Purpose Of Public Schooling Research Articles

The forces underlying the public school enrollment drop

Recent headlines describing the national drop in public school enrollment suggest that this is a shocking crisis brought on or worsened by the pandemic. However, Abbie Cohen argues that the current enrollment decline should not be a surprise. The underlying causes have festered for decades. Among these causes is the tension between the different purposes of public schools. Those who see schools primarily as a means of social mobility have promoted a variety of school choice initiatives. These efforts have pulled resources out of traditional public schools, making it more difficult to reduce inequality and prepare all young people for participation in a democratic society. The shortcomings of public schools, particularly in urban communities, have fed a growing mistrust of schools, which leads more families to seek other options. These trends put at risk public schools’ ability to serve the public good.

Rhetoric and the purposes of public education: building discourse for shared responsibility

ABSTRACT In this study, we employ discourse analysis of US gubernatorial political advertisements to analyze the discursive struggles over the purposes of public schools. The advertisements are analyzed to demonstrate how rhetoric works to shape consent for dominant, human capital views regarding schooling's purposes, as well as to communicate alternative articulations of schooling's purposes which can disrupt that consent. In the latter exploration, we draw upon the approach of public persuasion, where the public is persuaded to deem something other than dominant economic values as relevant for making education decisions. We analyze alternative contextual cues that can shift citizens’ impressions, leading them to weigh conflicting values toward schools differently. We offer narratives that change the meaning citizens make of schools with the aim of building public support for public schools.

Immigrant and "Alien" Reactions to Obama 's Educational Policy:Disposition of Authenticity or the Politics of The Emperor's New Clothes

The article by Stella Batagiannis brings into sharp relief issues confronting education in general in the United States through the narrative of an immigrant inside the system. In particular. Ms. Batagiannis addresses current policy level rhetoric and subsequent decision making that has led to increased polarization of views about the nature and purpose of public schools, the role of teachers, and measured accountability through high stakes testing as the shibboleth for society. This reaction, in the form of voices is composed by another immigrant to the United States (Bharath Sriraman), and two Norwegian aliens1 to the system (Haavold Per 0ystein and Gunnar Kristiansen) .

Education for citizenship in for-profit charter schools?

Most Americans and many residents of other democratic countries hold public schools to the social and political goal of preparing children to be good citizens. This goal is being challenged by some new forms of schooling promoted through popular education reform movements, especially in the US. This article reveals potentially insurmountable conflicts between the beliefs and practices of one of those forms of schools, for-profit charter schools, and their public task of educating for citizenship. This study begins by exploring the public nature and purposes of public schools, especially their role in creating particular types of citizens. This understanding of public schooling and good citizenship, then, becomes the theoretical lens for analysing the practices of for-profit charter schools. A critical discourse analysis was conducted of school materials such as websites, curricula, investor relation materials, proposals for new charter schools, and interviews with charter school founders. That analysis was used to indicate aspects of support for and incompatibility with quality citizenship education and to assess the overall likelihood that for-profit schools can educate citizens well.

Good Citizens vs. Good Workers: Low‐Income Girls and Clashing Subjectivities in a Charter School

Abstract: The public school system has continued to promote inequalities along axes of class, race and gender. Yet contestation over the role and purpose of public schooling has yielded significant social protest as well as reforms that are unfolding in often contradictory and complex ways. One set of conflicting aims characterizing current education reform is clashing definitions of the “good” citizen versus “good worker.” While neoliberal tenets posit “good” citizens and workers as those who exercise responsible “individual” choices, education reform enabling the adoption of radical pedagogies stresses a model of citizenship calling for individual and collective critical awareness and activism while still trying to prepare students to access further educational and employment opportunities as “good” workers. I explore how low‐income, female, predominantly African‐American high‐school students who attend a charter school incorporating a radical education pedagogy interpret, internalize, and contest these competing definitions of good citizens versus good workers.

