Getting Beyond the “One Best System”?

Abstract

Amid the growing debates over the globalization of schooling, the United States seems both to embrace and to defy the idea that there can be one model for education. Despite the absence of a national curriculum and despite significant control of education located in school districts, researchers and policymakers in the United States typically lament the limited number of distinct and successful approaches to education. Some have suggested that the striking lack of variation across schools reflects a de facto “one best system” that governs school operations and instruction (Tyack 1974). At the same time, states and districts have pursued several significant and arguably systematic efforts to support the development of alternative educational approaches that reflect the needs and interests of local communities. For example, since the 1970s, the creation of magnet schools has been a popular means of instituting distinctive instructional goals and pedagogies to meet the needs of particular students, employers, and others (Blank, Levine, and Steel 1996). In recent years, the advent of charter schools and small schools reflects a renewed enthusiasm for developing schools that are free from many of the constraints of state and district bureaucracies and more responsive to the concerns of local community members (Bulkley and Fisler 2002; Clinchy 2000; Nathan 1996).