Knowledge is central to power. Knowledge helps us envision the contours of our existence, what is desirable, what is possible, and what actions might bring about the possibilities. Knowledge helps us examine relationships between what is ethical and what is desirable; it widens our experiences; it provides analytic tools for thinking through questions, situations, and problems. Knowledge empowers centers around the interest and aims of the prospective knower.  Apart from the knower, knowledge has no intrinsic power ( Sleeter and Grant).
    What has this talk of knowledge being power have to do with public schooling in our country? First, our country has shifted from hands on to making software. Student’s of today need to explore keyboards, computer labs, and processing of data, while competing with student’s across the United States and the world. Because student’s backgrounds influence their choice of schools, it would not be valid to infer differences among types of schools by simply comparing achievements. Public schools have achievement scores on standardized tests that are not based on income, so the students earn their way. Public schools attract a more comparable mix of students, relative to private schools. Public schools also serve a sizable proportion of children in families where they compete for higher resources.
    There are many major ideas of why public schools can become more competitive in the labor markets.
♣    Equity: Everyone pays school taxes, so everyone should enjoy the benefits, even if they want to buy more than the tax dollars will allow. Equity equates success.
♣    Freedom: Maximizes the range of choices, and the decision to not harm others while allowing other children to learn more. Society benefits when children learn more.
♣    Parental involvement: Parents choose more carefully when there is not such a big out-of-pocket cost. Parents involved helps to keep the children involved.
♣    Efficiency: Price is a primary market mechanism. Changes can only reflect political forces. There are fewer costs because each child gets the same amount of public money.
    Public schools are being attacked; headlines seem to be about violence, drugs, and desegregation. Has the education crisis been overstated? Illiterate high school graduates and wasted tax dollars are among a national risk report warning of the rise in school mediocrity. Parents and educators have seized on a rash of reforms and alternatives, ranging from national standards and private management to school choice charter schools. With in all of this controversy there are a growing number of scholars and public school advocates that are questioning whether the “crisis” really exists. They are reviewing data that has recently pointed out these ideas of failing public schools and they are finding that most of the data has been distorted by critics in order to seek tax dollars for support of private schools. Such charges, the critics counter, represent the education establishment in a state of denial.
    In February 2004, a hard-driving real estate agent placed a provocative advertisement in a local newspaper stating “Mount Vernon Public Schools have got you down?” It then asked “That you move.” Most reputations of public schools are precious to their communities. The person who put that article in the newspaper received hundreds of calls, not from potential clients, but from teachers, parents, and school officials who were furious at the slurs on their public schools.
    Indeed, the absence of dramatic progress prompts many critics to argue that public schools need to raise their standards. This is what the Bush administration is working on. The education officials have assembled what is considered one of the best compilations of data on the problems and how to form a plan to fix our public schools.
    We are now seeing public schools pull out of a stagnation formed in both the good news and bad news. This is progress in closing the gaps that have been stalling public schools since the mid 1980’s.

Merrifield, John, 1955-The School choice wars/ p.cm. LB 1027.9 m.47. 2001.

Fuller, Bruce. Elmore, Richard F. Who Chooses? Who Loses? Culture, Institutions, and the Unequal           Effects of School Choice. Teachers College, Columbia University New York and London. 1996.

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http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearch/cqresrre1994010700.
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Koch, K.(1999,May 14). National education standards. The CQ Research Online, 9. Retrieved                    December 26, 2004, From.

http://libary.cqpress.com/cqreseacher/cqresrre1999051400. 
        Document ID: cqresrre19990514000.