• Preface

Preface

In 1986 I published Beyond Public Education, a book that argues that the educational reform movement in the United States is essentially a futilitarian effort. Nothing that has happened since then has led me to change this conclusion; if anything, subsequent developments have led to widespread albeit not unanimous agreement with this point of view.

In that book, my contention was that schools for profit could avoid the obstacles that frustrate conventional school reform. Although this conclusion still seems valid, I have come to realize that such schools are not the only way, or necessarily the best way to all circumstances, to utilize the for-profit sector to provide educational services. This realization was partly a consequence of a more intensive analysis of the privatization and educational choice movements. Eventually I recognized a need to assess educational reform from a broader perspective than characterized earlier publications. For example, discussions of educational choice typically treat it as an isolated phenomenon and rarely consider the underlying social forces that generate pressures for more differentiation among products and services.

This book, then, constitutes an effort to relate educational improvement to the privatization movement and to certain broad social changes as well as to circumstances within the field of education itself. Regardless of whether readers agree or disagree with my resolution of various issues, the book is intended to generate discussion of several neglected issues in educational policy and practice.

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