U of A Professor Reflects on Obama's Education Agenda

Palgrave/Macmillan

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- President Barack Obama's education agenda is the focus of a new book co-written by University of Arkansas professor Robert Maranto, who has produced two other books about the Obama presidency.

Education Reform in the Obama Era: The Second Term and the 2016 Election was published by Palgrave/Macmillan.

Maranto, who holds the Twenty-First Century Chair in Leadership, wrote the book with Michael McShane, who earned a doctorate in education policy from the U of A, and Evan Rhinesmith, who is a doctoral student in the program in the Department of Education Reform. McShane directs education policy at the University of Missouri's Show-Me Institute.

"We offer an overview of President Obama's education policies, placing them in a historic context and also summarizing the education proposals of the 2016 presidential aspirants," Maranto said. "We see President Obama's education agenda as broadly in accord with those of recent presidents, though in the second term the administration has overreached, producing a backlash."

The authors say that Obama's policies reflect elite views that, because substantial increases in spending have failed to improve equity and achievement, public schools require reforms promoting transparency such as the Common Core national standards, as well as market-based reforms such as charter schools. The processes used to implement those goals have been hurried and lacked public input, Maranto said.

The book is divided into four sections that examine control of school policies, education waivers, Common Core standards and education reform in the future.

Maranto is also the co-author of President Obama and Education Reform: The Personal and the Political published in 2013 by Palgrave /Macmillan and co-editor of The Obama Presidency: Change and Continuity published in 2011 by Routledge.

The 2011 book was co-edited by Dirk van Raemdonck, the graduate coordinator in the Department of Education Reform, and Andrew Dowdle, a U of A professor of political science.