Word: public-schools
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...noble the dream, how ignoble the modern reality. Mann's crowning achievement was the 19th century American common school, a place where children from all backgrounds could nurture democracy through a shared educational experience. Not very long ago, that vision seemed an eternal verity, enshrined in the public-school system. But over the past generation, the balance wheel of the social machinery began to wobble badly. American schools today, as any parent knows, are anything but equal. And education, rather than bringing students together, has become a social dividing line, separating children rich with choices in life from those doomed...
...PUBLIC-SCHOOL CHOICE. The alternative-schools movement of the early 1970s gave parents in some cities options beyond sending their children to the neighborhood school. Prodded by desegregation orders from the courts, many urban school districts now practice open enrollment, which permits parents to place their children in any public school with vacant seats as long as racial balance is maintained. Some of these public-school Choice experiments (notably Cambridge, Mass.; St. Paul; and a New York City district in East Harlem) have been praised for encouraging innovation and raising student performance...
...consensus in Minnesota -- the state with the largest open-enrollment plan -- is that public-school Choice works as far as it goes. True, there is some evidence that black and Hispanic parents, in particular, receive limited information about their school options. Transportation costs also could become a public burden if many more students decide to cross district lines. "Open enrollment has been fully in effect for only one year," summarizes Van Mueller, a professor of education policy at the University of Minnesota. "We don't know much, but almost all the participants are pretty happy with it. And most parents...
...principle is more sacred to American public education than the authority of locally elected school boards. Yet the Boston city council voted last week to abolish the independent School Committee and put city hall directly in charge of Boston's 57,000 public-school students, 80% of them members of minorities. Black leaders and the School Committee protested the council's action, which must be approved by the Massachusetts legislature and signed by the Governor. But Mayor Raymond Flynn, who is pushing hard to overhaul the debt-ridden system, argues, "There's just no time anymore to sit around...
...most controversial aspect of any voucher plan (a term that Chubb and Moe avoid because of its Friedmanesque heritage) is the idea of permitting private and even parochial schools to compete with public institutions. But Chubb insists that choice plans that allow open enrollment only within the public- school system will not provide enough competition or sufficient diversity. "Public-school choice," he argues, "is merely a demand-side test. There's no change on the supply side...