Power
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PLAYERS IN THE SCHOOL GAME
FIRST CATEGORY: Government Agencies
1) State legislatures, particularly
those politicians known in-house to specialize in educational matters
2) Ambitious politicians with high
public visibility
3)
Big-city school boards controlling lucrative contracts
4) The courts
5)
Big-city departments of education
6) State departments of education
8) Other government agencies (National
Science Foundation, National Training
Laboratories, Defense Department, HUD, Labor Department, Health and
Human Services, and many
more)
SECOND
CATEGORY: Active Special Interests
1) Key
private foundations.
2.)
About a dozen of these curious entities have been the most important shapers of national education
policy in this century, particularly those of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller. 2) Giant corporations, acting through a
private association called the Business
Roundtable (BR), latest manifestation of a series of such associations
dating back to the turn of the
century. Some evidence of the centrality of business in the school mix was
the composition of the New
American Schools Development Corporation. Its makeup of eighteen members (which the uninitiated
might assume would be drawn from a
representative cross-section of parties interested in the shape of
American schooling) was heavily
weighted as follows: CEO, RJR Nabisco; CEO, Boeing; President, Exxon; CEO, AT&T; CEO, Ashland Oil; CEO, Martin
Marietta; CEO, AMEX; CEO, Eastman Kodak;
CEO, WARNACO; CEO, Honeywell; CEO, Ralston; CEO, Arvin; Chairman,
BF Goodrich; two ex-governors, two
publishers, a TV producer.
3) The United Nations through UNESCO,
the World Health Organization, UNICEF, etc.
4) Other private associations, National
Association of Manufacturers, Council on
Economic Development, the Advertising Council, Council on Foreign
Relations, Foreign Policy
Association, etc.
5)
Professional unions, National Education Association, American Federation
of Teachers, Council of
Supervisory Associations, etc.
6)
Private educational interest groups, Council on Basic Education,
Progressive Education Association,
etc.
7)
Single-interest groups: abortion activists, pro and con; other advocates
for specific interests.
THIRD
CATEGORY: The "Knowledge" Industry
1)
Colleges and universities
2)
Teacher training colleges
3)
Researchers
4)
Testing organizations
5)
Materials producers (other than print)
6) Text publishers
7)
"Knowledge" brokers, subsystem designers
Control of the educational enterprise is
distributed among at least these twenty-two players, each of which can be subdivided into in-house
warring factions which further
remove the decision-making process from simple accessibility. The
financial interests of these
associational voices are served whether children learn to read or not.
There is little
accountability. No matter how many assertions are made to the contrary, few penalties exist past a certain
level on the organizational chart — unless a culprit runs afoul of the media — an explanation for
the bitter truth whistle-blowers regularly discover when they tell all. Which explains why precious few
experienced hands care to ruin
themselves to act the hero. This is not to say sensitive, intelligent,
moral, and concerned individuals
aren't distributed through each of the twenty-two categories, but the
conflict of interest is so glaring
between serving a system loyally and serving the public that it is finally overwhelming. Indeed, it isn't
hard to see that in strictly economic terms this edifice of competing and conflicting interests is better
served by badly performing schools
than by successful ones. On economic grounds alone a disincentive exists
to improve schools. When schools
are bad, demands for increased funding and personnel, and professional control removed from public oversight, can
be pressed by simply pointing to
the perilous state of the enterprise. But when things go well, getting an
extra buck is like pulling teeth.
Some of this
political impasse grew naturally from a maze of competing interests, some grew from more cynical calculations
with exactly the end in mind we see, but whatever the formative motives, the net result is virtually
impervious to democratically generated
change. No large change can occur in-system without a complicated
coalition of separate interests
backing it, not one of which can actually be a primary advocate for children
and parents.
2. "Ellen Condliffe
Lagemann's Private Power for the Public Good (Wesleyan, 1986) is an excellent
place to start to experience what Bernard
Bailyn meant when he said that twentieth-century schooling troubled many
high-minded people. Miss Lagemann is a high-minded woman, obviously troubled by what she
discovered poking around one of the Carnegie endowments, and director of
Harvard's Graduate Education
School. The pages
devoted to Rockefeller's General Education Board in Collier and Horowitz's The
Rockefellers: An American Dynasty make a good simple introduction to another private endowment which
ultimately will repay a deeper look; also, the pages on true believer Frederick
T. Gates, the man who actually
directed the spending of Rockefeller's money, bear close attention as
well. For a sharp look at
how foundations shape our ideology, I recommend Philanthropy and Cultural
Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and
Abroad, and for a hair-raising finale Rene Wormser's Foundations: Their
Power and Influence is essential. Wormser was a general counsel for the House Committee which set out to
investigate tax-exempt organizations during the eighty-third Congress. Its
stormy course and hair-raising
disclosures are guaranteed to remove any lingering traces of innocence
about the conduct of American education, international affairs, or what are called "the social
sciences." Miss Lagemann's bibliography will lead you further, if
needed.
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