This article was downloaded by: [Temple University Libraries]On: 20 November 2014, At: 15:13Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

British Journal ofEducational StudiesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbje20

Perspectives onderegulation of schooling inAmericaJohn Hardin Best aa The Pennsylvania State University , RackleyBuilding, University Park, PA, 16802, USAPublished online: 21 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: John Hardin Best (1993) Perspectives on deregulation ofschooling in America, British Journal of Educational Studies, 41:2, 122-133, DOI:10.1080/00071005.1993.9973955

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.1993.9973955

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions andviews of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information.Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, OxfordOX4 1JF, UK and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USABRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL STUDIES

VOL XXXX1 No 2, JUNE 1993 ISSN 0007-1005

PERSPECTIVES ON DEREGULATION OFSCHOOLING IN AMERICA

by J O H N HARDIN BEST, Pennsylvania State University, United States of

America

1. EXCELLENCE AND EQUITY

Critics in rising numbers in recent years have cried the failure ofAmerican schools as inadequate to the task of educating America forthe 21st century. Our political leaders, presidents, secretaries ofeducation, ambitious governors and legislators have declared the highrisks of our failure. The implication is clear: we are engaged in intenseeconomic competition in today's expanded capitalist world, and thedegree of success in that competition will determine our wealth andwellbeing as a nation, as well as our power and position internationally,for years to come. Our faltering leadership in technology and science,it is assumed, follows directly from the woeful inadequacies ofAmerican education. But in the view of many Americans, our schoolsmust not only meet the challenge of capitalist competition worldwide,they must also maintain our principles of equity at home. Our socialand political system of democratic capitalism assumes that merit willbe rewarded and, further, that free access to schooling will be assuredto every American. Whatever social justice inheres in our meritocracy,whatever claim of equality of opportunity, the American dream restson the American school. To maintain economic preeminence, as wellas our ideal of social justice, post-industrial America must have bothexcellence and equity in our system of education.

American society needs, it is said, a new order of school reform,perhaps even a new mode of thinking about the persisting problems ofexcellence and equity. Perhaps the schools must have, not merelyprescriptions, but surgery. The new order of the nineties appears to bederegulation, the capitalist free-market, the choice principle, priva-tization, disestablishment, that is, a new frame for thinking on thetransformation of the schools. Rather than proposals for pedagogicreform, deregulation theories shift the ground for educational changeto the economic and social forces that create and support schooling inour society. The choice principle in schooling, within or withoutpublic education, voucher schemes and the like have been discussed

122

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

for some years (Coons & Sugarman, 1978; Lieberman, 1989). Therehave even been various trial efforts for schooling under businesscontract, such as the ill-fated Alum Rock experiment, as early as theNixon era. The Reagan administration consistently advocated supportfor non-public schools through various voucher plans. But ironicallyReagan's 1983 Nation At Risk study had the unexpected effect ofrallying national support for improving America's public schools, andhence nothing of consequence was done in the direction of tax supportfor private schooling during the Reagan years. Bush, the self-proclaimed Education President, with his newly appointed Secretaryof Education, Lamar Alexander, in April, 1991, set a clear coursetoward school deregulation. The administration outlined a broad planfor change titled America 2000: The President's Education Strategy whichincluded a national testing program, a system of experimental schoolsnationwide, and at the heart of the proposal, school choice (TheWhite House, 1991).

2. DEREGULATION THEORY & THE POST-INDUSTRIAL

ECONOMY

Today's school choice proposals spring from a body of research thathas emerged in recent years from the social sciences. Currentderegulation theory, perhaps best represented in the work of John E.Chubb and Terry M. Moe in their Brookings study, Politics, Marketsand America's Schools is based on cool social science analysis of politicaland economic behavior of capitalist America in the nineties (Chubb &Moe, 1990). It is not a critique of education; in fact the work isconcerned very little with what actually goes on in schools. It is rathera theory that advances from a basic principle, perhaps the firstprinciple in the study of education: whatever schools are and do willinevitably reflect the social and economic organization of society(Katz, 1987). The assumption underlying the current deregulationtheory is that the free market organization of schooling is in accordwith the market forces that have created the America of today, theinformation age, the world of computers and instant communication,the wealth and poverty, suburbs and cities, shopping malls andfranchises of today's massive consumer society.

