Politics, Markets, and America's SchoolsDuring the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America's schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation's political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. Chubb and Moe argue that these reforms are destined to fail because they do not get to the root of the problem. The fundamental causes of poor academic performance, they claim, are not to be found in the schools, but rather in the institutions of direct democratic control by which the schools have traditionally been governed. Reformers fail to solve the problem-when the institutions ARE the problem. The authors recommend a new system of public education, built around parent-student choice and school competition, that would promote school autonomy- thus providing a firm foundation for genuine school improvement and superior student achievement. |
Contents
The Root of the Problem | 1 |
The One Best System | 3 |
Academic Excellence and Educational Reform | 6 |
Politics Social Science and Educational Reform | 11 |
Institutions and Effective Organization | 18 |
Theory and Data | 20 |
Asking the Right Questions | 25 |
An Institutional Perspective on Schools | 26 |
The Causes of Student Achievement | 101 |
Economic Resources | 102 |
School Size | 104 |
Family Background | 105 |
Modeling Student Achievement | 111 |
A General Model of Student Achievement | 115 |
The Results | 125 |
Conclusion | 137 |
Politics and Markets | 27 |
Authority and Decisionmaking | 28 |
Constituents and Consumers | 30 |
Bureaucracy and Autonomy | 35 |
The Organization of Schools | 47 |
Central Tendency and Variance | 60 |
Conclusion | 66 |
The Organization of Effective Schools | 69 |
Measuring School Performance | 70 |
The Achievement Test Results | 72 |
An Exploratory Analysis | 76 |
Goals | 78 |
Leadership | 83 |
Personnel | 86 |
Practice | 92 |
Conclusion | 99 |
Institutional Context and School Organization | 141 |
Control and Organization in Americas Schools | 142 |
Institutions and Control in Americas Schools | 166 |
Conclusion | 183 |
Better Schools through New Institutions Giving Americans Choice | 185 |
Schools and Institutions | 186 |
Educational Reform during the 1980s | 192 |
A Proposal for Reform | 215 |
Politics Ideas and Americas Schools | 226 |
Data | 230 |
Measures and Indicators | 235 |
Special Issues in Modeling Student Achievement | 248 |
Achievement and Organization in Public Schools | 259 |
Notes | 278 |
| 313 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
academic excellence academic program achieve a nationally administrative constraint analysis autonomy average basic bureaucratic influence chapter characteristics choice classroom district East Harlem effective and ineffective effective organizations effective school organization estimates formal graduation requirements high and low high performance schools highest quartile important independent variables indicators influence of school Joe Nathan leadership levels linear regression log gain scores low performance schools measure of school Michael Rutter Models of Student nationally representative sample one-tail test parent-school parents and students percent personnel constraint political Predicted two-year gain principal's principals private high schools private schools probit model problems professionalism public and private public authority public education public schools regression coefficients relationships sample of public Sample weighted school control school effectiveness school performance selection bias senior sophomore Standardized coefficients structure Student Achievement Gains student body successful schools teaching tend tests unions unstandardized weighted to achieve