Thirteen—
Schools under Pressure

Caroline Hodges Persell

It is fashionable today to attack education in the United States. Conservatives and liberals alike agree that education is in trouble. They disagree about why and what should be done, but they agree that the educational system needs to be improved. I suggest that systemic shifts and demographic changes make the situation facing education more serious than in recent decades and exacerbate the challenges education faces. Chief among these is the challenge of social inequality. But there are other challenges facing education as well, namely those of pedagogy, personnel, national testing, and a shift in the purposes of education.

Changes in the Social Context of Education

Education is a broader concept than schooling, and the social institution of education includes more than just what happens in schools. Education refers to both formal and informal ways that the older members of a society or group try to teach newer members the attitudes, behaviors, skills, beliefs, and roles considered necessary to become participating members in that group or society. Education occurs both informally and formally. Informal education occurs through child rearing by parents and other members of the family, through peer-group interactions, and through observation and imitation of behaviors seen in the neighborhood, on television, or elsewhere. Some of what is observed and imitated may not be intended to be learned. Formal education occurs in schools, where trained personnel try to transmit information, teach skills, and guide inquiry and learning. Formal education in the United States reaches increasing numbers of pupils, for growing numbers of years.

Systemic Shifts in Society

Two systemic shifts in society are creating a new crisis in education. The first is that our society is becoming a postindustrial one, as numerous others have noted already. As physical labor and manufacturing become less important, interpersonal services and symbol manipulation become more important. Dropping out of, or being excluded from, education increasingly means being shut out of the economic and cultural core of society. Education, both formal and informal, is particularly important for integrating people into a society where symbolic distinctions are increasingly prevalent. The second shift is the shrinking of the informal sphere of education, and the growing burden being placed on the formal system of education, without concomitant increases in time, staff, money, or innovation. The informal sphere is shrinking because of changes in other social institutions, namely the family and the economy. Children are spending much less time with their families than they did in the past. Many more mothers of even very young children are working full time. A projected 59 percent of the children born in 1983 (who are now in school) will live with only one parent before the age of eighteen, there are at least 4 million latchkey children in the United States of school age, and 20 percent of all children in the United States are being reared in poverty.^[1]

As a result of changes in other institutions described in other chapters in this volume, parents can bring less time to the informal education of their children. There is no systemic acknowledgment of the need for, or support for, child care in the United States, unlike Canada and most Western European countries. This is in no way to blame single parents or working mothers, but to recognize the fact that the family's capacity to provide informal education has eroded.

The formal sector might be able to compensate for limitations in the informal sector if it were given more resources. Instead what we see is ever-growing demands being placed on formal education, with no significant increase in the resources needed to meet those demands. Schools are asked to offer all their usual instruction in literacy, numeracy, civil education, science education, language instruction, and reasoning skills, and they are charged with meeting each new challenge facing society, whether for driver's education, the teaching of moral values, technological "literacy," the provision of adequate nutrition, or the avoidance of drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, and AIDS. Not only is education called upon to solve these social problems, but problems such as these make the task of education more difficult. In addition, schools in the United States educate a larger percentage of youth for a longer period than any other society in the world. Thus the size and the expense

of the system has continued to increase, simply because it is touching more lives.

Demographic Changes

Demographic changes intensify the crisis in education. The population to be educated is changing dramatically. No longer are the majority of school children from white middle-class families who live in suburban homes with white picket fences. At least ten states face the prospect of "minority majorities" in their public schools by 1995.^[2] In 1987 the Los Angeles public schools were teaching children who spoke eighty-one languages other than English at home.^[3] Such children pose major challenges for schools.

A second demographic change is the increase in disabled and handicapped youngsters. There are increasing numbers of teen parents and babies born to addicted parents. Twenty-five percent of babies get no prenatal care. All of these factors are related to increased numbers of disabled children, who may need different kinds of education. In short, massive systemic and demographic changes increase the demands and expectations placed on education, and they heighten the challenges facing education.

The Challenge of Social Inequality

Demographic diversity makes the realization of equal educational opportunity all the more important if society is to be perceived as just, legitimate, and reasonably cohesive. How can education mitigate inequality based on class or ethnicity when, in practice, education reinforces inequality by virtue of vast differences in public and private schools and extensive tracking in public schools? The United States, perhaps more than any other society, holds as a cherished ideology the concept of a fresh start for each new generation. Young people, the creed goes, should be given a fair chance to be all that they can be. For a nation of immigrants, two opportunities are essential—the opportunity to learn the language, the culture, and skills, and the opportunity to work. Other chapters in this book explore the availability of opportunities to work. Here we consider opportunities to learn.

Despite imagery to the contrary, American education is not a uniform system. Therefore, it is very important to understand the broad contours of American education and to discern how variations are related to social class and ethnicity and to educational consequences. The configurations of American education are remarkably related to class and ethnicity. In most schools, students' social class and backgrounds are likely

to be similar because most people in the United States live in relatively homogeneous neighborhoods. Children who grow up in large cities or mixed suburbs are less likely to attend a local school with neighborhood children. Private schools flourish in such areas. If by chance students of different backgrounds do attend the same school, they are very likely to have different classmates and to experience different programs of study because of tracking. Distinctions between public and private schools and the practice of tracking have important educational as well as social consequences.

Public, Parochial, and Private Schools

A private school is one controlled and funded by nonstate sources. While 25 percent of all elementary and secondary schools are private schools, they educate only 12 percent of the student population.^[4] This is because they are generally quite small; their average enrollment is 234, and 75 percent enroll fewer than 300 students. Only 7 percent enroll 600 students or more. They are thus much smaller than most public schools, which average 482 students. Many urban secondary schools are much larger, often enrolling several thousand students.

The most elite private schools are attended by children of the upper and upper middle classes. In the early 1980s, 90 percent of the fathers of elite boarding school students were executives or professionals, and nearly half had family incomes above $100,000 per year. Fewer than 20 percent of the parents were divorced. The ethnic composition of elite boarding schools has become more diverse in recent decades than in the past, although it is still considerably less diverse than the public school population. Four percent of students are black, 5 percent are Asian, 11 percent are Jewish, and 27 percent are Catholic.^[5]

Despite their relatively small size, elite private schools have spacious and well-kept grounds, and extensive computer, laboratory, language, arts, and athletic facilities. The teachers have been educated in the liberal arts at selective colleges and are responsive to students and parents. Teachers generally do not have tenure or belong to unions, so they can be fired by the school head if they are considered unresponsive or incompetent. Although three-quarters of private school teachers nationally are women, at elite private boarding schools 60 percent are male, as are 61 percent of the students.^[6] Nationally, 92 percent of private school teachers are white.^[7] Classes are small, often having no more than fifteen students, and sometimes considerably fewer. Students are required to be prepared for class and to participate in class discussions, and they write a great deal. Virtually all students study a college preparatory curriculum, and considerable homework is assigned. Numerous advanced placement courses offer the possibility of college credit. There are also many op-

portunities for extracurricular activities, such as debate and drama clubs, publications, and music, and the chance to learn unusual sports that colleges value, such as crew, squash, and ice hockey. Students have both academic and personal advisors who monitor their progress, help them resolve problems, and try to see that they have a successful school experience.

In terms of the family backgrounds of children who attend them, other private schools and parochial schools are quite similar to each other, although the philosophy and organization of the schools may vary considerably. Parental education, especially the mother's education, is highly related to student aspirations, and mothers of parochial school students are comparable to public school mothers. In parochial schools, 6 percent of students are black and 10 percent are Hispanic. In other private schools, 2 percent are black and 8 percent are Hispanic.^[8] Hence, the ethnic composition of these schools is less diverse than that of the public schools.

Like elite boarding schools, parochial and other private schools are almost exclusively academic, and their students take more credits in mathematics, English, foreign language, history, and science than do public school students. There is also little grade inflation. Parochial schools more closely resemble public schools than other private schools or elite schools in terms of the levels of student participation in extracurricular activities, with more students participating in the latter two types of schools.^[9]

The costs at parochial schools are relatively low, especially compared to private schools, because the schools are subsidized by religious groups. These schools have relatively low teacher salaries and usually have no teachers' unions. Currently there are more lay teachers and fewer nuns, sisters, priests, and brothers as teachers than in the past.