The transition in the American economy in the decade or so justpast to what has been called the post-industrial era is as momentous asthe transition a century earlier from the agrarian to the industrial.The new economy of today shifted from mills and mines and thesmokestacks of heavy industry to control and management ofinformation, to programs and computers, chips and monitors, and

123

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

instant communication around the world. New technology is continu-ally pressed to be made yet newer. These changes have changed thelandscape of America. The air in Pittsburgh is astonishingly cleartoday with the steel mills gone, replaced by office parks and high techindustries. Gone also from Pittsburgh is a sizeable working classpopulation of the old industrial era: the city experienced a new loss ofnearly 200,000 during the decade of the eighties. The transition,however, has been stunning; even the manufacturing that remainstoday, automobile assembly for example, has a laboratory air about it:men and women in white coats check the endless labour of robots, andthe checking is done electronically. No smoke stacks, no pollution; theparts to be assembled are of course manufactured elsewhere in theworld. The new economy is dominated by the 'processing ofknowledge,' as it is termed, the managing, control and distribution ofinformation in all its phases. It is estimated that half the Americanwork force is engaged in this enterprise, in science and research,culture and entertainment, education and the medical fields. Consumerdemand takes on great importance in this new economy. Any item onoffer for purchase, moreover, in whatever goods, clothing, even food,must meet the particular demands to the smallest detail of adiscriminating buyer. The consumer's choice is supreme. The serviceindustries are also thriving: food service, cleaning, domestic work, andthe social services including child care and care for the aging. Suchservices are, of course, poorly compensated in an economy dominatedby high tech industries.

Much remarked upon has been the changes in American society inthe decade past that have accompanied the transitions in theeconomy. The revisions in the traditional American family have beenespecially evident. The number of households headed by a singleparent, usually a female parent, has risen to such proportions as to benearly the norm today. The number of women in the work force hasrisen proportionally: 51.9% employed outside the home in 1980, up tonear 60% in 1990. Also much discussed is the rise in percentage of thepopulation of various minority groups, particularly of AfricanAmericans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, minorities that arepredominant in the urban populations in today's society. The socialclass lines in America, both urban and suburban, have become inrecent years increasingly rigid, the distance between the classesgreater. The rich unquestionably became richer during the Reaganyears. On the opposite end, there is now in every city and in someblighted rural areas as well, a more or less permanent underclass ofpoverty, of people without resources and without hope in thisotherwise affluent society. Whatever sense of shared community that

124

© Basil Blackwel! Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

exists in America today seems to derive largely from the masscommunications networks, the village of CNN, rather than fromresidence in a local neighborhood or town. Given these remarkablechanges in American society in recent years, what has become of thevaunted American work ethic of years past? Horatio Alger and hisProtestant ethic forebears seem to have largely disappeared. Thoughmuch of middle class America may maintain the values of honestwork, and indeed the rewards of the meritocracy are reality for them,many other Americans, especially among the minorities, are likely tosee success in their lives as a product of chance, the 'breaks,' ratherthan following from systematic hard work, in school or beyond. Evenamong the affluent middle class, the work ethic seems to be shakenwith the doings of Trumps, Wall Street arbitrageurs, the savings andloan operators, resonant of the Robber Barons of an earlier era, as themodel for quick success. The work ethic, it is said, is seriouslyproblematic today.

Schooling in America in this post-industrial economy and societyhas come under intense criticism for its failure to support theadvances of the new era. Indeed it appears that the great Americansystem of education, invented in the 19th century to support theburgeoning factory system of the times, is by and large little changeddespite the recent drastic revisions in our society. The factory modelschools, bureaucratically organized and controlled, continue throughthe grades to turn out a mass, standardized product. Public support,state and local, remains the basis for citizen governance of the system.Properly licensed and certified professionals, women in the main,continue to operate the machine with a degree of efficiency and goodorder. The world may have changed remarkably, but the Americanpublic school marches on.

