Education Next – William G. Howell
“Caught between extraordinary public expectations and relatively modest constitutional authority, U.S. presidents historically have fashioned all sorts of mechanisms—executive orders, proclamations, memoranda—by which to move their objectives forward. Under President Barack Obama’s administration, presidential entrepreneurialism has continued unabated. Like his predecessors, Obama has sought to harness and consolidate his influence outside of Congress. He also has made contributions of his own to the arsenal of administrative policy devices. The most creative, perhaps, is his Race to the Top initiative, which attempted to spur wide-ranging reforms in education, a policy domain in which past presidents exercised very little independent authority.”(more)