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Breaking Free (Magill Book Reviews)

Ineffective bureaucracy, goofy ideas, burdensome union contracts, and a monopoly structure all hurt education, writes Sol Stern in Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice, this provocative screed about problems in public schools. Giving parents choices could help break the monopoly, and help kids learn. A conclusion that school reform is needed is obvious, but Stern’s analysis is less so, seemingly colored by an agenda. However, any bias matters less than the stakes, for districts and society, for families and students.

The real key may be in discussing the issue without limiting debate to false choices, as the late Paul Wellstone said. As ably shown in Stern’s account of his own household’s difficulties with the New York City public school system, which gets billions of dollars to operate, serious woes exist. But solutions seem less simple and clear than Stern says.

Funding is not the main trouble, he writes. And others elsewhere agree, finding disparities in achievement levels in race and class apart from resources. Giving everyone a choice to shop for schools could leave neighborhood schools with good teachers and able administrators but lousy surroundings in worse shape. There’s a fear that “choice” abandons the ideal of free, compulsory education shared by kids of all classes. Parochial schools, charter schools, and voucher systems like Milwaukee’s, Stern shows, can be successful. But he ignores possible ties between private schools and their families’ financial ability to afford tuition and other costs.

Stern voices his indignation at teachers, principals, and politicians, but mostly at unions. Despite his venomous condemnation of teacher’s contracts—and he has many valid points—he generalizes and neglects context. First, both sides agree to employment contracts. Also, the use of seniority, while sometimes abused, avoids other abuses. Time is value neutral, so “years of service” as a benefit is a term unaffected by management’s subjective criteria or unilateral decisions. Lastly, few would claim that fools are limited to unions, schools, or New York.

The book’s last half is more one-sided, slipping into criticism of liberalism, as the author—an ex-Ramparts magazine editor and one-time Free Speech Movement activist—reveals his institutional perspective. A fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (which has the slogan “Turning intellect into influence”), funded by foundations including Olin, Carthage and Bradley, Stern largely echoes the think tank’s party-line opposition to social programs.