The anomaly of a factory organized school in a computer drivensociety has of course not gone unnoticed: from the early eighties totoday there has been an outpouring of nervous concern, of plans andmore plans, projects and proposals to reform education. Never, saysthe rhetoric, did American schools bear such a burden, the staggeringweight of the future of our country. But many of the critics and criersof the decade just past, far from despairing, were quick to offer a rangeof remedies and reforms. Very simply, it was declared, Americaneducation must be "fixed." And there were a number of proposalsforthcoming to fix the schools. Many of these proposed reforms werealong the line of the old Catskill resort complaint: 'the food at thishotel is simply inedible, and not only that, the portions they give youare ridiculously small.' Plans were offered, that is, for an extendedschool calendar year, or for a longer school day for increased time in

125

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

class. Widely discussed and variously implemented were the 'effectiveschool' proposals, an administrative approach to rationalizing andfocusing the effort of the school on academic achievement. Itrepresented little more than good common sense in ordering theschool, but was offered with great fanfare as a significant reformprogram. There were projects, some with rich foundation funding, todevelop a uniform national curriculum for the schools, accompaniedby national standards and the tests to measure achievement of thestandard.

Other reform proposals set out to fix the teacher. Merit payarrangements for school districts or for entire state systems, as inFlorida or Tennessee, were designed to reward exceptional teachingperformance with substantial pay increases for those teachersdesignated meritorious. It was a scheme to put the perennially limitedtax dollars on those teachers of merit, the few, the distinguished, toendorse and encourage their excellent work. But of course it requiredcumbersome machinery for determining the selection, which tendedto be controlled by administrative officials through pervasive programsfor observation and testing. Statewide testing of teachers, as inArkansas, was an even broader effort to improve the academic qualityof teachers. Related proposals for upgrading the profession were putforward by the Carnegie Foundation for the university preparation ofmaster teachers as well as plans for a system of national certificationto create a true profession of teaching.

Fixing the colleges and schools of education was yet anotherdirection of reform. There were proposals from a group of educationdeans to extend and expand their involvement in preparing teachers.Other proposals on the other hand would move education by andlarge out of the university squarely into the schools. Some governorsand would-be governors of states wanted the schools to be set free ofschools of education and the trappings of teacher certification entirely.

Finally, there were reform proposals to fix the students. Statewidetesting schemes at several points in the education of the young wereseen as a device to encourage academic application. Often moreharassing than offering any diagnostic value, standardized testingschemes came perilously close to blaming the victim. Tougherstandards for grade promotions and for high school graduation werealso efforts to enhance the academic quality of students' schoolwork.

The labours for reform during the eighties varied from state to stateand from district to district, but across the land there was intenseconcern to improve America's schools for the good of the nation. Bythe close of the decade and the beginning of the nineties, however, itappeared that the schools, the teachers, the entire education

126

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

enterprise, remained largely un-fixed. After a decade of reform efforts,the question remains: how to revise American education to make thetransition from factory to post-industrial.

Judging from the patterns of the past in the relationships of schoolsto the economy and society, schools today could be expected to reflectthe current capitalist ethos, a competitive spirit in institutionalorganization, a mix of public and private support and control, greatdiversity in style and modes of instruction. A consumer society, itwould appear, demands individuation and choice in schooling theyoung as in every other aspect. Designer schools, perhaps. Yet thereare these nagging issues of equity. Does American education oweopportunity and access to all the nation's young people, to thehandicapped, the racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities, the childrenof poverty, of the new seemingly permanent underclass? Freeenterprise democratic capitalism in the late 20th century has beenthought to mean, has held at least the ideal, that equal opportunitythrough education for all is fundamental to our society. The Americandream was built in large part on this principle.

3. CHOICE AND PRIVATIZED EDUCATION

The Chubb and Moe theory of deregulation speaks to variousimportant aspects of this current circumstance. Few observers denythat the factory schools of today with their heavy bureaucracy, their'trained' professionals, the uniformity of their product must be re-formed. By shifting the base of support and control of the schoolsChubb and Moe speculate that new formulations will follow. Theyassume the principle that schooling will reflect the social andeconomic organization of society, then proceed to apply that principleto plan revisions for today's schools. As a corollary to that firstprinciple, however, it should be stated that the planner's conceptionof the realities of the society in question will influence importantly theplans to be layed. That is, what is the conception of society set out inthe Chubb and Moe study as the basis for planning change? Thestudy perceives American society as a democratic capitalism based onultimate individualism, driven by competition, both individual andinstitutional, and reaching always for the highest possible economicproductivity. It is of course a profit driven economy. It follows thatacademic achievement is the central, perhaps sole, purpose ofschooling, for insuring the advancement of the individual and theeconomy at large. Chubb and Moe begin with the assumption that thepublic schools are failed beyond reforming. Urban schools no longerperform the miracle of the meritocracy. Far from it. Even the schools

