Politics, Markets, and America's Schools

During the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America's schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation's political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. Chubb and Moe argue that these reforms are destined to fail because they do not get to the root of the problem. The fundamental causes of poor academic performance, they claim, are not to be found in the schools, but rather in the institutions of direct democratic control by which the schools have traditionally been governed. Reformers fail to solve the problem-when the institutions ARE the problem. The authors recommend a new system of public education, built around parent-student choice and school competition, that would promote school autonomy—thus providing a firm foundation for genuine school improvement and superior student achievement.

• The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem
• Education and the Commercial Mindset
• Building Civic Capacity : The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools (Studies in Government and Public Policy (Paper))
• Hidden Markets: The New Education Privatization (Critical Social Thought)
• Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States
• Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side
• Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
• Culturally Responsive School Leadership (Race and Education)
• Learning to Improve: How America's Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better
• The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District