Public Schools and the Public Good

Abstract

Criticism of the public schools in recent years has been both broad-based and unrelenting, yet I argue in this essay that the decline in public education is exaggerated and the accomplishments of public education neglected. Verbal and quantitative achievement levels among school-age youth at present are about where they were in the late fifties through the early sixties, before the purported decline, while disparities across social lines, especially involving minority-majority comparisons, actually are smaller now — much smaller — than they were then. How are we to comprehend these favorable patterns? I argue that improved conditions outside school are an unlikely candidate, but that conditions of schooling, including expenditures, class size, and curricular patterns, have been changing in ways that should boost achievement. My conclusion: despite many “external” forces pulling against their successes, not the least being an increasingly hostile political climate, our public schools have been doing a better job than most people realize. My concluding remarks address prospects for further school improvement in light of currently popular reform models, including so-called “consumer-choice” and the Charter School movement.