Fascinating article on education

Charles Leslie Glenn's The Myth of the Common School provides great historical information for those trying to figure out how we got from "there" to "here" in public education. Professor Glenn recently published a piece in the journal First Things entitled "Disestablishing Our Public Schools."

An observation he makes is that the systems surrounding public education (the bureaucracies of school districts and unions) often make education itself "beyond the reach of the democratic process" (42). That is, in practical terms, parents and other interested citizens cannot penetrate the thicket to have a voice in either how debates are framed or a way to give a meaningful opinion about the direction of neighborhood school.

Interestingly, Glenn asserts that parents are "much more interested in choice than in 'voice'"; meaning, that they are more interested in having authentic options in schooling over endless discussing schooling. A place where he suggests this is happening are charter schools:

American education now is undergoing a reinvention of localism, in the form of charter schools and other innovations that place significant decisions back in the hands of those engaged with shaping and maintaining an individual school: teachers and other school staff (and students as appropriate) in dialogue with parents and community institutions and supporters, as in the nineteenth century. Since the barriers of distance have been greatly reduced, such school communities can be formed on the basis of choice rather than of geography (42).

Food for thought.