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This timely book refocuses the debate about school choice programs with a nonpartisan assessment of the nation’s largest and longest-running private school voucher program—the high profile Milwaukee experiment—and finds that the system undercuts the promise of school choice. The authors argue that the Milwaukee experiment has not resulted in the one element necessary for school choice to be effective: an accountability system in which good schools thrive and poor schools close. They show that most ingredients of a robust market are missing. Well-informed consumers (parents) are not the norm. State fiscal incentives are counterproductive, and competition among public and choice schools is difficult to discern. They conclude that school choice could succeed if certain conditions were met, and they offer guidelines to strengthen accountability and repair the voucher system.
How is it that, half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, educational opportunities remain so unequal for black and white students, not to mention poor and wealthy ones?In his important new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart, James E. Ryan answers this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia--one in the city and the other in the suburbs. Ryan shows how court rulings in the 1970s, limiting the scope of desegregation, laid the groundwork for the sharp disparities between urban and suburban public schools that persist to this day. The Supreme Court, in accord with the wishes of the Nixon administration, allowed the suburbs to lock nonresidents out of thei...
Just Generosity calls Christians to examine their priorities and their pocketbooks in the face of a scandalous tendency to overlook those among us who suffer while we live in practical opulence. This holistic approach to helping the poor goes far beyond donating clothes or money, envisioning a world in which faith-based groups work with businesses, the media, and the government to help end poverty in the world's richest nation. This updated edition includes current statistics, policy recommendations, and discussions covering everything from welfare reform, changes to Medicade, and the Social Security debate. "Sider's most important book since Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger."--Jim Wallis, author, God's Politics "Sider knows how to lift up people in need.... [An] important and challenging book."--John Ashcroft, former Attorney General of the United States
Despite George W. Bush’s professed opposition to big government, federal spending has increased under his watch more quickly than it did during the Clinton administration, and demands on government have continued to grow. Why? Lawrence Brown and Lawrence Jacobs show that conservative efforts to expand markets and shrink government often have the ironic effect of expanding government’s reach by creating problems that force legislators to enact new rules and regulations. Dismantling the flawed reasoning behind these attempts to cast markets and public power in opposing roles, The Private Abuse of the Public Interest urges citizens and policy makers to recognize that properly functioning ma...
Recent US economic history is rife with examples of cities and regions that have experienced significant decline. Many of those localities began to slide after decades, even generations, of feeling immune to economic disaster. Boeing and Kodak, the steel industry in Pittsburg, and the automotive industry in Detroit all expected to make it golden into the distant future. Tapping into the available body of knowledge as well as- through nearly 70 interviews—the experiences of those who lived and worked in those times in cities around the United States—to identify the most effective strategies, Reinventing Local and Regional Economies delineates the dos and don’ts to observe in order to su...
The local school board is one of America’s enduring venues of lay democracy at work. In Democracy, Deliberation, and Education, Robert Asen takes the pulse of this democratic exemplar through an in-depth study of three local school boards in Wisconsin. In so doing, Asen identifies the broader democratic ideal in the most parochial of American settings. Conducted over two years across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines, Asen’s research reveals as much about the possibilities and pitfalls of local democracy as it does about educational policy. From issues as old as racial integration and as contemporary as the recognition of the Gay-Straight Alliance in high schools, Democracy, Delibe...
Foundations of Education incorporates relevant interdisciplinary perspectives and emphasizes coverage of key issues in education, with up-to-date research, primary resources, and documentation. This text provides comprehensive and substantive coverage of all foundational areas--including social, philosophical, historical, political, economic, curricular, and legal--for students who are preparing for a career in teaching and for those who simply wish to learn more about significant contemporary issues in education. The authors have included strong, thought-provoking pedagogy, and have emphasized the growing role of technology in education, especially in the new Technology@School feature.New! ...