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C H A P T E R F O U R Interests and Education Reform in Multiethnic Cities AN INTEREST-BASED perspective is a natural starting point for our analysis of the school reform puzzle. To understand why the concerns of new school constituencies are not reflected in school-reform agendas , we focus first on an analysis of the interests involved. The belief that interests matter—usually interpreted to refer to self-interested and purposive pursuit of material goals, social status, and power as a central force in politics —is the most common orientation to the study of politics in the United States. This approach highlights the relevance of material resources as both bases of political influence and incentives for maintaining group action and cohesion. A closely related view, the pluralist interpretation, argues that patterns of interest group interaction, such as competition, conflict, cooperation, and coalition building, are the core factors in understanding politics. And pluralism is probably the leading perspective on American politics (see Chapter 2). Most often, the basis for interest group formation and activity is economic interest; groups support or oppose public policies depending on their expected impact on groups’ material interests. Typically, analyses treat politics as competition over “who wins and who loses” or as “who gets what,when, and how” and usually explain outcomes in terms of comparative levels of resource across groups, or comparative mobilization and use of resources. There is much that is attractive and intuitively plausible about interestbased interpretations that lead to their acceptance. They are consistent with the ideas of major thinkers in American politics. James Madison’s Federalist 10 asserted the importance of factions, or interest groups, in politics and society, arguing that factions were inevitable, and were rooted in unequal financial resources. Thus, to assume that self interest and material resources play a major role in political outcomes simply makes a great deal of sense. Moreover, the nature of interests and resources seems more immediately understandable, and perhaps more measurable, than other analytical perspectives grounded in more ostensibly abstract notions—such as ideas and institutions. For example, one can more readily measure or quantify the membership size, financial contributions , and economic characteristics of a group, while precisely measuring an idea or an institution and imputing specific impacts to them are more inherently elusive. As we argue here, an interest-based analysis of school reform highlights the complex relationship of resources, influence, and educational policy outcomes in multiethnic cities. But ultimately a purely interest-based approach raises as many questions as it answers. Ethnic and racial minority groups, for example, cannot be considered only or perhaps even primarily as economically motivated interest groups; it appears that interest group–based approaches and pluralist assumptions “about group origins and self-interest maximization motives” may be less relevant in analyzing identity politics and distinctive issues such as education (Clarke et al. 1995, 206). Furthermore, the relationships between groups in the multiethnic politics of education are often more complicated than either conflict or cooperation. Finally an interest-based analysis points to seemingly counterintuitive results when groups appear to be acting against their interests. An Interest-based Analysis of Education Politics This chapter examines education politics from the standpoint of the dominant paradigm, an interest-based analytical perspective (see, for example, Marquez 1993; Hero 1992; McClain and Stewart 1998). In doing so, the chapter makes certain assumptions. It assumes, of course, that the interest-based framework is applicable to education policy issues and to group concerns about those issues. While the framework may be applicable within limits, it should be noted that education policy might be particularly elusive and complex: For instance, it may simultaneously have aspects of developmental, redistributive, and regulatory policy (Peterson 1981; cf. Clarke et al. 1995). The ambiguous divisibility of education as a public and private good makes analysis more complicated. Moreover, as a matter of human—rather than physical—capital, education has a host of characteristics and ambiguities that limit the applicability of interestbased analyses. And all these points must be considered within the complex reality of multiethnic politics. Another assumption is that racial/ethnic groups are a major part of the interest-based story. This seems appropriate in that much of the legal and related political and policy debates about education—including equality and the quality I N T E R E S T S A N D E D U C AT I O N R E F O R M I N M U LT I E...

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