Creating the Educational Marketplace

Chapter 5 shows how, by the 1920s, public policies had forged a regulated educational marketplace in American cities. Catholic students frequently transferred between public and private schools. Effectively managing these shifts in school attendance required public officials to establish the standards, rules, and procedures to facilitate parental choice between the two systems. Public regulations standardized the diffuse curriculum and teaching practices of public and private schools. Parents transferred their children from public to private schools with the understanding that the latter fit within the state’s minimal education standards, and that their choice would not result in their child suffering academic or professional harm. New regulations tied public and parochial school governance together in ways unthinkable during the nineteenth century. Catholic school administrators and parents largely embraced these new laws, viewing them as essential for raising the status of Catholic education.