McGuinn, Patrick. No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy, 1965-2005. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2006.

Summary
This book is a political analysis of the evolution of federal elementary and secondary education policy between 1965 and 2005 and argues that education policy was shaped by broader ideological changes and also came to play a key role in electoral politics. He argues that the federal in education was dominated by a few groups and little public input from 1965 to the 1980s and questions regarding the federal role in education garnered very little mass public debate. The struggle to define the federal role in school reform became a public concern (Nation at Risk) and thus played a central role in the electoral politics and inter-intra party debates during he 1980s and 1990s over the appropriate role of national government in promoting opportunity and social welfare. President Bush (#1) made himself the first “education president” and based on the findings from the “A Nation at Risk” report, proposed policy that de-emphasized inputs (funding) and underscored outputs (achievements). While Bush moved policy in that direction, McGuinn argues that Clinton played a central role. As a centrist democrat, he rejected conservative efforts to reject the federal role in education and the liberal emphasis on inputs rather than outputs. Education, as a result of these policies, became central to electoral politics. The Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA, 1994) was the first policy to introduce the idea of accountability. With the reelection of Clinton, Republicans rescinded their calls to end the Dept. of Education and accepted a limited federal role in education. The NCLB was thus a grand compromise between accountability and a federal role in education. It ended the equity regime that began in 1965 and brought about what McGuinn sees a revolutionary education policy approach: accountability.

Also see: James D. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education; Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life;  David Tyack/Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia; William Reese, America's Public Schools;