Educational Policy & Reform
- Battling Corruption in America's Public Schools
- Lydia G. Segal
- Drawing on ten years of undercover work and research in four major school districts, Lydia Segal reveals how systemic waste and fraud siphon millions of dollars from urban classrooms. Segal shows how money is lost in systems that focus on process rather than on results, and how regulations established to curb waste and fraud provide perverse incentives for new forms of both. Calling for renewed powers for principals and a streamlining of oversight, Segal offers a bold, far-reaching plan to reclaim our schools.
- Paperback 2005
- The Blackboard and the Bottom Line
- Larry Cuban
- In this provocative new book, Cuban takes aim at the alluring cliché that schools should be more businesslike, and shows that in its long history in business-minded America, no one has shown that a business model can be successfully applied to education.
- Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
- Children as Pawns
- Timothy A. Hacsi
- Head Start. Bilingual education. Small class size. