About the Book
Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush agreed on little, but united behind the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Passed in late 2001, it was hailed as a dramatic new departure in school reform. It would make the states set high standards, measure student progress, and hold failing schools accountable. A decade later, NCLB has been repudiated on both sides of the aisle. According to Jal Mehta, we should have seen it coming. Far from new, it was the same approach to school
reform that Americans have tried before.In The Allure of Order, Mehta recounts a century of attempts at revitalizing public education, and puts forward a truly new agenda to reach
this elusive goal. Not once, not twice, but three separate times-in the Progressive Era, the 1960s and '70s, and NCLB-reformers have hit upon the same idea for remaking schools. Over and over again, outsiders have been fascinated by the promise of scientific management and have attempted to apply principles of rational administration from above. Each of these movements started with high hopes and ambitious promises, but each gradually discovered that schooling is not easy to "order" from afar:
policymakers are too far from schools to know what they need; teachers are resistant to top-down mandates; and the practice of good teaching is too complex for simple external standardization.
The larger problem, Mehta argues, is that reformers have it backwards: they are trying to do on the back-end, through external accountability, what they should have done on the front-end: build a strong, skilled and expert profession. Our current pattern is to draw less than our most talented people into teaching, equip them with little relevant knowledge, train them minimally, put them in a weak welfare state, and then hold them accountable when they predictably do not
achieve what we seek. What we want, Mehta argues, is the opposite approach which characterizes top-performing educational nations: attract strong candidates into teaching, develop relevant and usable
knowledge, train teachers extensively in that knowledge, and support these efforts through a strong welfare state. The Allure of Order boldly challenges conventional wisdom with a sweeping, empirically rich account of the last century of education reform, and offers a new path forward for the century to come.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One: The Allure of Order: Rationalizing Schools From the Progressive to the Present
Chapter Two: The Cultural Struggle for Control Over Schooling: The Power of Ideas and the Weakness of the Educational Field
Chapter Three: Taking Control from Above: The Rationalization of Schooling in the Progressive Era
Chapter Four: The Forgotten Standards Movement: The Coleman Report, the Defense Department, and a Nascent Push for Educational Accountability
Chapter Five: Setting the Problem: The Deep Roots and Long Shadows of A Nation at Risk
Chapter Six: A Semi-Profession in an Era of Accountability
Chapter Seven: E Pluribus Unum: How Standards and Accountability Became King
Chapter Eight: Transforming Federal Policy: Ideas and the Triumph of Accountability Politics
Chapter Nine: Rationalizing Schools: Patterns, Ironies, Contradictions
Chapter Ten: Beyond Rationalization: Inverting the Pyramid, Remaking the Educational Sector
Bibliography
About the Author :
Jal Mehta is Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research explores the underlying structures which shape American schooling, the cultural assumptions which underpin these approaches to education, and the consequences of those decisions for schools, teachers, and students. He is the co-editor of The Futures of School Reform. Mehta received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University.
Review :
"The success of The Allure of Order is how it challenges anyone involved in education reform to reexamine their most closely held concepts. At this critical period when the only consensus among U.S. educators, reformers, and policymakers is the need for change, The Allure of Order is a major guide for the sweeping decisions that must be made during the next several years. While analyzing both the history and the common strands of education reform
movements, Jal Mehta also puts forward meaningful proposals to avoid repeating the past while building a system that truly empowers educators to perform at their highest levels. Documenting that the current
'rationalization of schools' has reached its limits, Dr. Mehta points us to an approach that produces greater learning outcomes by trusting educators, sharing ideas, and moving away from the concept of 'one best system." --Robert Wise, President, Alliance for Excellent Education
"In this detailed historical and political reanalysis of America's checkered history of school reform, Jal Mehta finds two major patterns: an impulse on the part of reformers and policymakers for the imposition of order and coherence on a set of institutions that lack the incentives and capacities to respond to these ideas, and a persistent lack of attention to the underlying problems of human values, knowledge, and skill that actually determine the value of
schooling to individuals and society over time. His analysis leads to a vision of the future that will be harder to achieve but more likely to succeed, based on valuing human knowledge and skill over
technical order in the learning sector." --Richard F. Elmore, Gregory Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership, Harvard Graduate School of Education
"A powerful academic treatise written lucidly which, being pleasingly free of jargon, deserves, nay demands, a wide readership...." --London School of Economics
"Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"Jal Mehta challenges our tendency to believe that every education reform effort is 'new' and therefore holds fresh promise for improving student performance... Although the value of standards as a primary driver of educational improvement has generated a plethora of literature, Mehta's search for why this reform has persisted, despite frustration with student achievement gains, adds depth to an ongoing and urgent policy discussion about strategies to improve
student performance." --Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
"Even those who question some of Mehta's premises, however, are likely
to profit from his elegant historical detail and careful conceptualizations...many
readers will appreciate the intellectual force behind whatmay be the book's
most important contention: we are currently going at the problem backwards,
emphasizing sanctions and controls at the end of the process, driven by student outcomes." --Social Service Review
