Making Politics Work: Practical Lessons on Politics for Would-Be Education Reformers

An expansive study shows how politics can work for, not just against, efforts to improve America's schools. The education reform project has always been about making America's schools more effective for the children who attend them. In Making Politics Work, authors Paul T. Hill and Ashley E. Jochim show that this project cannot succeed without mastering what is the single largest constraint on its success: politics. Drawing upon more than a decade of work with dozens of school systems, Hill and Jochim show how failures to secure political support or mitigate inevitable opposition dooms the education reform project from the start. But this outcome is not inevitable. By tracing the evolution of the "portfolio strategy" across 27 localities that implemented it, they uncover practical lessons that superintendents, state leaders, and foundation officials can use to increase the likelihood that their ideas for improving public education don't join the list of once-promising initiatives that could not be sustained in the face of intractable political conflict.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Why Politics 2. The Portfolio Strategy in Theory and Practice 3. Laying the Groundwork for Change 4. Expanding a Base of Support and Mitigating Opposition 5. Surviving the Expansion of Conflict 6. How COVID Transformed Education Politics 7. Making Politics Work Acknowledgments Notes References Index

About the Author :
Paul T. Hill is professor of practice at Arizona State University and founder and former director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which studies alternative governance and finance systems for public K-12 education. He is the author of Strife and Progress: Portfolio Strategies for Managing Urban Schools and coauthor of A Democratic Constitution for Public Education, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Ashley E. Jochim is an independent education researcher and Consulting Principal at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University. She is coauthor of A Democratic Constitution for Public Education, also published by the University of Chicago Press.  

Review :
"This clear-eyed and deeply informed assessment underscores a critical point: education reformers cannot succeed by bowling over or dodging around local politics. The route to sustainable reform runs through engaging local stakeholders and taking their views fully into account." "Making Politics Work is a uniquely valuable book. Hill and Jochim leverage a novel data set to show that, although politics usually weakens or kills good reform ideas, politically savvy advocates can use politics to mobilize support, sideline opposition, and see their ideas adopted and endure. This is a book that all reformers need to read." “This book is a refreshing elixir to the naïve view that one must set politics aside to solve persistent problems in K-12 education. Hill and Jochim not only turn that maxim on its head by recognizing the centrality of politics to all policy change, in addition, they provide readers concrete suggestions for how to carry out ‘the political work of reform’ needed to improve the nation's schools.”