Mayors, Governors, and Presidents: The New Education Executives and the End of Educational Exceptionalism

Various accounts have noted a growing visibility and influence of presidents, governors, and mayors in the shaping of educational policy. Typically, explanations for this are discrete and situational: specific to particular levels of government, particular jurisdictions, particular visionary leaders, and transitory external events. This article reviews the historical manifestations of growing executive involvement in education throughout the federal system and introduces four rivals to the situational perspective. The emergence of the so-called new educational executives, it concludes, grows out of structural shifts in the institutional landscape and may be best understood as the more visible front edge of a broader reabsorption of education politics into the arena of general-purpose governance.