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⁴ David B. Young, a colleague at UMBC, has suggested this alternative. I would also like to thank the following persons for helping to fill my own workshop with interesting ideas: at UMBC, Professor E. Wendy Saul, and graduate assistants Cass Mairs, Loris Nebbia, and Paul van Rijn; in the public schools, Jackie Sisco, Donna Dieckman, and Mary Beth Johnson.Google Scholar

¹ Many of the reforms that Tyack and Cuban like best came about neither from the inside out nor from the bottom up but from the top down, imposed upon reluctant educators and recalcitrant communities by federal judges and other policy elites. Attempts to accomplish social and economic objectives through the schools hardly began with the tribunes of economic competitiveness.Google Scholar

² In Michigan, for example, the goals behind sweeping changes in the educational system over the past four years have been to reduce taxes, to weaken the power of unions, and to placate parents and other constituencies alienated from the public schools. “Helping students learn better” may or may not be a by-product of these reforms, but it was distinctly not their main objective.Google Scholar

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