The American Dream and the Public Schools

316 Pages·2003·12.29 MB·English

by  Jennifer L. Hochschild

The American Dream

and the

Public Schools

JENNIFER L. HOCHSCHILD

NATHAN SCOVRONICK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The American Dream

and the

Public Schools
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The American

Dream

and the

Public Schools

J E N N I F E R L . H O C H S C H I L D

and

N A T H A N S C O V R O N I C K

1
1

Oxford(cid:1) New York

Auckland(cid:1) Bangkok(cid:1) Buenos Aires

Cape Town(cid:1) Chennai(cid:1) Dar es Salaam(cid:1) Delhi(cid:1) Hong Kong(cid:1) Istanbul

Karachi(cid:1) Kolkata(cid:1) Kuala Lumpur(cid:1) Madrid(cid:1) Melbourne(cid:1) Mexico City(cid:1) Mumbai

Nairobi(cid:1) São Paulo(cid:1) Shanghai(cid:1) Taipei

Tokyo(cid:1) Toronto

Copyright © 2003 by Jennifer L. Hochschild and Nathan Scovronick

First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003

198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

www.oup.com

First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2004

ISBN 0-19-517603-0 (pbk.)

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Hochschild, Jennifer L., 1950–

The American dream and the public schools / Jennifer L. Hochschild

and Nathan Scovronick.

p.(cid:1) cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-19-515278-6

1.(cid:1) Education and states—United States.

2.(cid:1) Educational equalization—United States.

3.(cid:1) Public schools—United States.

I. Scovronick, Nathan B., 1945–

II.(cid:1) Title.

LC89 .H63 2003

371.01�0973—dc21(cid:1) 2002027848

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper
To Tony, Lea, and Raphe(cid:1)
—J.L.H.(cid:1)
To Lily(cid:1)
—N.S.(cid:1)
In America, when a problem is too hard for adults,
we pass it on to schools.
—Patricia Graham, 1996
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments(cid:1) ix

Introduction(cid:1) 1

1. What Americans Want from Public Schools(cid:1) 9

2. School Desegregation(cid:1) 28

3. School Finance Reform(cid:1) 52

4. School Reform(cid:1) 77

5. Choice(cid:1) 107

6. Separation and Inclusion(cid:1) 133

7. Challenging the American Dream(cid:1) 168

8. Public Schools in the New America(cid:1) 191

Notes(cid:1) 202

References(cid:1) 239

Index(cid:1) 291
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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A LMOST TWO DECADES AGO, Jennifer Hochschild published a book on
race in public education, and since then she has worked on several court
cases involving school desegregation. Almost twenty years ago, Nate
Scovronick was policy director of the New Jersey General Assembly, and later
he worked on education issues for the state’s governor. Both of us have taught
university courses on schooling and have consulted and worked with public
school educators. Both of us have children who have been entirely educated in
public school systems. We have discussed the issues in this book with each
other, with students, and with other colleagues for years.
So when we decided to write this book, we thought that we saw things the
same way and that we knew most of what we needed to know in order to write
it—it was to be the product of hard but pleasant labor over a few summers and
Christmas vacations. Seven years, many arguments, and innumerable drafts
later, we have learned our lesson the hard way. This book proved more
difficult—and rewarding—to write than we anticipated, for reasons that are di-
rectly relevant to the actual making of education policy.
We began with some general but very important questions. Why is edu-
cation policy so contentious? Why are there so many arenas of contention?
Does the array of seemingly disparate issues have something in common that
might help explain the level of controversy and lead us to some overall policy
conclusions? We quickly discovered that we did agree on almost everything
but also differed on a few important points. We agreed, and we hope that the
book makes this case strongly, that public education is a unique treasure in the
array of American public policies and that it deserves to be maintained and
cherished, though not everywhere in its present form. We agreed that the great
flaw in the American public school system is its systematic and pervasive de-
nial to poor (and disproportionately nonwhite) children of the chance to get a
good education. We agreed that much can be done within the contours of pub-