Parents are generally involved in private schools, first by paying directly for them, and also in terms of attending parent conferences, school meetings, and doing volunteer work. They are often involved in fund raising and promotion for the schools.^[10]

Although there is wide variation among public schools in the United States, they are usually quite large, and part of an even larger school system that is highly bureaucratic. They are usually comprehensive schools, which means that they offer varied courses of study, including academic, vocational, and general curricular tracks. James Coleman and Thomas Hoffer, authors of a recent book on public and private high schools, note that "two-thirds of the public schools, enrolling three-quarters of all public school students, are organized as comprehensive schools."^[11]

In the early 1980s, the median income of parents of public school students was $18,700,^[12] four to six thousand dollars less per year than that

of parochial and other private school parents. The parents are much more likely to be working or lower class, with lower average levels of education, and they are more likely to be divorced. Among public school students in 1984, 16.2 percent were black, 9.1 percent were Hispanic, 2.5 percent were Asian or Pacific Islander, and .9 percent were Native American or Alaskan Natives.^[13]

In 1986, 90 percent of public school teachers were white and 69 percent were female. The authority of professional educators is often buttressed by bureaucratic procedures and by unionization of teachers and administrators. In general, there is a higher ratio of administrators to teachers and students in public than in private schools, perhaps partly because of the numerous governmental requirements public schools have to meet.

Clearly there are differences in terms of who goes to different types of schools, and what they experience there. The question is, are there different consequences, and can any of those differences be attributed to school effects rather than to selectivity bias? There are a number of differences in outcomes, which we will consider briefly, before turning to the question of their causes.

A perfectly reasonable question is what proportion of the students drop out. Among public high school students, 24 percent drop out, compared to 12 percent of parochial and 13 percent of other private school students. In terms of achievement test scores, private and parochial school students score higher than public school students in every subject. When Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore introduced statistical controls for various relevant family background factors, they found that achievement differences between public and private sectors were reduced (more for private schools than for parochial schools), but that differences remain.^[14] In other analyses, Catsambis found that most of the "school effect" of Catholic schools was due to curricular track placement and types of courses taken.^[15]

A third differential outcome is college attendance. Private and parochial school graduates are much more likely to attend college than are public school seniors; 45 percent of public school students, compared to 76 percent of Catholic school students and 76 percent of other private school students, enrolled in college.^[16] Part of this difference is due to differences in individual abilities and social backgrounds, part is due to curricular placement, and part is related to type of school attended (whether public, private, or parochial). Among elite boarding school graduates, virtually all (99 percent) attend college, a result that is related to parental and peer expectations, curricula, and highly organized efforts by college advisors in those schools.^[17] Such graduates are also much more likely to

attend high-status selective private colleges than are public high school graduates.^[18]

A fourth consequence is seldom considered in discussions of American education. As Cookson notes:

Schools not only impart to students skills, but they also confer social status. Status competition is an ever-present fact of social life, and the effects of having high-status educational credentials ripple through graduates' lives like waves emanating from a central source; in time, they touch every social and economic boundary. Much of what is currently being written about public and private schools shapes the issue in terms of "choice," a value-free term that implies that private schools are educational alternatives more or less available to all families. This is not true. Private schools, especially socially elite private schools, are similar to private clubs; admission is contingent not only on the ability of the client to pay but [on] his or her personal and social attributes. Educational choice is not a neutral, self-regulating mechanism that acts as a kind of invisible educational hand, sorting and selecting students according to their preferences. To make a meaningful choice one must have the resources to act.^[19]

These resources are both financial and social. If private schools were to be supported by public funds, as Chubb and Moe urge,^[20] Cookson suggests that such a policy would be likely to increase educational opportunities for already advantaged members of society, result in greater stratification of school children, promote the founding of more and weaker private schools, limit the autonomy of existing private schools, and promote further racial and ethnic segregation.^[21]

Finally, graduates of private schools earn more than public school graduates, even when appropriate background characteristics are controlled.^[22] Graduates of thirteen elite boarding schools comprise 10 percent of the members of the board of directors of large American business organizations, and 17 percent of those who sit on multiple boards of such corporations.^[23]