127

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

of affluent suburban districts are doing less than spectacularly well indeveloping the intellectual power that our high tech economydemands. Whatever new ideas and efforts, they write, are all too oftenswamped in a morass of bureaucracy. State licensing and certificationacts to restrain and discourage any creative development in schoolstaffing. Schools and colleges of education, in alliance with the states,simply perform as low-level training establishments for turning outnew generations of school functionaries — the normal school syndrome.And the entire enterprise of the factory school, inherited from ourindustrial past, is costly, very costly, to the public purse.

With this grasp of American schooling and society in hand, theyproceed then to outline a sweeping proposal for change. Schools asinstitutions within this society, they argue, must be set free to competefor enrollments in an open market. Tax dollars must flow directly tostudents who could then choose among the rival institutions.Additional dollars out of pocket, incidentally, might also be necessaryfor many schools. Choice presumably would be made by students andtheir families on the basis of the academic or otherwise appeal of oneschool or another. The academically fittest schools would survive;others would fail and disappear, thereby assuring institutionalexcellence. The great bureaucratic machinery, state and local forcontrolling and administering the schools is no longer necessary. Thetraining systems for licensing teachers and administrators would alsobe closed out. The end of the school bureaucracy would create hugefinancial savings, but more importantly, it would free schools todevelop independently toward higher standards of academic excellence.Choice in the Chubb and Moe view is indeed the panacea. Privatizededucation, or more accurately a quasi-public, quasi-private system ofschools, in their view fits the demands of today's America.

Such a system, or non system, reflects their conception of oursociety's interests. But there are problems here. To abandon thetraditional social responsibilities of the public school in order to gain aclear academic focus may be a limitation that high tech America,socially and financially, cannot afford. The school, for better or worse,has been the agency responsible over many years for inculcating civicresponsibility, for coping with racism and bigotry, with discriminationagainst the handicapped, for wrestling with a range of medical andsocial problems, drug abuse, AIDS and so on. If the schools are nolonger to take on these tasks, can other agencies be invented to do thejob, and at what cost? The Chubb and Moe study suggests that, withthe elimination of the present massive bureaucracy of publicschooling, measures can be developed to ensure, for example, equityin schooling for the handicapped. Public monies would be offered to

128

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

entrepreneurial schools in order that they could do well by thehandicapped as well as insure the 'least restrictive environment.' Butof course expenditure of public resources requires oversight and, withit, a bureaucratic organization to regularize the function. Governmentalcontrols, the study suggests, will also be necessary to insure equity,racial and otherwise; new laws will need to be put in place to preventunwanted discrimination. With new regulations and .new regulators,it suggests a new bureaucracy to replace the old. Such an arrangementwould be entirely expected in the present American economy whichis, far from the laissez-faire mode of the academy era, a thoroughlyregulated capitalism

The Chubb and Moe study of course is not concerned directly witheducating the young; the focus is on school institutions, their controland support, and on the economic frame of school organization withinthe society. Fine. The data base for the analysis, however, and amassive set of data are in the High School and Beyond study (Heyns &Hilton, 1982, p. 89—102) is limited to secondary schools andsecondary students. There is little concern in fact with elementary orearly childhood schools and, on the other hand, even less interest inhigher education except as to academic preparation for it. As ithappens, both these arenas have taken on enhanced importance in thepost-industrial world.

4. PUBLIC-PRIVATE COMPETITION AND EARLYCHILDHOOD AND HIGHER EDUCATION

There are in fact several dimensions of education that could be usefulto study in examining the pretended panacea of choice. Earlychildhood education, as mentioned, is an important one today giventhe form that the American family has taken in recent years.Schooling of young children from day-care to 'pre-school' offers anilluminating example of the problems of public-private competition.There are few controls in most of the states and little public moneyinvested in it; consensus in general is that it is a near disaster area.The one federally funded program in the area is, of course, HeadStart, and it has shown some good success over the years despiteserious underfunding and the limitation of its focus to the children ofminority poor. Some franchised schools, appealing to middle classfamilies, such as the Montessori schools, offer a well establishedstandard of method and curriculum, but in general parents are left totheir own devices in selecting a school. Judging competence of staff isoften particularly difficult since there are generally no state standardsof qualification. Any principle of equity in regard to early childhood

129

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

schooling hardly exists. Choice in this case without substantial publicsupport and without some degree of state regulation and controlseems less than desirable.

