Policy Is Curriculum Is Politics: Curriculum Politics and the Rise of Authoritarian Populists in a New Media Ecosystem

This chapter illustrates the role of a powerful media ecosystem in shaping curriculum politics as authoritarian populists become more influential in national politics. This ecosystem includes actors from think tanks, advocacy and interest groups, and media outlets, who strategically use both traditional and social media to create urgency around highly political, often racialized, problem definitions in order to catalyze policy change. The authors apply this framework to the cases of opposition to the Common Core State Standards, the “science of reading,” and the anti–critical race theory movement. These cases each highlight the recursive and interdependent nature of policy, curriculum, and politics. They also demonstrate how media entrepreneurs take ideas incubated in conservative think tanks and activate advocacy groups’ social media campaigns to shape the national mood and define how the public perceives a policy problem.

Keywords: curriculum; education policy; education politics; media; social media; think tanks; advocacy groups