The institutional autonomy of education

This paper develops a liberal contextualist account of schooling that balan ces institutional autonomy with public accountability under conditions of r easonable pluralism. First a conceptual obstacle is discussed: the tendency to conceive educational autonomy according to the false dilemma of instrum entalism versus non-instrumentalism. Then an alternative is advanced-the co ntextualist picture-that places education's institutional autonomy in its p roper Eight. The conclusion raises and then responds to important objection s to the contextualist picture.