Higher education in the United States offers another example ofchoice. Our system of colleges and universities has a great diversity ofinstitutions, public and private in support and control, academic andnot, religious and non, large and small and so on. It is an intenselycompetitive system which encourages every institution, whetherpublic or private, to compete for enrollments of students and thetuitions they pay (Best, 1988, pp. 177-189). Within the varied sub-markets — research universities, junior colleges, liberal arts collegesand the like — each institution must maintain its position, to justifycontinuing levels of state appropriations in the case of the public ones,or to hold its position in numbers and perhaps selection of'quality' ofstudents for the private ones. The competition has produced abusiness model, heavily bureaucratic in mangement and control, thecosts of which are difficult to calculate. But undeniably highereducation in America thrives. Colleges and universities have expandedin the decade or so past, despite ever rising costs, to become the massinstitution for the middle class, a response in large part to the post-industrial transition of the economy. The competitive market forceshave brought women in increasing numbers, minorities, and 'returningadults' into the higher learning, offsetting the demographic decline inthe eighties of the traditional clientele. Whether the higher educationexperience can be held out as an exemplar for schools choice isquestionable. Certainly in any measure of equity or even equality ofaccess the colleges offer no acceptable model. The cost differentialsamong differing institutions and types of institutions, from the elite tothe ordinary, even with grants and loans of public monies, are ofcourse vast. Still, the higher education example should be explored.

5. THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHER COUNTRIES AND ELSEWHERE

Yet another dimension for reflecting on issues of choice andprivatization is the experience of other countries in disestablishingpublic schooling. Comparative studies are always risky and oftendangerously misleading in that the cultural position of schools withinany society, as well as societies themselves, can differ fundamentallywhile appearing quite similar. Even so, the example of recent actionsin Great Britain could be instructive. During the waning Thatcheryears, the government moved to create a competitive, free enterpriseframe for schooling throughout the country involving schools which'opt out' of local government control and a network of specialist City

130

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

Technology Colleges. These initiatives have created great disruption,but the plan is still unfolding and the studies of its effects on educationin the society at large are yet to be done. The Australians, similarly,have moved towards quasi-public, privatized schools in recent years,as have the Netherlanders a decade earlier. Analysis of the experienceof these societies, which is just beginning to be done, could inform usin important ways on successes and failures we might anticipate in aderegulation course.

There are examples of school choice to be examined within theUnited States today, examples in differing limited constituencies butpossibly important in considering any larger application. The state ofMinnesota adopted a choice plan statewide in 1989, the only state todate to do so, which permits students to exercise choice among anypublicly supported schools in any district. The plan does not includeprivate institutions. To date, in only the second year of operation,movement of students has been minimal and the effect on schoolsnegligible. But it is only beginning, and the plan will need examiningas it develops. The city of Milwaukee has recently inaugurated achoice plan which embraces both private and public school options.The population affected within the city includes a substantial numberof African American students and their families who in general seemto endorse the plan. The plan, however, has been challenged in thecourts on the church-state issue and at present the outcome isuncertain. In any event, the Milwaukee effort will need study.

The New York City public schools offer yet another example ofschool choice. In an experiment that has become somewhat famous inits success, the Central Park East District 4 in East Harlem within theCity's public schools system was administratively reorganized in 1974with the intention of creating new options of schools for studentswithin the district (Meier, 1987, pp. 753-757). The several massiveschools within the district, which were by general agreement 'failing'schools, were re-formed over time into a number of smaller 'schools,'not buildings, but groups of cooperating faculty who were encouragedto develop their own special genius in style and mode and approach tostudies. The new option schools, thirty of them as of today, fromelementary through high school, compete for students within theentire district. The success, well known now, of this experiment seemsto indicate the possibilities within a public school system of releasingenormous energy and creativity to the benefit of all the students andthe schools' staff as well. It is a remarkable example of effective choicethat can be examined to good effect.

