ABSTRACT
The 1950s and 1960s were decades of unprecedented expansion in the scale of public education in the United States. By the early 1970s, however, demographic and economic conditions had changed. Enrollment in US public schools peaked in 1971-72 and has been declining ever since. This chapter identifies the more salient patterns of social conflict accompanying the responses of existing institutions to enrollment decline and fiscal retrenchment. It suggests that a constitutional choice approach is an appropriate methodology for identifying alternative institutions of school decisionmaking. The chapter outlines a research project designed to simulate the collective choices of such institutions under varying conditions of conflict. The responses of school boards and administrators to decline have resulted in specific conflict patterns that have shifted as the crises deepened. Constitutional choice analysis attempts to predict the selection of principles constraining social choice institutions.
