Accountability, the Public, and Public Schools

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Stitzlein
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
The Public ◽  
Citizen Support ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shared Benefit ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Important Basis

I begin by laying out the shifting context of public schools and the citizens and democracy they serve. I ground my discussion in a theory of participatory democracy influenced by the ideas of Progressive Era philosopher of education John Dewey and contemporary political theorist Benjamin Barber. I provide that theory as both a foil to analyze contemporary changes in democracy and a guide for how we might respond to and, at times, resist them. I then trace the history of educational accountability to illuminate key aspects of the current accountability crisis. Finally, I define the public and public goods, an important basis for my call to revitalize citizen support for public schools insofar as these concepts show us how schools not only serve as a shared benefit, but also are established and protected as such through our shared efforts.

Ethnic trust, minority status, and public goods in post-conflict societies

2021 ◽  
pp. 002234332098421
Author(s):  
Sam Whitt
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Intergroup Contact ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
The Public ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
History Of

This study considers how ethnic trust and minority status can impact the ability of ethnic groups to pursue cooperative public goods, focusing on groups with a history of conflict and lingering hostility. A public good experiment between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in postwar Kosovo reveals that subjects contribute far more to a mutually beneficial public good when they are part of an experimentally induced coethnic majority. However, when in the minority, subjects not only underinvest, but many actively divest entirely, privatizing the public good. Majority/minority status also has wide-ranging implications for how individuals relate to real-world public goods and the institutions of government that provide them. Compared to majority Albanians, survey data indicate how minority Serbs in Kosovo express greater safety and security concerns, feel more politically, socially, and economically excluded, are more dissatisfied with civil liberties and human rights protections, and are less likely to participate politically or pay taxes to support public goods. Conflict-related victimization and distrust of out-groups are strong predictors of these minority group attitudes and behaviors. This suggests a mechanism for how conflict amplifies out-group distrust, increasing parochial bias in public good commitments, especially among minorities who are wary of exploitation at the hands of an out-group majority. To restore trust, this study finds that institutional trust and intergroup contact are important to bridging ethnic divides that inhibit public good cooperation.

scholarly journals “A Superior Kind of Working Woman”: The Contested Meaning of Vocational Education for Girls in Progressive Era Chicago

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-410
Author(s):  
Ruby Oram
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Vocational Education ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Male Students ◽  
School Officials ◽  
History Of Capitalism ◽  
New School ◽  
Club Women ◽  
History Of

AbstractProgressive Era school officials transformed public education in American cities by teaching male students trades like foundry, carpentry, and mechanics in classrooms outfitted like factories. Historians have demonstrated how this “vocational education movement” was championed by male administrators and business leaders anxious to train the next generation of expert tradesmen. But women also hoped vocational education could prepare female students for industrial careers. In the early twentieth century, members of the National Women’s Trade Union League demanded that public schools open trade programs to female students and teach future working women the history of capitalism and the philosophy of collective bargaining. Their ambitious goals were tempered by some middle-class reformers and club women who argued vocational programs should also prepare female students for homemaking and motherhood. This article uses Chicago as a case study to explore how Progressive Era women competed and collaborated to reform vocational education for girls, and how female students responded to new school programs designed to prepare them for work both in and outside the home.

Energy R&D: in tepid pursuit of collective goods

1979 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davis B. Bobrow ◽  
Robert T. Kudrle
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Liquid Fuel ◽  
Liquid Fuels ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collective Goods ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economy Approach

Continued dependence on expensive imported liquid fuels puts stress on the relations among and the domestic performance of the members of OECD. Coordinated energy R&D could in principle lessen those stresses and also benefit other liquid fuel consumers. A political economy approach can help explain the tepid pursuit of this possibility in two ways. First, it can clarify the reasons for the weak collective action energy R&D record of the members of the OECD both before and after the oil events of 1973. Second, it can demonstrate and identify the nature of the undersupply of the public good of energy knowledge. The history of this area illustrates several general obstacles to the provision of public goods in realistically complex political situations. These include the uncertain and distant nature of commitments to actually deliver collective goods in the absense of self-enforcing agreements, unwillingness to jeopardize possible future private advantages, and the tendencies to link provision of particular public goods to cooperation by other parties with the provider on a host of other matters. In effect, the attempts of particular statesmen to tie energy R&D cooperation to other issues reinforce tendencies to view the choices not as ones about the level of provision of public goods, but rather as ones about national shares of private goods—economic, military, and political.

