Abstract
In this article, Bock and Arthur highlight the political quality of decisions made by competing interest groups and actors in the educational reform process - foreign assistance agency officials, project directors and supporting staff, ministers of education and other ministry officials, and political and educational leaders in their terrain of the state. Each of these stakeholders, existing within and outside the school, tries to maximize control over scarce resources such as finance and legitimacy in order to influence the determination of the types of innovative programs that will take place. Given that education is one of our most politicized institutions and that seldom are its benefits shared equitably among all the citizens or interest groups who are expected to support them, it should be evident that educational reforms fail (or succeed) more often for political reasons than because of any technical or programmatic differences. The authors illustrate this contention by looking at a large international educational technical assistance project -Improving the Efficiency of Education Systems -and drawing some comparisons from the 1980s'reform agenda in the United States.
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