ABSTRACT

Despite robust self-confidence in its economy and a naive optimism in its New World Order hegemony, the United States is currently experiencing a cycle of distrust and self-doubt regarding its public education system (Bloom, 1987; National Commission, 1996). Such scepticism is not new, nor singularly dependent on wider political, economic or societal trends. What is novel about the present wave of dissatisfaction, however, is both its ubiquitous appeal and its call for specific kinds of remedies to the perceived inadequacies of the system through a series of structural interventions. These are primarily state bureaucratic but also economically libertarian in nature and, while viewing public schools as the vital arenas of change, neither position prizes professional vision and leadership as the driving force of that agenda (McLaren, 1994; Apple, 1996).