131

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

6. CONCLUSION

Chubb and Moe with Politics, Markets and America's Schools haveopened the debate, or perhaps more accurately, have framed a longterm debate with a new stance. As social researchers, they haverefocused the conversation, away from education and the endlesssquabbles of teaching and learning to the business of schooling, to theschool itself and its function as part of the larger body of society. Theplan, that is, offers no new ideas in education but argues that thedynamic force of market competition in schooling will propel usforward. It assumes that individual and family initiative toward'getting ahead' in the world, a position eloquently stated by no less afounding figure than Benjamin Franklin, will lead to the advancementof society at large. The existing factory organized school, it seemsclear, will simply no longer do. National interests in today's worldeconomy leave no place for the community values of the schools or forlocal community involvement in governance and control. Thederegulation proposal thus avoids not only the educational issues, butignores whatever schooling has meant in America's past as well.

With no sense of our history, it follows, of course, that deregulationcan offer only a limited vision of our future. And a closer look at ouremergent society suggests there may be problems ahead. Americansseem to value education for purposes of rhetoric, as in 'EducationPresident,' but the reality is that we spend our resources as a nation,and very generously, in executing brilliant high tech wars in variousThird World countries which we can then view on television. Theresources for support of schools, as for social programs in general, arevery hard to come by. The social unconcern and the drasticindividualism of the nineties may well lead to the proposedprivatization of schooling. The choice principle in a society which isgenerally uncaring or at the least unaware of social ills may well beready to abandon long held but expensive ideals of equality ofopportunity. Concerns for fairness and equity seem almost archaic inthe computer age. In sum, an uncaring society will create schoolsexactly in its image, and indeed the Chubb and Moe theory mayunfold to become a crude reality.

Perhaps the Chubb and Moe study and its reflection in Bush'sAmerica 2000 political strategy can be seen as a first pass, an initialeffort to create the ground for a comprehensive redesign of schools forpost-industrial America. Let us hope that, with Clinton and the newleadership in Washington, other plans, other theories will beforthcoming, ones that may include some broader social and historicalcontext for schooling America. Lawrence Cremin, who often stressed in

132

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014

DEREGULATION OF SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

his writing the distinction of education and schooling, proposed thatschools and colleges should reorganize themselves to teach above allaccess to learning, how to seek out and take advantage of availableeducational opportunities (Cremin, 1990). The central concern ofschooling should become, he wrote, 'the nurturance of educationalautonomy.' Unquestionably, today's post-industrial technology isenriching the possibilities for nurturance, for expanding availability forlearning far beyond classrooms and schools. Cremin's vision of whatschooling could become, that is, schools that lead to education, is a farbroader concept of what schools might be than the institutionalstratagems of a Chubb and Moe or an America 2000. Assuming a societythat cares about its young, perhaps the 21st century will be able toreach beyond matters of competing institutions toward an ideal ofeducational autonomy for every American.

REFERENCES

BEST, J. H. (1988) The Revolution of Markets and Management: Toward a Historyof American Higher Education Since 1945. History of Education Quarterly, Summer,177-189.

CHUBB, J . E. and MOE, T. M. (1990) Politics, Markets and America's Schools.(Washington, DC, Brookings Institution).

COONS, J . E. and SUGARMAN, S.D. (1978) Education by Choice: The Case forFamily Control (Berkeley: University of California Press).

CREMIN, L. A. (1990) Popular Education and Its Discontents. New York: Harper andRow.

HEYNS, B. and HILTON, T. L. (1982, April-July) The Cognitive Tests for HighSchool and Beyond: An Assessment. Sociology of Education, pp. 89-102.

KATZ, M. B. (1987) Reconstructing American Education. (Cambridge, MA, HarvardUniversity Press).

LIEBERMAN, M. (1989) Privatization and Educational Choice (New York, St. Martin'sPress).

MEIER, M. (1987) Central Park East: An Alternative Story. Phi Delta Kappan, June,753-757.

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary (1991) America 2000: The President'sEducation Strategy (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office).

Correspondence:Professor John Hardin BestThe Pennsylvania State UniversityRackley BuildingUniversity ParkPA 16802USA

133

© Basil Blackwell Ltd. and SCSE 1993

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Tem

ple

Uni

vers

ity L

ibra

ries

] at

15:

13 2

0 N

ovem

ber

2014