The Study

In this chapter, Professor David Labaree examines the way that implementation of the common school ideal has led to particular forms of educational failure and the negative educational consequences of the alternative put forward by market-oriented reformers, who propose to abandon the common school ideal altogether.

The Findings

Labaree notes that the core of the conflict over American education is the question of whether public education should be seen primarily as a public good or a private good. In his analysis, Labaree shows that public education has traditionally been insulated from market pressures. Even though a school district may lose students to other educational institutions, "it has little incentive to change its practices in order to make customers happy. Unhappy customers are sending a classic market signal of dissatisfaction, but it is not being received because the organization is responsive only to political signals." Market-oriented reformers have sought to solve the problem by making public schools vulnerable to the same corrective mechanism they provoke among dissatisfied customers. One measure, for instance, is to tie school funding to students. "The result is that, if a school loses a customer, it will feel the fiscal consequences ..." The other key component of reform has been to eliminate the governmental barriers to the exercise of school choice by educational consumers. The problem with these market-based economic solutions, Labaree writes, is that they are "radically antisocial." By making education entirely subject to the demands of the individual consumer, it leaves no one looking out for the public interest in public education. As an answer to a dysfunctional system where schools operate without an effective feedback mechanism to correct them when they go astray and a market-oriented solution, Labaree argues "that the way to convince people to voice their concerns about the failings of public education (rather than to turn their backs on these failings) is to demonstrate to them that they have an irreducible stake in the success of this institution." Labaree's essential point is that even those families who currently enjoy the benefits of education as a private good must support the public school system because the price of letting the schools fail would be steep for everyone. It would result in a society with fellow citizens who would be unable to make intelligent decisions as voters or jurors, and would be unable to follow the law, etc. Labaree concludes that by making people aware of their stake in a public good, such as public education, there is reason for optimism. "Loyalty to public education is a rational response for citizens to adopt, even if they have chosen to send their children to private school across the city line. They can run from public education, but they cannot hide from its consequences. With no exit possible from this intensely public good, the only reasonable option is to speak up and pay up in order to make these schools better."

What It Means to You

Do parents in your school district view public education as public good or a private one? Are your schools responsive to those who call for change, to those "dissatisfied customers?" What impact have market-oriented reforms had on your schools, students and communities?

For More Information

Labaree, D.F. (2000). No exit: Public education as an inescapably public good. In Cuban, L. & Shipps, D. (Eds.) Reconstructing the common good in education: Coping with intractable American dilemmas (pp. 110-129). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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