Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public SchoolingWhat do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all childrenÑbut all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way Òthis archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do.Ó Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult. At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposesÑto pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own. Provocative, unflinching, wry, Someone Has to Fail looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 From Citizens to Consumers | 10 |
2 Founding the American School System | 42 |
3 The Progressive Effort to Reshape the System | 80 |
4 Organizational Resistance to Reform | 106 |
5 Classroom Resistance to Reform | 134 |
6 Failing to Solve Social Problems | 163 |
7 The Limits of School Learning | 195 |
8 Living with the School Syndrome | 222 |
Notes | 259 |
| 269 | |
Acknowledgments | 279 |
| 293 | |
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academic administrative progressives American education American school system argument cation chapter child-centered choice movement cial citizens civic virtue classroom common school movement common school system core create credential Cuban curriculum democratic equality dents desegregation develop districts educa educational consumers educational progressivism educational reform educational system effective enrollments establish expanding factor focus formal Goldin and Katz graduates high school human capital impact increase individual institutions large number liberal democracy market economy ment Nation at Risk nineteenth century nomic opportunity organizational percent political primary productive professional progressive era progressive movement progressivism promote public school pursue rationale reform efforts reform movements republic republican community rhetoric role school choice school reform skills social efficiency social equality social mobility social order social problems society standards movement students learn sumers teachers teaching and learning tion tional trying twentieth century Tyack United Whig workers