ABSTRACT
The general public in the United States has traditionally viewed the schools as institutions that are created, maintained, and controlled by “the people.” With some notable exceptions, conventional wisdom has it that schools have somehow escaped the socially damaging effects of corrupt politics. This view persists despite the many trenchant critiques made of public education in the past. During the Progressive Era an outpouring of social commentary on the political, economic, and social uses and misuses of schools was made, and such criticism of the social effects of schooling has continued to the present. Thus, even a cursory examination of our past and present reveals that the local, state and federal governments—and the various dominant group interests they serve—have been and continue to be an active and indeed a crucially significant force in the historic reform of public schooling.
