David Labaree's Impact On Education

David Labaree argues that the central problem with American education is political in nature; we cannot agree on what the goal of American education is: democratic equality, social efficiency, or social mobility. Labaree defines democratic equality as an approach to schooling that is intended to create responsible citizens and to promote relative equality so that social equality is not stratified and undermined by inequality. However, Labaree claims that recently, social mobility has shaped public education and which has has promoted stratification in educational opportunity. The social mobility goal for education views education as a private good for parents and students to consume, and often times those in the higher social class begin with

Some of these models tried Labaree’s goal of social efficiency which served mainly to reproduce one’s place in society. Schools engaged in practices like IQ testing and tracking, and it was often the ethnic minorities or the women who were steered towards the vocational tracks, which hampered their ability to move on to postsecondary education. In contrast, many individuals such as those on the Committee of Ten in 1894, recognized the importance democratic equality and designed a curriculum that had minimum academic expectations for all students. When schools follow social efficiency and think of only creating workers to satisfy the job market, a majority will be expected to fill the lower wage jobs to support the market. Without equal expectations for all, a select few students will fill the higher level jobs will the rest are trained to shoulder the burden of the job market. Schools would not be responsible for promoting academic excellence from all students and this is an impediment to the promise of our democracy, that all have equal opportunity in this nation.*find

A concrete example of how this functions in practice are school choice programs. Institutions such as charter schools have gained traction since the 90’s and are an alternative to public schools which many consider as failing. Charters and magnet schools are a place for the most motivated and talented students to go to get a better education, which is consistent with the approach of social mobility. However, schools like this often strip public schools of their best students and leave them to struggle with the lower achieving students and has a detrimental effect overall for the public school and it’s students. For example, in Jamaica High School, a historically high achieving school, was shut down in 2011 after losing it’s best students to nearby magnet schools in the 90’s. Following this “brain drain”, the high school did not have enough resources to perform well, and had the burden of educating the students that were struggling more. This is exemplary of Labaree’s criticism of social mobility, the ones who start ahead have more capital and motivation and will get ahead by enrolling in alternative schools, and further stratifies schools and reinforces preexisting social