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In today's Education Gadfly, Checker Finn wrote a thoughtful, at times almost lyrical, meditation on the role of schools in forging national unity. Unlike most voucher advocates, he acknowledges the risk of national balkanization posed by the proliferation of "charters, vouchers, tax credits, virtual schools, magnets, hybrids, and on and on"--in other words, schools that often cater to specific ideological, social or religious interests without championing any larger vision of national identity.

Finn advocates "well-wrought, statewide academic standards joined to well-wrought and forceful state testing-and-accountability mechanisms" but concedes the difficulty of applying this structure to private schools under a voucher scheme. Indeed, private schools that accept public dollars, align their curricula with state standards, and submit to state testing and accountability strictures sound an awful lot like public schools and would most likely be anathema to all but the most temperate privatization supporters. (Apparently, a forthcoming Fordham report will wrestle with this issue.)

Finn also cites a new report from the conservative Bradley Foundation which lays much of the blame for national disunity on the erosion of U.S. civics and history education as well as on accommodations for new immigrants such as bilingual education. (Public School Insights shares their concern about the decline of civics education. Their concern about bilingual education? Not so much.)

National unity surely suffers at least as much from the influence of pure market forces unconstrained by any larger set of common intellectual or social values. Finn suggests as much when he decries "the hedonistic, live-for-today, save-not-for-tomorrow, bread-and-circuses 'life-style'" as well as "the substitution of trashy celebrity 'news' for hard news in one paper after another. (That's what sells, say publishers, as they lay off reporters.)" The untrammeled free market--even such a market for schools--too often elevates immediate personal needs over any enduring common purpose.

Without stifling choice or smothering difference, public schools can by contrast establish common ground--both figuratively and literally--for an increasingly diverse nation. "With all of its flaws and limitations," Charles Haynes writes, "the success of the American experiment -- E Pluribus Unum -- is due in no small measure to the work of public schools."  Persistent inequities and segregation in our nation and our schools have seriously marred this achievement, but the project of balancing diversity and unity in our schools remains as important as it ever was.