Whether or not differences between types of schools are the decisive factors in these unequal social outcomes, there is clearly a pattern of cumulative advantage at work here. More privileged families—families that have ethnic, economic, occupational, and structural advantages—gravitate toward certain types of schools, where their children experience different educational programs. The combined effects of initial advantage and educational experience contribute to the more advantaged positions and incomes such children attain in their adult lives. In these ways, family, educational experiences, and resources combine to reproduce social inequalities from one generation to the next. One of the major challenges facing education is how to provide equal educa-

tional opportunities to children, regardless of their family backgrounds. The educational practice of curricular tracking in the public schools is one that needs to be reconsidered if educational inequalities are to be reduced.

Curricular Tracking

As we have seen, in private and parochial schools most students study an academic curriculum. This is not the case in public schools, however, where most students are tracked into different curricula. Tracking consists of two elements: sorting by ability and by curriculum. Ability grouping assigns students to learning groups based on their background and achievement in a subject area at any given moment. Their skills and knowledge are evaluated at relatively frequent intervals, and students showing gains can be shifted readily into another group. Students might be in different ability groups in different subjects. Ability grouping can occur while students share a common curriculum, with only the mix of student abilities being varied. All students are taught the same material, although they may be taught in different ways or at different speeds. Quite often, however, different ability groups are assigned to different courses of study, resulting in simultaneous grouping by curriculum and ability. Such placements tend to become self-perpetuating.^[24]

One major result of tracking is the differential respect students receive from peers and teachers, with implications for both instruction and esteem. Curricular track placement has long-term consequences with regard to whether people go to college or not, and what type of college they attend.^[25] Among public school graduates, 73 percent of academic track students attended college, compared to 30 percent of nonacademic track students.^[26] Because where people attend college is related to their chances of graduating, and because college attendance and graduation are related to occupational prestige and income,^[27] the issue of educational tracking has profound social implications. Many researchers recommend that tracking should be used much more carefully,^[28] or abandoned completely.^[29]

Desegregation, Bilingual Education, and Special Education

In addition to struggling with the issue of offering equal opportunity, education is confronted with meeting a number of social and political goals including desegregation, bilingualism, and special education. By putting responsibility for these issues onto education, our society may try to absolve other institutions from worrying about them. Systematic research has been done on desegregation. In the last decade "many education policy makers seem to have decided that high-quality education rather than equal educational opportunity should be the primary goal of

public education."^[30] However, desegregation and quality education need not be mutually exclusive goals. In fact, they may be mutually reinforcing. This is particularly likely if we accept Willis Hawley's definition of quality or effectiveness in education in terms of "(1) academic achievement in mathematics and language arts and (2) tolerance and understanding of people of different races and social backgrounds."^[31] He concludes that desegregation improves the achievement of ethnic minorities and does not undermine the achievement of whites.^[32]

Bilingual education has been less extensively researched than has desegregation. Bilingual education often results from court cases on behalf of non-English-speaking children who are alleged to be receiving unequal educational opportunities.^[33] One short-term study found that students enrolled in bilingual programs did not achieve any better than their counterparts who were not enrolled in such programs.^[34] Other research, however, which followed students enrolled in bilingual programs for at least four years, found that they made positive academic gains.^[35] The issues surrounding bilingual education involve more than education; they include social and political issues that affect the rights of non-English-speaking persons in a predominantly English-speaking country. On the one hand, in an ever-shrinking international world, multiple linguistic traditions can enrich a society. On the other hand, lack of proficiency in the dominant language of a country can lead to linguistic ghettos, fragmentation, and distrust within a society. These issues need to be resolved at a societal level before the mission of bilingual education can be clarified.

