Arguments about the education of the young are at least as old as Socrates. However, it is fair to suggest that the voucher debate that has erupted over the past few years is qualitatively different from many that have preceded it. Rather than arguing about whether public schools are deficient, and if so, in what respects; rather than debating the merits of one "reform" over another, the issue has become whether America should continue to support a system of free, publicly controlled schools or whether government?s educational role should be reduced to dispensing vouchers to families, enabling them to "buy" educational services in the marketplace. It is a classic political confrontation, engaging partisan strategies and implicating political ideologies.
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Category Archives: Academic Papers
Privatization and the Twenty-First Century City
Political Rhetoric and Reality in the Indianapolis Experiment
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Benefit or Blackmail?
The past ten years have given rise to an almost unprecedented building boom involving new stadiums and arenas for professional sports teams. By the year 2002 at least 60 percent of the 121 major sports franchises will be playing their home games in a facility built or remodeled since 1991. With construction costs in…
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Reducing Identity politics in the Workplace
The official American vision of equality has been one of a society in which group identity is legally irrelevant, where individual conduct is the only proper concern of government, and individual merit the only determinant of reward in the workplace. In such a meritocracy, individuals are rewarded or punished …
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Back to Basics
The study of public affairs is inevitably particularistic; that is, it is focused upon analysis and management of the public’s business as that business is defined by a particular society at a particular time. Such a study must begin with the rules a given society has established to direct and constrain its government; that is, with analysis of constitutional assumptions about the roles, rights and responsibilities of government and its citizens, and the relationship between them.
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