| This book is a product of theory and practice. The theory part comes from my personal and professional concern with the politics of education. The practice part comes from my participation in community and campus organizing, union activism, and, perhaps most important, service as a school board member in the small town of Easthampton, Massachusetts. |
| As a student at the City College of New York in the 1960s, I was well aware of its almost unique tradition as a tuition-free public institution. And as an instructor in the City University system during the following decade, I learned how vulnerable that tradition could be if powerful economic and political interests were determined to destroy it. The state college system in Massachusetts, where I have taught for over twenty years, has always been the educational stepchild among the state's prestigious private institutions, which possess overwhelming political influence. And the assault on public elementary and secondary education has been a major feature of national politics over the same period. A concern with protecting public education thus became a personal matter, which I made my specialty as a political scientist. |
| But the real education came when, after holding other elective offices, I won a seat on my local school committee (the New England term for school board). What immediately struck me was the recurrence of certain themes that seemed to receive unqualified acceptance from everyone involved with the school system: cooperation with the business community, the prime importance of computer technology, corporate models of school governance, an emphasis on collaboration among various "stakeholders" in the system, the economic rationality of school choice, and rigid state standards and assessments in the name of reform. With the exception of choice, these concerns were unfamiliar to me. As a student of the politics of education, I knew a great deal about finance, racial and ethnic issues, and conflicts over curriculum, but the matters |
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