps to organize policy responses within all levels of the educational system, as well as expansive to include other social sectors within public policy.

Think Tanks and Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuti Bhatnagar
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Policy Frames ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
The Media ◽  
Intellectual Elites

The role of think tanks as policy actors has developed over time and created significant global scholarship. Widely understood as non-state policy actors, think tanks established either with or without the support of government have evolved in various political contexts with varied characteristics. They are avenues for the discussion of new policy ideas as well as used for the consolidation of existing understandings of global and national political issues. As ideational actors think tanks interact with policy frameworks at different levels, either in the framing stage or at the stage of consensus building towards certain policies. Intellectual elites at think tanks allow for the introduction of think tank ideas into the policy frames as well as the creation of public opinion towards foreign policy decisions. Think tank deliberations involve an interaction with policymakers, academic experts, business and social actors, as well as the media to disseminate ideas. Institutionally, think tanks in a wide variety of political contexts play a critical role in the making of foreign policy and bring closer attention to processes of state–society interactions in different political environments.

scholarly journals Authority signaling: How relational interactions between journalists and politicians create primary definers in UK broadcast news

Journalism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 896-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Chadwick ◽  
Declan McDowell-Naylor ◽  
Amy P Smith ◽  
Ellen Watts
Keyword(s):  
Think Tanks ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Broadcast News ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Sociology Of News ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Relational Interactions

How journalists construct the authority of their sources is an essential part of how news comes to have power in politics and how political actors legitimize their roles to publics. Focusing on economic policy reporting and a dataset of 133 hours of mainstream broadcast news from the 5-week 2015 UK general election campaign, we theorize and empirically illustrate how the construction of expert source authority works. To build our theory, we integrate four strands of thought: an important, though in recent years neglected, tradition in the sociology of news concerned with ‘primary definers’; the underdeveloped literature on expert think tanks and media; recent work in journalism studies advocating a relational approach to authority; and elements from the discursive psychology approach to the construction of facticity in interactive settings. Our central contribution is a new perspective on source authority: the identification of behaviors that are key to how the interactions between journalists and elite political actors actively construct the elevated authoritative status of expert sources. We call these behaviors authority signaling. We show how authority signaling works to legitimize the power of the United Kingdom’s most important policy think tank and discuss the implications of this process.

scholarly journals RESEARCH ON THE PROMOTION OF CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THINK TANKS IN LOCAL NEWLY BUILT UNDERGRADUATE UNIVERSITIES—TAKING THE BRAND STRATEGY AND DEVELOPMENT THINK TANK OF SHANDONG WOMEN'S UNIVERSITY AS AN EXAMPLE

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHI-GUO HUANG ◽  
PEI-BIAO LIU
Keyword(s):  
Social Service ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Brand Strategy ◽  
Women's College ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Healthy Development ◽  
Existing Problems

The think tank of universities is an important carrier for scientific research, social service and talent training. At present, the construction of the think tank in local newly-built undergraduate universities is increasingly intensified, but its related functions have not been fully developed and played yet. Taking the brand strategy and development think tank of Shandong Women’s College as an example, this paper investigates and analyzes the current situation, existing problems and causes of its construction and development, and then proposes corresponding countermeasures, the purpose is to provide guidance for the sustainable and healthy development and growth of the think tank. At the same time, it can provide reference for the construction and development of the think tank in similar newly-built undergraduate universities.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document