Politics, Markets, and America's Schools

John E. Chubb, Terry M. Moe

Brookings Institution Press, 1990 - Education - 318 pages

During 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: 8
• The One Best System: 8
• Academic Excellence and Educational Reform: 8
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Index: 313

About the author

John E. Chubb is a founding partner of Edison Schools and a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Terry M. Moe is professor of political science at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written extensively on American education and American political institutions.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Politics, Markets, and America's Schools; The American studies collection
• Authors: John E. Chubb, Terry M. Moe
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1990
• ISBN: 0815714092, 9780815714095
• Length: 318 pages
• Subjects: Education / Administration / General; Education / Evaluation & Assessment; Education / General; Political Science / General