About 10 to 12 percent of all students are currently classified as in need of special educational services.^[36] As Public Law 94-142 was implemented, a new category of handicap, namely, "learning disability," was introduced. The term refers to students who display inadequate achievement in speech, language, spelling, writing, or arithmetic, as a result of cerebral dysfunction. By 1986–87, the number of students identified as learning disabled was 1,914,000, or 44 percent of all handicapped students.^[37] Although couched as a psychological model to explain why children fail, many children who are classified as learning disabled do not match the theoretical model. "Learning disabled" is the latest in a long list of labels applied to children who are having trouble in school. Like all deficit theories, this one places the blame for failure squarely on the child's limitations and effectively diverts blame from curriculum or pedagogy. Both of these, however, should be considered candidates for explaining pupil failure. The concept of learning disability also has self-fulfilling potency; that is, if teachers believe that children cannot learn because of their disability, they will expect less of them, teach them less, and it is likely that the children will learn less.^[38] Learning disability the-

ory diverts attention from the issue of how children learn and what kinds of cognitive skills they have. Such diversions make it less likely that effective forms of teaching and learning will occur.

Other Challenges Facing Education

Four other challenges facing education also warrant consideration: pedagogy, personnel, national testing and standards, and the purposes of education.

Pedagogy

The need for improved methods of teaching has already been mentioned. If tracking is going to be discontinued, if desegregation is to work, if children with special needs are to be effectively educated, new and better forms of pedagogy are required. At least three possibilities exist, and others might be found with further experimentation and research. The three are peer teaching and counseling, cooperative learning, and new technologies, specifically microcomputers.

In peer teaching and peer counseling programs, students who have been trained by teachers and counselors help and tutor other children. Already widely used in a variety of public and private schools, peer teaching has three major strengths. First, those doing the teaching learn more and consolidate their own knowledge and skills. Second, peer tutors are often able to communicate very effectively with students slightly younger than they are. Third, enlisting students in pursuit of the school's goals expands the resources of the schools, at no additional cost. Peer tutors can help teach academic skills, they can help mediate conflict, and provide drug education and AIDS awareness. A study of 143 adolescent drug prevention programs, for example, found that "peer programs are dramatically more effective than all other 'interventions.'"^[39]

Cooperative learning is an instructional method whereby students of different abilities and achievements work together in small groups to achieve a group goal. It is a more effective pedagogy than traditional classroom methods, in terms of learning subject matter, increasing self-esteem, and improving race relations.^[40] The learning groups usually have four members, one who is a high achiever, two who are average, and one who is below average. Each student is responsible not only for learning the material taught in class but also for helping the other members of the group learn it.^[41] The benefits are that each individual's achievement brings glory to the group rather than depresses the group achievement, as happens in conventionally structured systems of classroom rewards. Such an arrangement motivates students to help each other to learn.

Robert Slavin, who has studied cooperative learning extensively, cau-

tions that several conditions must be present if it is to be effective. As noted, there must be a group goal, but it must be of a particular type. It is not enough to have the group complete a single project because there the temptation is great simply to have the strongest students do the work. Rather, the group goal needs to be to prepare each member for success on an individual test or other appraisal. Therefore, group success needs to be measured in terms of the individual achievement of each member. When the above conditions are met, student achievement improves.^[42]

Cooperative learning strategies have been used in both elementary and secondary schools, in urban, rural, and suburban schools in the United States, Canada, Israel, West Germany, and Nigeria, from grades 2 to 12, and in such subjects as mathematics, language arts, writing, reading, social studies, and science.^[43] They have led to social growth and improved academic achievement.^[44]

If education sometimes resists new ways of socially structuring learning, it has often looked to the latest in technological wizardry for quick cures. The dust still gathers on teaching machines, and audiovisual equipment lies broken or unused in many schools. The big question is whether personal computers (PCs) will go the same route as other promised technological fixes or whether they can improve teaching efficiency and effectiveness. If they can, several major stumbling blocks must first be overcome. These include shortages of computers in many schools, the need for suitable instructional software, and the need to provide teachers with time and training to use computers effectively in courses. These are issues that schools and communities need to address.

Personnel

The teaching force is aging and many experienced people are leaving the field. In the next decade, an estimated two million new teachers will be needed. This need will pose tremendous recruitment problems for school districts across the country. As many local and state governments face deficits and resistance to higher taxes, districts will need to marshal public support for higher teacher salaries and devise creative new strategies for attracting academically talented people to teaching. Only when teachers can have more influence on curriculum, choice of books, and pedagogy, is the occupation likely to attract highly able people.^[45]

If teaching is to become an attractive occupation, it needs to be a well-paid career, with professional training, responsibility, accountability, and respect. If it were to change in those ways, it is quite likely that it could appeal to intelligent young men and women who want to work with young people. It is a career that provides flexibility for young adults who want to help raise their own children while pursuing a professional occupation. If certain features of teaching could be changed, namely pay

and working conditions, it is possible that education's drawing power could increase.

