The Death and Life of the Great American School System


Book Description

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.







The Education Invasion


Book Description

Most Americans had no idea what Common Core was in 2013, according to polls. But it had been creeping into schools nationwide over the previous three years, and children were feeling its effects. They cried over math homework so mystifying their parents could not help them, even in elementary school. They read motley assortments of “informational text” instead of classic literature. They dreaded the high-stakes tests, in unfamiliar formats, that were increasingly controlling their classrooms. How did this latest and most sweeping “reform” of American education come in mostly under the radar? Joy Pullmann started tugging on a thread of reports from worried parents and frustrated teachers, and it led to a big tangle of history and politics, intrigue and arrogance. She unwound it to discover how a cabal of private foundation honchos and unelected public officials cooked up a set of rules for what American children must learn in core K–12 classes, and how the Obama administration pressured states to adopt them. Thus a federalized education scheme took root, despite legal prohibitions against federal involvement in curriculum. Common Core and its testing regime were touted as “an absolute game-changer in public education,” yet the evidence so far suggests that kids are actually learning less under it. Why, then, was such a costly and disruptive agenda imposed on the nation’s schools? Who benefits? And how can citizens regain local self-governance in education, so their children’s minds will be fed a more nourishing intellectual diet and be protected from the experiments of emboldened bureaucrats? The Education Invasion offers answers and remedies.




The Schools Our Children Deserve


Book Description

Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.




School Choice and the Quasi-market


Book Description

Throughout much of the industrialised world in the 1980s and 1990s governments divested themselves of responsibility for providing services for their citizens and espoused the ideology of the market. In education the term ‘quasi-market’ has been used to describe the situation where the market forces introduced into schooling differ in some fundamental respects from classical free markets. This book brings together specially written accounts of developments in the quasi-market in nine countries. The authors were asked to focus on their own particular country and to review policy developments in school choice over the previous five to ten years. In addition they were asked to assess the research evidence on the workings of the quasi-market of schools and, in particular, the effects of such changes on children of different genders and from differing social class and ethnic backgrounds. The result is a series of thought-provoking articles that add greatly to our understanding of the pressures that led to quasi-markets in education, and of how particular countries have responded to such changes and to the potentially inequitable effects of such moves.




Politics, Markets, and America's Schools


Book Description

During the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America's schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation's political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. Chubb and Moe argue that these reforms are destined to fail because they do not get to the root of the problem. The fundamental causes of poor academic performance, they claim, are not to be found in the schools, but rather in the institutions of direct democratic control by which the schools have traditionally been governed. Reformers fail to solve the problem-when the institutions ARE the problem. The authors recommend a new system of public education, built around parent-student choice and school competition, that would promote school autonomy—thus providing a firm foundation for genuine school improvement and superior student achievement.




American Education


Book Description

Joel Spring’s American Education introduces readers to the historical, political, social, and legal foundations of education and to the profession of teaching in the United States. In his signature straightforward and concise approach to describing complex issues, Spring illuminates events and topics and that are often overlooked or whitewashed, giving students the opportunity to engage in critical thinking about education. In this edition he looks closely at the global context of education in the U.S. Featuring current information and challenging perspectives—with scholarship that is often cited as a primary source, students will come away from this clear, authoritative text informed on the latest topics, issues, and data and with a strong knowledge of the forces shaping of the American educational system. Changes in the 17th Edition include new and updated material and statistics on economic theories related to "skills" education and employability the conflict between a skills approach and cultural diversity political differences regarding education among the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green parties social mobility and equality of opportunity as related to schooling global migration and student diversity in US schools charter schools and home schooling




American Education


Book Description

Featuring current information and challenging perspectives on the latest issues and forces shaping the American educational system—with scholarship that is often cited as a primary source, Joel Spring introduces readers to the historical, political, social, and legal foundations of education and to the profession of teaching in the United States. In his signature straightforward, concise approach to describing complex issues, he illuminates events and topics that are often overlooked or whitewashed, giving students the opportunity to engage in critical thinking about education. Students come away informed on the latest topics, issues, and data and with a strong knowledge of the forces shaping the American educational system. Thoroughly updated throughout, the 18th edition of this clear, authoritative text remains fresh and up to date, reflecting the many changes in education that have occurred since the publication of the previous edition. Topics and issues addressed and analyzed include • The decline of the Common Core State Standards, particularly as result of a Republican-controlled administration currently in place • Increasing emphasis on for-profit education, vouchers, charter schools and free-market competition between schools, expected to surge with the appointment of the new U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos • Current debates about immigration and "Dreamers"—new statistics on immigrant education, discussion of education proposals to accommodate the languages, cultures and religions of newly arrived immigrants • New education statistics on school enrollments, dropouts, education and income, school segregation, charter schools and home languages • The purposes of education as presented in the 2016 platforms of the Republican, Democratic, Green, and Libertarian parties • Discussions around transgender students




Down from Bureaucracy


Book Description

Throughout the world, politicians are dismantling state enterprises and heaping praise on private markets, while in the United States a new rhetoric of "citizen empowerment" links a widespread distrust of government to decentralization and privatization. Here Joel Handler asks whether this restructuring of authority really allows ordinary citizens to take more control of the things that matter in their roles as parents and children, teachers and students, tenants and owners, producers and consumers. Looking at citizens as stakeholders in the modern social welfare state created by the New Deal, he traces the surprising ideological shifts of empowerment from its beginning as a cornerstone of the war on poverty in the 1960s to its central place in conservative market-based voucher schemes for school reform in the 1990s. Handler shows that in the past the gains from decentralization have proved to be more symbol than substance: some disadvantaged members of society will find new opportunities in the changes of the 1990s, but others will simply experience powerlessness under another name. He carefully distinguishes "empowerment by invitation" (in special education, worker safety, home health care, public housing tenancy, and neighborhood organizations) from the "empowerment by conflict" exemplified by the radical decentralization of the Chicago public schools. What emerges is a map of the major pitfalls and possible successes in the current journey away from a discredited regulatory state.