No Adult Left Behind

For decades, Americans have debated why our students consistently score lower than their peers in other developed countries. While most debates have focused on school spending, curriculum, teacher quality, and teachers' unions, No Adult Left Behind argues that local democratic control is the root of the problem. Elected school boards govern local school districts, but only adults vote in local elections – most of whom don't have children or care about academics. This leads to educational debates that are centered around issues that adults care most about, such as partisanship, identity politics, property values, and employment concerns, while the needs of students get left behind. In identifying the misalignment between the interests of school children and the political and policy agendas of the adults who control education, No Adult Left Behind stands to become a landmark study on modern education politics.

• Provides an original perspective on the issue of American students' poor academic performance
• Seeks to explain why the politics surrounding education focus mostly on the issues adults care about and not the quality of education that students receive
• Combines powerful case studies and examples with large quantitative analyses to make the text accessible to a wide range of readers within and outside of academia