Central to the rise of the modern state in western societies was the change from private to public schooling; an attendant feature of this shift was the development of bureaucratic modes of school organization. Recent North American studies of these related phenomena, however, present two different interpretations of their evolution. Michael Katz's and David Tyack's studies of nineteenth century American schooling have portrayed the state as the protagonist in the promotion of bureaucratic structures in education, and their arguments have been echoed in Canadian analysis. The state, according to this interpretation, set the pace of educational reform, redefined the nature of parental, communal and religious involvement in the socialization of the young, and provided the framework for the organization of schools along hierarchical and bureaucratic lines.