ABSTRACT
Schools reverberate to the fortunes and misadventures of their students, their families, and their neighborhoods and communities. These daily, even momentto-moment, interactions mirror the social conditions in a local milieu. Schools also function as the nexus for educational policies developed outside their walls from school district boards, state legislatures, and the U.S. Congress with regulatory guidance generated by the federal Department of Education. In many ways schools expose a phenomenon known as policy transfer; that is, the remarkable adoption and adaption of policy features found in many other democratic nations worldwide (Ball, 2001, 2003; Levi-Faur & Vigoda-Gadot, 2006). Schools experience global politics in a microcosm. Schools exist locally, and simultaneously absorb global impacts of social and economic conditions, politics, and culture.
