Reasons Why Public Education Has Neglected Public Education - Article Example

Article Critique al Affiliation Article Critique Main Purpose The primary purpose of the article is to cite reasons why Public education has neglected public education. The article also explains how important public education is.It also gives an outline of steps needed to bring public education under public administration. The article further explains what contributes to this neglect of public education. According to the article, the neglect can be attributed to several factors. These include the structural and organizational barriers and the costs of overcoming these barriers too (Raffel, 2007). To show how significant public education is, the article has given several reasons why it is considered important in America. On this section, the article has explained that federal expenditures have increased moderately towards public education. The article has cited several pieces of evidence to show how the public administration has neglected public education. The next thing mentioned in the article by the author is reasons for the separation of public administration and public education. He starts by noting that the reasons are complex and lie in the roots of the field of public education and the federal focus of the public administration. The document has given some of the impacts of this separation and lastly has given the agenda for the future (Raffel, 2007). Key Question The Key question that could have been in the mind of the author when writing this article was why the public administration has ignored public education. This can be justified by the fact that the author has given enough evidence to show that it the public education has been ignored. Some of the evidence includes textbooks, journals, great books and curriculums. In books for example, the author notes that the discussion of state and local government in field’s textbooks is limited. He notes that the long-term focus of public administration on the federal government has contributed partly to the neglect of public education in public administration textbooks. None of the public administration textbooks recognizes the scope of public education (Raffel, 2007). Virtually, there is a lack of public policy discussion in these manuals and there are little recognition principals as public administrators. The author further notes that these books contain topics based on general field subjects such as finance. The second evidence that shows this was the fundamental question of the author was journals. Five public administration journals were analyzed to investigate how much they had covered in public education. It was hence noted that there was very little coverage of these journals on public education. There were only 17 articles that had focused on public education. The third reason that shows that this was the author’s primary question is the evidence provided on curriculum. The author explicitly noted that the public administration is not as strong as it is involved in fields like health and environment. The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration created a website to conduct curriculum searches. This body surveyed its member institutions to investigate whether they had specializations in fields like health and criminal justice. Education was not on this list (Raffel, 2007). Important Information The first significant information that the author has discussed is the significance of public education. He first begins by saying that an analysis of state budgets shows that one-third of the states expenditures goes to education. Federal spending on the sector of education has also increased fairly rapidly. The second information the author has discussed in the article is he has given evidence to show that the public administration has ignored public education. He has outlined several indications that include great books, textbooks, professional associations and curriculum. In each of the books, he has given reasons why in.Public education has been ignored by the public administration the last evidence he has written down is professional associations. In this, he has noted that the American Society for Public Administration had 20 different sections dedicated to topics such as an emergency. There was no single theme in education. This gave enough evidence to show that public education has been ignored so much by public administration (Raffel, 2007). The third important information provided by the author is Reasons for the separation of Public Administration and Public Education. The grounds were said to lie in the roots of the fields of public administration and the ideological views about the relationship between public relations and politics. The roots of public education lie in the subject of political science. Political science, on the other hand, did not discover the importance of public education. In this, Eliots seminal article of 1959 helps one to understand why politics and education do not go hand in hand. He argues that because public schools are public entities, they are a rift to the study of the policy by political scientists. The next important information discussed is the effects that come along with separation. In this, he explained by saying how scholars who have been willing to cross public administration-public education barrier make it.They illustrate the contribution that the study of public education can bring to public administration. Finally, the author has given the agenda for the future. He encourages that the public policy field must consciously include schools in its research. Public administrators also need to reach out cross structural lines through initiatives (Raffel, 2007). Mean Assumptions The author assumes that the responsibility for ensuring there is proper public education is in the hands of the public administration. He believes that the public policy should ensure there is an equal enhancement of the education field like other areas. He makes an assumption that public administration textbooks should talk more about the field of education more than another field. Journals should also emphasize too much on public education. Another assumption the author is making is politics should go hand in hand with education. In the agenda section, the author also assumes that most of the activities should be to improve education. This cannot be possible as the public administration has other fields to run other than education (Raffel, 2007). Implications of the Authors Thinking The thinking of the author is biased. He only gives views on how the public education can be made possible by the public administration. This is in spite of having other fields that the civil service has to take care of. The fact that public education has been neglected does not mean the public administration should only work to improve it alone, which is according to the thinking of the author. If the readers decide to put this into practice, other fields might finally be neglected as well. There should be equal opportunities in all areas given by the public administration to avoid being biased. On the other hand, the views of the author should not be ignored. For instance, the public administration should emphasize more on education as it is already neglected.it should work to improve it to level it with other fields (Raffel, 2007). In conclusion, the main reason the article was written was to answer the question why the public administration has neglected public education. The author observes the fact that public administration has ignored the importance of public education, yet it should be at the center of it. There is no way public administration can be discussed or looked in to while leaving out public education. Public education is part of public administration and should be included in its discussion. The author cited several reasons one being the public administrations federal focus. The author has also outlined evidence to show that this type of education has been neglected. Textbooks, journals, and professional associations are some of the evidence. Finally, the author has given a suggestion that the public administration can use to improve public education (Raffel, 2007). Reference Raffel, J. A. (2007). Why has public administration ignored public education, and does it matter? Public administration review, 67(1), 135-151. Read More