Testing and Standards

One problem that efforts to mobilize support will face is a perception that public education is not doing a very good job. The bombshell report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk (1983), reported that "international comparisons of student achievement, completed a decade ago, reveal that on nineteen academic tests American students were never first or second and, in comparison with other industrialized nations, were last seven times."^[46] However, the data used to support this statement were gathered between 1964 and 1971. Furthermore, the comparisons were based on averages for different countries as reported by the International Assessment of Educational Achievement (IEA). The problem with using country averages is that the student bodies in different countries are not comparable.^[47] For example, only 9 percent of eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds in other countries reached the last year of high school in the period studied, compared to about 75 percent of those in the United States.^[48] Not surprisingly, the more academically select students in other countries did better than the average U.S. student. There is no adequate international study of the academic performance of comparable populations of students. As a result, we do not really know whether U.S. education is suffering internationally.

A Nation at Risk also argued that educational content has been watered down over time, suggesting that the growth of electives has diminished the academic focus of secondary schools, resulting in a "curricular smorgasbord."^[49] This assertion depends on one analysis of high school transcripts from a 1964–69 sample and a second based on a 1975–81 sample. But these two samples are not comparable.^[50] Even if the two samples could be compared, the evidence does not fully support the Commission's conclusions. While the second sample showed more students in the general track and big increases in the numbers of students taking such courses as driver's education and marriage training, students in both samples spent nearly the same amount of total time on academics (the first sample had 69 percent of their credits in academic subjects, while the second had 62 percent).^[51] Other research based on representative samples indicates a modest decline in academic emphasis overall.^[52]

Additional school practices were also cited as declining: amounts of homework required, disciplinary standards, and the standards required for high grades (so-called grade inflation).^[53] It is hard to prove that such changes are the causes of lower academic performance. One often-cited indicator of lower performance is declining Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. In its own analysis, the College Board (who makes the test) found that the decline was largely due to changes in the students taking

the test. The College Board attributed the remainder of the decline to changing social conditions, such as increased television watching, student unrest, and other factors. Curricular differences among schools accounted for little of the difference in scores between schools.^[54] While there appear to be some small declines in curricular content over time, and some small performance declines over time, no one has pinpointed the causes of the performance declines in terms of educational practices.

In more recent years there is some evidence of educational improvement. For example, there were fewer dropouts in 1985–88 than in 1978, and reading scores have increased in recent years.^[55] However, these seemingly mixed and noncomparable results over time lead some to call for national educational testing.

Recent Gallup polls reveal that the majority of Americans favor national education standards, national tests, and a national curriculum, the strong tradition of local control over education notwithstanding.^[56] The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has done periodic studies to assess what American children know. A national test would set absolute standards of what children should know and would ascertain their mastery of that prescribed content. In this sense it is different from tests, such as the SAT, which grade students in relation to each other, that is, essentially on a curve. But the possibility of such a test raises a series of important questions. Would such a test be a politically attractive substitute for improving teacher pay and teaching methods? Who would decide what all children should know? How would that knowledge be tested? Standardized multiple-choice tests are not usually the best way to measure higher-order thinking and reasoning, which many educators consider an important educational goal. If such tests lead to tighter requirements for high school graduation, they could increase the number of students having difficulties, and the number who drop out earlier.^[57] Debates over national testing are invariably linked with discussions of the goals of education.

The Goals of Education

Over time, American education appears to have shifted its primary purpose. In colonial times, education was designed to produce literacy so people could read the Bible. Reading and simple arithmetic were also helpful to people conducting their daily lives. Most people did not go beyond the eighth grade. With the giant waves of immigration in the nineteenth century, education took on the additional goal of preparing people for citizenship. There were literacy tests for voting in some states, and English tests for immigrants seeking naturalization. The importance of education for citizenship should not be forgotten. Every totalitarian regime that takes power tries immediately to seize control of the educational system. Education is considered a nerve center of political control.

