Public education and the battle over the nature of social responsibility to the nation's children and schools

In recent years, allegedly worse schools have been blamed for lack of economic competitiveness and other social problems. Some observers have interpreted the supposed decline of education as a trumpet call to reform public schools. Others believing that public education is mostly beyond repair, have argued that the way to regenerate schooling is to create a market system of education in which parents can choose their children's schools, either public or private, and pay the tuition through vouchers funded by taxes. -David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform