CHAPTER 1

Conflicting Models forPublic Education

Societies based on the idea of liberty have two primary templatesfor organizing their institutions. For many enterprises, free marketsare best suited for advancing both individual and collective intereststhrough the private or nongovernment sectors. For other undertakings,especially those needed to nurture or sustain freedom and individualautonomy, government action is often used to initiate, support, or administeressential services. Each of these organizational models evincesspecific advantages for recognizing and meeting the needs and preferencesof citizens, and each has its own purview of institutions where itis deemed more appropriate and useful.

And yet, while democratic or bureaucratic "politics" and economic"markets" are often presented as contrasting ideals, the line betweenthese arenas is often less defined than it may first appear, with governmentaction often necessary for supporting effective market mechanismsand private interests frequently playing a pivotal role in thepublic arena. Indeed, individual institutions themselves—for example,the military or the federal courts—can often include elements of bothpolitics and markets, so that there is more of a spectrum than a starkboundary between government action and private economic activity.Some concerns can be addressed largely through one organizationalmodel, while the other plays a lesser, perhaps supporting, role in providinggoods and services to citizens in that sector. And it is in thearea between pure market and government models—on issues such ashealth care, transportation, the environment, and education—wherethe most interesting debates play out on the appropriate and optimalroles of the government and the market in social organization.

Where one model is less effective, the other may serve as a better primarytemplate for organizing institutions. For instance, the free marketideals of voluntary participation and individual choice may not bethe best tenets for organizing, say, national security. Instead, collectiveand coercive government action may be better suited for administeringthat public good, which all then enjoy. Likewise, government's abilityto gather and redistribute resources and enforce equity standardsmay not be useful in all areas. State control over the media and foodproduction led to disastrous results in the Soviet Bloc; people preferindividual freedom and choice in many areas of their lives, and the aggregateof individual choices can lead to the best outcome when articulatedthrough market mechanisms in many areas. The problem comeswhen one model systematically fails to produce an important good orservice that is placed in its purview, yet there are reasons to resist theobvious remedy of shifting production toward the other model.

That is, there are many examples of "market failure" or "governmentfailure" evident in a number of areas. We all know of instances wherethe state fails to effectively deliver a service, such as filling potholesor policing the streets. And we know of cases where markets producedrastic inequality in wages or limit access to essential goods based onpeople's ability to pay. In these cases, people often react by seeking tomove the endeavor into the other model. Governments could easilylimit CEOs' pay or distribute important goods to the poor, many wouldclaim; and private companies may be better prepared to provide securityservices, for instance.

In this knee-jerk tendency to look to alternative models, marketshave been ascendant in particular in recent years as a means to addressthe social problems that are increasingly associated with popularlyperceived government failure. Problems of government ineffectivenessand social malaise tied to public programs such as welfare help explainwhy markets have become increasingly paramount, seen as a commonsensicalsolution to seemingly intractable problems of governmentineffectiveness. Whether it is promoting individualized retirement accounts(instead of federally administered Social Security), privatizedmedical savings accounts (instead of government health insuranceprograms), or even privatized military services (for functions previouslyperformed by the armed forces), markets make sense on manylevels.

The same is true in the area of schools, where market-style organizationhas an inherent appeal. Particularly in the case of public schools,which—as we will show—are the site of multiple tensions and competingdemands, markets represent a very attractive solution because oftheir apparently neat delineation of producers responding to the needsof consumers, namely, the children. But closer scrutiny of these issuesraises important questions about the efficacy of simplistic solutionssuch as these.

Indeed, the idea of education for all may be the best example of theunforeseen difficulties of moving to a market model. In fact, schoolswere not always a state function, as is evident in the history of mostWestern democracies. Instead, they were often left to a range of privateproviders, including religious, charity, for-profit, and family-basedmodels. Education became a state concern in the United States onlywhen reformers in the nineteenth century argued that a laissez faireapproach to education led to too much variation, too much inequality,and not enough access to a service that was crucial to the young republic(and, according to some perspectives, not enough uniformity whenthe nascent Industrial Revolution required workers with a reliable setof skills and values).

The Continuing Crisis

The U.S. public education system was...