An educated citizenry is an essential ingredient for a healthy democratic society.

In recent years, education has added the goal of preparation for a vocation or career. Education and the economy are increasingly closely coupled, at least for people who want to work in corporate or nonprofit bureaucracies.^[58] Education is an increasingly important passkey to reasonably well paid and secure employment. The continuing importance of education for citizenship should not be overlooked, however, particularly in an era when the labor market is becoming increasingly polarized and pressures are on education to become increasingly tightly linked to the labor market. If education succumbs to this trend, it will relegate large numbers of lower-class and minority children to second-class citizenship and membership in a permanent underclass. As a recent report from the New World Foundation notes:

Education for citizenship means that schools should provide children with the social and intellectual skills to function well as members of families and communities, as political participants, as adult learners, as self-directed individuals. It means educating children about the way the world works, and arming them to influence how it works. Citizenship requires basic skills, but it requires other forms of learning as well: critical thinking, social awareness, connection to community, shared values. The call is for educational values which recognize student needs as legitimate and which prepare students for multiple roles as adults, regardless of their labor-market destinies or economic status. The bottom line for democratic education is empowerment, not employment.^[59]

Directions for the Future

To address the current crisis in education, two major directions need to be pursued. First, the United States needs to change its political and social orientations. It needs to become willing to invest now for future benefits, and it needs to move from a "scrap heap" mentality to a reclamation stance toward difficult cases. Second, we need to structure innovation into education.

Investment now could pay big dividends for the future. One area of educational investment that has a proven track record is Head Start, the preschool program for four-year-olds.^[60] Every dollar invested in quality preschool education yields $4.75 because of lower costs later on for special education, public assistance, and crime.^[61] However, only 16 percent of the low-income children eligible for Head Start are now in it.^[62] Liberals and conservatives both are coming to the view that Head Start is an essential but incomplete program.

As the United States struggles to change its stance toward natural resources and the environment, it might similarly change its attitude to-

ward human resources. The country could move away from scrapping undeveloped human talent and toward developing and utilizing it. Much could be learned from the nation of Israel in this regard. There every child is needed and valued, partly because the country is in a virtual state of military seige. In the United States, the "birth dearth," which is following on the heels of the "baby boom," may produce labor shortages and may help to mobilize public support for salvaging human talent and developing it from a young age.

Part of developing youthful talent involves ameliorating the worst features of poverty. As long as hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people are homeless, reaching the children and youth living under such conditions with the fact and the promise of education will be difficult, if not impossible. Twenty-five percent of pregnant women in the United States receive no prenatal care. One result is an infant mortality rate in the United States that places it nineteenth in the world, above Cuba and Bulgaria, but below Singapore, Hong Kong, and Spain.^[63] A second result is a greater number of handicapped children. Of the 11 percent of school children who are classified as handicapped, one-third would have had a lesser handicap or none if their mothers had received prenatal care.^[64] Handicapped children can cost the state as much as $100,000 per year to educate.^[65] Prevention is cheaper for society in the long run than treatment after the fact.

Schools need to consider how to structure innovation into a bureaucratic system. Schools and teachers need to be given incentives and support to experiment with new pedagogies, such as peer teaching, cooperative learning, and new educational technologies.

Because so many children are being reared in poverty, so many are being raised by single parents, and the informal sphere of education is shrinking, the formal sphere of public education must take up the slack or our future will founder. Social justice is a noble reason for changing the level of investment and innovation we pour into education. The threat of international competition is a catchy, if somewhat irrelevant, rallying cry. But if those reasons fail to convince in this age of rational self-interest then good sense, social pragmatism, and even self-interest can be summoned to elicit support. Do we want to see our society become increasingly polarized, to the point where there is a permanently excluded underclass and an increasingly besieged dominant class? Given this prospect, Americans might try to think more rationally about several interrelated questions. What do they need and want from their schools? Can tracked public schools and socially segregated private schools accomplish the goals Americans have for education? Is the form and level of funding for education adequate to the tasks that it faces?