Back to school
School: The Story of American Public Education. Produced by Sarah Mondale and Sarah Patton. Public Broadcasting System.
School: The Story of American Public Education. By David Tyack et al. Beacon, 233 pp., $30.00.
On any given school day between September and June nearly a quarter of the population (students, teachers, administrators and support staff) can be found in a public elementary or secondary schoolhouse. Over 47 million children (88 percent of school-age children) are enrolled in over 90,000 public schools, and 90 percent of them are likely to graduate from high school. School expenditures have reached $330 billion. Little wonder that Americans, and American leaders from Thomas Jefferson to George W. Bush, have fiercely debated the ends and means of public education.
