Busting Bureaucracy to Reclaim Our Schools

Book excerpt: In this book, the author argues that the bureaucratization of schooling has interfered with the process of education. The costs, complexity, and rigidity of the educational edifice leaves it unresponsive to parental concerns and reluctant to measure its own inadequacies such as illiteracy and high dropout rates among students. The author identifies two conceptual bases for action to address this problem: public choice theory and agency theory, discusses the issue of identity in its relation to education, and then makes the case for charter schools in Canada, stressing definitions of community, parental rights, and the need to combat bureaucratic tendencies. Two discussants respond to the author's analysis, one amplifying his call for charter schools and the other arguing that the basis for demanding reform is less clear than the author claims.