For this first History of Education Quarterly Policy Forum, we invited participants in the special Plenary Session at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the History of Education Society (HES) in St. Louis to publish their remarks on the historical significance of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) at fifty. Organized and introduced by HES vice‐president and program chair Adam R. Nelson, the session consisted of presentations by three expert panelists from the fields of History and African American Studies, American Law and Politics, and Political Science and Public Policy: Crystal Sanders of Penn State University, Doug Reed of Georgetown University, and Susan Moffitt of Brown University, respectively. What follows are the texts of Adam Nelson's introductory remarks—including his introduction of the three panelists—followed by the panelists' remarks.

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In 1979, fourteen years after publishing his landmark work, The Emergence of the American University, Laurence R. Veysey wrote a forward-looking article for the American Quarterly tided “The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered.” In this article, he suggested that the time had come to rewrite American history from a more international point of view. “The increasing global awareness of our age enables us to view national differences with a new sophistication,” he observed in terms that now seem remarkably prescient:The powerful sense of a common outcome to modern history across a substantial part of the planet forces us to reexamine many long-held notions about the peculiar development of national cultural traditions. In particular, it is clear that earlier interpretations of American history and cultures aggressively put forth as recently as the 1950s and emphasizing ‘uniquely’ American experiences and habits of mind, served largely to mislead us. American history has been viewed far too often as if it were autonomous, a theme entirely unto itself, rather than in enormous measure a reflection of forces operating throughout the modern world.

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