Reconstructing the Common Good in Education: Coping with Intractable American Dilemmas

For almost two centuries, Americans expected that their public schools would cultivate the personal, moral, and social development of individual students, create citizens, and bind diverse groups into one nation. Since the 1980s, however, a new generation of school reformers has been intent on using schools to solve the nation’s economic problems. An economic justification for public schools equipping students with marketable skills to help the nation compete in a global, information-based workplace overwhelmed other historically accepted purposes for tax-supported public schools. Private sector management has become the model for public school systems as schools and districts are downsized, restructured, and outsourced. Recent reform proposals have called for government-funded vouchers to send children to private schools, the creation of self-governing charter schools, the contracting of schools to private entrepreneurs, and the partnerships with the business community in promoting new information technologies. But if there is a shared national purpose for education, should it be oriented only toward enhancing the country s economic success? Is everything public for sale? Are the interests of individuals or selected groups overwhelming the common good that the founders of tax-supported public schools so fervently sought?