The Allure of Order
High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
Published on 16. April 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-0-19-023145-3 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
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
*
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
19 figures and tables
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
689 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-023145-3 (9780190231453)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Jal Mehta
The Allure of Order
High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
Book
05/2013
Oxford University Press Inc
€82.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Jal Mehta
The Allure of Order
High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
E-Book
04/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€11.99
Available for download
Jal Mehta
The Allure of Order
High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling
E-Book
04/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€11.99
Available for download
Person
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.
Content
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