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The growing public sentiment that government has failed and is doomed to fail when it attempts to develop collective solutions to broad social problems is a measure of the success of economic interests over the past fifteen years in redefining the public good. Public good is increasingly defined and measured by the extent to which private interests are allowed to extend the reach of the marketplace.
Although choice, as a general principle, is worth protecting, “its effectiveness in addressing social problems depends on its being used in the context of confident and legitimate government authority, not as an alternative to such authority” (Henig, pp.23-24).
Lost in the crisis quality of the debate about private school choice is an understanding that public schools are not merely service providers. Public schools are not merely places where the individual’s or the society’s economic needs are met. Public schools have a special status as producers of values, perspectives, knowledge, and skills which are fundamental to community. Historically, this public function was widely celebrated. More recently, with the emergence of marketplace and consumer analogies, individual customer satisfaction, rather than the public good, has become a primary consideration.
Individualism, the promise of individual freedom and personal happiness, has been a central tenet of the American dream and is fundamental in American society. The danger we face is that individualism, as exemplified by private school choice, may further isolate Americans from each other and undermine the conditions of freedom.
The question, Education for what? crystallizes the issue of public good. A fundamental tension exists between two polarities. On the one hand, education for democracy views education as fundamental, with the responsibility of transmitting values and skills which sustain democracy. In a democracy citizens play two roles: as informed, intelligent arbiters of issues and as protectors of values. While a democracy may be viewed as an open forum of values, not all values are equal. A few are central: respect for minority opinions, freedom of expression, and allegiance to reason over unreason (Henig, p. 202).
On the other hand, education for economic interest views education as a dependent variable. In this view, education’s success is judged by whether it satisfies marketplace needs; thus, the marketplace determines the nature of schooling. Economic interests are narrowly personalized with little commitment to the collective or broad public good. The question, Does education work? is answered only in terms of personal, family or corporate economic success.
This tension, between an America where individuals are perceived as creating the good economic life for themselves and an America where citizens possess the right and duty of self governance, not as individuals, but as a community, is at the heart of the debate about private school choice. At its core, the debate is about the extent to which knowledge or access to knowledge is privileged. The effects of privilege are most apparent in the disparities of resources available to wealthy and poor school districts which Jonathan Kozol has documented in striking fashion in his book, Savage Inequalities.
The issue is quite simple: Will public resources be diverted from schools whose purpose is to perpetuate the public good? The answer to this question has implications for the parents and children involved and for the nature of our collective future.
The concept of the public good suggests that public education is neither exclusively public nor exclusively private. Democracy is not just an instrument for accomplishing some other policy objective. It is a way of living together in a pluralistic and difficult world.
This Handbook on educational issues was written with the recognition that the debate about public good versus the marketplace continues to dominate the discussion about the future of American public education. The primary purpose of the paper was to provide the reader with an overview of the research literature so that in the on-going debate about public education and educational reforms the discussion can move beyond ideology and political expediency.
Initially, there was a discussion of the public’s opinions, attitudes, and levels of understanding related to public education. Public opinion makes a difference, and it is crucial that it be understood and considered in any decisions about the future status of public education.
Further, there was analysis of the perceptions that many have about American public education. Special attention was given to those who maintain that the public schools have failed and that students of the 1980’s and beyond do not compare favorably with students from other countries or with Americans of one or more generations ago. Research was cited which shows that much of the discussion about the so-called failure of American public education has been exaggerated, distorted, and sensationalized. It was argued that even though there are serious problems in American public education, there are no empirical data to suggest that the overall system is failing.
In the discussion about student achievement, it was stated that explanations of why students succeed or fail in school are never simple. Researchers have identified the most important factors which affect student success or failure in school. They are myriad and are related to the school, the community, the family, and to individual behaviors and decisions. No single factor can explain why some students fail to achieve.
Finally, there was a brief look at several current and
popular educational reforms. It was found that most of these reforms are solidly based on the research on student achievement. This observation is significant because there is nothing simple about learning and education. Those who maintain that there are easy answers to the challenges we face are engaging in a form of avoidance behavior which never will allow us to offer every child a real opportunity to succeed in school.