Pt. 1. Ways of seeing the common good in public education: the past informing the present. Public schools and the elusive search for the common good / William J. Reese ; Turning points: reconstruction and the growth of national influence in education / Ted Mitchell ; "There is no escape...from the ogre of indoctrination": George Counts and the civic dilemmas of democratic educators / Daniel Perlstein ; "No one here to put us down": Hispano education in a southern Colorado cummunity, 1920-1963 / Rubén Donato ; Echoes of corporate influence: managing away urban school troubles / Dorothy Shipps --Pt. 2. Ways of seeing the common good in public education: social and political implications. No exit: public education as an inescapably public good / David F. Labaree ; Bureaucracy left and right: thinking about the one best system / Harvey Kantor and Robert Lowe ; Why is it so hard to get "good" schools? / Larry Cuban -- Pt. 3. Uncommon ways of seeing the common good. Civic friendship: an Aristotelian perspective / Elisabeth Hansot ; Devotion and ambiguity in the struggles of a poor mother and her family: New York City, 1918-1919 / Michael B. Katz ; Reflections on education as transcendence / John Meyer.