I am a sociologically oriented historian of education who seeks to explore some of the major processes and patterns that define the relationship between education and society in the United States. In my research, I aim to analyze the evolving institutional character of educational organizations (such as the high school, community college, education school, and university) and the evolving role of key groups that affect education (such as teachers, teacher educators, and reform movements) in the context of the broader purposes and functions of education in a liberal democracy. Within this broad approach to the subject, I have focused in the past on two major areas of study. One is the pressure exerted by markets on democratic education; the other is the peculiar nature of education schools as they have evolved over the years in the U.S.

"How could the most admired, imitated, and (in many ways) progressive characteristic of American education -- its focus on providing a wide array of citizens with the chance to get ahead through educational attainment -- produce so many negative consequences for both school and society? The answer, I suggest, is that the pursuit of educational advantage has inadvertently threatened to transform the public educational system into a mechanism for personal advancement. In the process, the generous public goals that have been so important in defining the larger societal interest in education -- to produce politically capable and socially productive citizens -- have lost significant ground to the narrow pursuit of private advantage at public expense. The result is that the common school has become increasingly uncommon, with a growing emphasis on producing selective symbolic distinctions rather than shared substantive accomplishments, and the community interest in education as a public good has increasingly lost ground to the individual interest in education as private property."

From How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning