73 © The Author(s) 2017 A.R. Berner, Pluralism and American Public Education, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50224-7_5 CHAPTER 5 Citizenship, Achievement, and Accountability What do we want our education system to accomplish, and can a plural educational system deliver it? American public education has had two longstanding aims: to form democratic citizens and to provide the academic and social capacities necessary for productive adulthood. These aims have held over time, despite signifcant changes in how we understand citizenship, vocation, and equal access to both. 1 In 1779, then-Governor Thomas Jefferson argued that Virginia’s townships should fund schools for all students. He explained that a common education would enable the next generation to protect democracy and rise above the circumstances of birth. 2 In 1954, the Supreme Court refected these themes when it declared de jure segregation to be unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education: Education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments … It is the very foundation of good citizenship [and] the principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environments. 3 The Court’s assumption was the same as Jefferson’s: public education exists to create equal access to academic preparation and citizenship training. In 2012, the Council on Foreign Relations’ education report sounded an alarm based on the same goals. 4 “The United States’ most foundational strengths are its liberty, democracy, capitalism, equality of opportunity, and unique ability to generate innovation,” wrote the authors. “Without a wide base of educated and capable citizens, these strengths will fade, and the United States will lose its leading standing in the world.” 5 While not everyone agrees that American education is in such dire shape, 6 it is hard to imagine a leader from Left or from Right who would disagree that “[t]he United States cannot be two countries—one educated and one not, one employable and one not.” 7