Editor's Introduction: In Search of the Common Good

While teaching a certification course entitled Issues and Reforms in American Secondary Schools, I sought to contextualize some of our country's current schooling issues with the help of the Public Broadcasting System's popular video The Merrow Report: In Schools We Trust. At the heart of John Merrow's historical documentary are two questions: What is the purpose of public schools? And who determines their direction? While Merrow's documentary discusses a broad array of cultural and political influences within the 150 or so years that communities within the United States have provided public schooling, one influence remains as a pervasively felt presence throughout the report. At times it is presented as the dominant educational stance within a particular era, while at other times it appears to have been almost eclipsed by a call to move back to the basics or towards an emphasis on increased economic security. However, this felt presence is a reality--that in spite of often concentrated efforts to do so--is difficult to ignore. No matter what various politicians or citizen groups have argued should be the purpose of the public schools, the fact remains that our educational systems operate within a country that claims a democratic form of government; the very nature of which indicates the necessity of providing educational opportunities for all. To divorce the purposes of our public schools from our political identity is a dangerous thing. To ignore the connections between the public schools and democracy is to make those schools expendable--to ignore the common good. Therefore, rather than argue about whether or not schools should inculcate students with democratic values, we should focus on exploring the ways in which our schools and society might move beyond narrowly individualistic perceptions of what contributing to a democracy can mean. Although it would be a mistake to reduce this issue's authors' meaning-making solely to an exploration of democracy, their writings do contribute to an increased understanding of what educating towards and contributing to the common good can mean. Among others, this issue grapples with democracy-related questions such as: What does it mean to implement effective instruction that honors the needs of all individuals within science classrooms? What are some of the ways, in which we can equip students to act as effective citizens in an era of globalization? What can educational researchers, teachers, and administrators learn about the common good from groups who have left public schools for other educational options? And in what ways do the ethical considerations that contribute to American perceptions of work, tell us something about the place of community in relation to individual interests and economic production within our society? Although diverse in content, each incorporates a felt presence that is uniquely democratic; a concern for the common good is pervasive. Five of this issue's eight articles deal directly with educational theory and practice in ways that also connect to life and growth within a democratic society. In Critical Constructivism for Teaching and Learning in a Democratic Society, Michael Bentley, Stephen C. Fleury, and Jim Garrison point out that the version of constructivism that has been most widely accepted among mainstream teacher educators has been trivialized, in that it is often devoid of reflection, social consciousness, and democratic citizenship. The authors caution that when constructivism is decontextualized in this way, the danger exists that pre-service teachers will view constructivism as just one more teaching technique; which, in turn, will put them at risk of fail[ing] to become aware of the political consequences of particular pedagogical decisions. Although careful to explain that recipe approaches to teaching a critical constructivism do not exist, the authors describe process-oriented frameworks that often lead pre-service science and social studies teachers towards a critical understanding of constructivism and its potentially positive role in educating for the common good. …

Bending Back on High School Programs for Youth with Learning Disabilities

To bend back, ... [to give] careful consideration to important matters and [to be] open to the voices, opinions, and advice of others (Valli, 1997, pp. 67-68). I am bending back my mind (and often, it seems, my soul) to reflect on high school programs for students with learning disabilities (LD). This is a painful process. My focus on secondary issues did not start until 1980 when I received a grant from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to study forms of interagency collaboration (Single Portal Intake Project, 19801983). In our work related to this grant, we found that (a) interagency collaboration was logical when agencies had reason to collaborate; and (b) transition times (when a student moves from one agency to another) were one of the prime opportunities for collaboration. One of the transitions we studied in the early 1980s was the one from the public schools to adult life. The first big question was happens to special education youth after they graduate from high school? This question led to the beginning of the follow-up studies on special education graduates I have conducted, almost yearly, since 1983. These studies have produced data that have raised new questions, including what conditions could improve the post-school status of special education graduates, how can we keep more special education students in high school through graduation, and, finally, what is the purpose of public schools in a democracy? For some these questions might not seem sequential; for me they were a straight line to my present position on schooling and special education. The current condition of schools with regard to youth with LD is worse than it was 20 years ago. This is not because many good, well-intentioned people did not spend oodles of time and energy on the problem. Nor is it because we do not have good, competent people working on the issue today. Indeed, the quality of the people working on these issues today seems superior to those of 20 years ago. The decline in the quality of schooling stems from other factors, factors that are, in my mind, a clear indication of the failure of the P-20 public school system due to the loss of a moral compass of schooling. The post-school outcome data on graduates with LD has remained pretty stable over the past 20 years. Males with LD who graduate from high school are employed at more or less 70-80% levels, similar to males without disabilities (Murray, Goldstein, & Edgar, 1997). Although many of these students plan to go to college, few do (about 25%), and even fewer graduate from some form of postsecondary education program (Murray, Goldstein, Nourse, & Edgar, 2000). Females do less well; their employment rates are 50-60%, primarily due to child bearing without partners (Murray et al., 1997). Additionally, about 40% of students with LD fail to complete schooling (Kortering & Braziel, 2002). For both graduates and dropouts, we have virtually no information on the quality of their lives or evidence of their overall citizenship. This is, sadly, also true of young adults without disabilities. Instead, we measure employment status and college attendance as keys to post-school success, rather than the more difficult analysis of quality of life and productive citizenship. This is, I am afraid, a cop-out to the pressure of the American worldview of free market economy and consumerism as a measure of goodness. It is an embarrassment. There are several major problems facing those of us who care about students labeled as LD. While there are technical problems that we as educators should be able to fix (definition of LD, best instructional practices for students so identified, powerful secondary programs that hold students and add value to their lives), these issues, while important, are not nearly as important as the shift of the aim of public schooling away from preparing democratic citizens and offering meaningful opportunities for all students. …

An Ongoing Conversation

The increasing polarization of the public's views on public education serves us poorly; we need to revive the skill and will to engage in more thoughtful dialogue, Mr. Bacchetti points out. WE DON'T look at the big issues of the principles and purposes of public schools often or carefully enough. Sadly, the political and philosophical conversation seems increasingly polarized. In Venn diagram terms, the two circles -- labeled right/left, basics/constructivist, academic/child-centered, etc. -- reveal at best a vanishingly thin region of overlap. When the true believers on either side look in the mirror, they see Dumbledore. Over their shoulders and gaining, they see Voldemort. Frederick Hess' beefy rhetoric stakes out a position that reflects a more conservative world view than my own. In essence, he argues that the purposes of public education will be better served if we narrow the number of principles that define its publicness and expand the number of ways those principles can be implemented. In that expanded universe, religious schools, vouchers, for-profit ventures, and other alternatives would be welcome. The principles advertised in Hess' title are woven through his essay, making difficult to distinguish his main point from his subsidiary concerns. Here is what I take to be the core of his definition of what makes a school public. In addition to teaching skills and content, public schools should: * prepare students to be productive members of the social order; * enable students to become aware of their responsibilities, including the principles, habits, and of citizenship; and * educate students to be respectful of constitutional strictures, including laws, process, and rights. In carrying out these functions, public school systems should also: * not deny access to students for reasons unrelated to [a school's] educational focus; and * provide an appropriate placement for each student in every community. Asserting by implication that the meanings of his key terms are inherently obvious, Hess goes on to argue that the terms others might use to set forth other principles are not. For example, he observes that diversity and tolerance are umbrella terms with multiple interpretations. Therefore, they lie outside his cluster of principles because, when we try to define them more precisely, it becomes clear that we must privilege some values at the expense of others. If he believes that a similar privileging of certain values might color his own key terms, such as obligations of citizenship, productive members of the social order, societal responsibilities, individual rights, and the like, he gives no indication. Hess seems to arrive at his position partly for affirmative reasons (e.g., an emphasis on academic learning) and partly because of a surprisingly bitter view of educators (some of whom he names, but most of whom he only characterizes). In his view, these educators * explicitly a particular world view and endorse a particular social ethos; * promote partisan attitudes toward American foreign policy, the propriety of affirmative action, or the morality of redistributive social policies; * teach students to accept teen pregnancy or homosexuality as normal and morally unobjectionable; * attempt to stamp out familial views and impress children with socially approved beliefs; and * treat public institutions as their personal playthings. To illustrate his more general points, Hess portrays the meaningful questions asked in the classrooms of the Coalition of Essential Schools as a herd of Trojan ponies surreptitiously unloading the teachers' agendas. It's not clear what meaningful questions might be in the classrooms he approves of, though readers might infer that they would be limited to the rational analysis of topics that arise from well-developed and authoritatively taught subject matter. …

Education, Social Cohesion, and the Future Role of International Organizations

Although they have many important functions, The European Union, many federal governments, and the United Nations (UN) have few areas where their mandates call for them to dictate, adjudicate, or legislate education policy. Education, for the most part, has traditionally been viewed as relevant to local culture and hence subject to local control. This is now changing. Traditional interest in mathematics, science, and language remain, and although there are distinct influences drawing school systems into cross-national interests and endeavors, the main focus of attention is not on this area. Today, the main focus of attention is on the citizenship function of education, that purpose of public schooling that transcends curriculum and helps to create social cohesion, the basis of a stable democracy. This article summarizes some of the social cohesion issues involving education, the concerns over how education performs this function, and the implications for international organizations. It begins by reviewing the purposes of public education, then it discusses some

Can We Find the Traditional American School in the Idea of Choice?

The largest and most profound purpose of public schooling continues to be education for social understanding and democratic participation. Over time, might we awaken the powers of the localty-zoned school to serve the comprehensive educational needs of all youth?

Book Review: A Taxonomy of Social Purposes of Public Schools: A Handbook

Book Review: A Taxonomy of Social Purposes of Public Schools: A Handbook