Please, Don’t Hype Teacher-run Schools
In 1990, Terry Moe and John Chubb published Politics, Markets and American Schools. The book was a hit among business and civic leaders, policy wonks, parents, school board members, superintendents, teachers. The authors argued that the 1980s reforms–teacher empowerment, school-site management, and restructuring–would disappoint advocates because political compromises with unions and foot-dragging school bureaucracies would suck the blood out of the reforms. Rather than sizzling reforms, they would slowly fizzle. What needs to be done to make schools effective, they argued, is completely change the governance and organization of the school by giving parents the right to choose schools. If parents, particularly low-income ones, could receive government vouchers that they could take to any school they thought would be best for their children, their sons’