American Public Education and the Responsibility of its Citizens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Stitzlein
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Educational Crisis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Citizen Support

Not only is the future of our public schools in jeopardy, so is our democracy. Public schools are central to a flourishing democracy, where children learn how to deliberate and solve problems together, build shared identities, and come to value justice and liberty. As citizen support for public schools wanes, our democratic way of life is at risk. While we often hear about the poor performance of students and teachers, the current educational crisis is at heart not about accountability, but rather about citizen responsibility. Yet citizens increasingly do not feel that public schools are our schools, that we have influence over them or responsibility for their outcomes. Citizens have become watchdogs of public institutions largely from the perspective of consumers, without seeing ourselves as citizens who compose the public of public institutions. Accountability becomes more about finding fault with and placing blame on our schools and teachers, rather than about taking responsibility as citizens for shaping our expectations of schools, determining the criteria we use to measure their success, or supporting schools in achieving those goals. This book sheds light on recent shifts in education and citizenship, helping the public to understand not only how schools now work, but also how citizens can take an active role in shaping them. It provides citizens with tools, habits, practices, and knowledge necessary to support schools. It offers a vision of how we can cultivate citizens who will continue to support public schools and thereby keep democracy strong.

Introduction

1979 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nasaw
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
The Public ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Colleges And Universities

A history of American public schooling reduced to graphs would tell a simple story of almost continuous growth. In every category, the graphs would incline upwards, recording a steady rise in the number of students in school, the time they spent there, the teachers who taught them, the schools that housed them, and the dollars expended. The upward trend would continue unbroken from the 1820s until the 1970s. We cannot, at this time, chart the downward course that has commenced (if only temporarily) in the mid-1970s. We know only that that part of the American public that votes on school bond issues and makes its opinions known to professional pollsters is no longer willing to spend as much money or place as much trust in public schooling as it once was. It is too soon to predict the future course of public schooling in America, but a good time to reconsider the past. To understand why Americans have grown disillusioned with their public schools we must look beyond the immediate present to the larger history of the United States and its public schools. The public schools of this country—elementary, secondary, and higher—were not conceived full-blown. They have a history, and it is the social history of the United States. This essay will not attempt to present that history in its entirety but will focus instead on three specific periods decisive for the social history of this society and its public schools: the decades before the Civil War, in which the elementary or “common schools” were reformed; the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, in which the secondary schools “welcomed” the “children of the plain people”; and the post-World War II decades, which found the public colleges and universities “overwhelmed” by a “tidal wave” of “non-traditional” students— those traditionally excluded from higher education by sex, race, and class. In each of these periods, the quantitative expansion of the student population was matched by a qualitative transformation of the enlarged institutions.

Vladikavkaz Nikolaev School

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-56
Author(s):  
Lana К. Khubaeva
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
World War ◽  
Central State ◽  
The Public ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
First World

The article is devoted to the Vladikavkaz city Nikolaev school, which was opened in 1874. Documents preserved in the fund of the Public Schools Directorate of the Central State Archive (CSA) of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania indicate that the school was a male educational institution and the name of the school was named after Nikolai Ugodnik. The school was originally a four-year school, later, in 1897, it was transformed into a six-year school. It was subordinate to the Ministry of Public Education and the Directorate of public schools in the Terek region. On November 3, 1895, the Society for Aid to the Poorest Students of the Vladikavkaz Nikolaev School was officially registered at the school. The fact of the creation of such a Society testifies to the fact that the school was not intended exclusively for children of privileged classes. The October Revolution made great changes in the educational system established by this period. Many schools have ceased to function. The same fate befell the Nikolaev School, but not immediately. The educational institution managed to prepare several generations of graduates who continued their education in higher educational institutions before and post-revolutionary Russia. The Nikolaev school entered the history of Vladikavkaz as a source of enlightenment, thanks to which dozens of young people who did not live not only in Vladikavkaz, but also those who entered here from remote areas of the region received education. The school existed until 1921, having survived two Russian revolutions and the period of the First World War.

scholarly journals On the Issue of the Establishment of the Institution of Local Self-Government Bodies in Cities and the Importance of Local Finance for the Population of Public and Legal Entities: Historical and Legal Aspect

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-33
Author(s):  
G. N. Sklyarov
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Legal Aspect ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Municipal Finance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Finance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Legal Entities

The history of the establishment of the institution of local self-government is one of the key aspects for understanding the fundamental principles of empowering local governments with financial powers. Given the enormous importance of municipal finance for the public of legal entities, it is necessary to clearly understand the origins of the emergence of the principle of independence of local budgets. The article analyzes the development of ideas about local selfgovernment from the financial point of view. The main ideas and ways of their realization in various historical periods are designated.

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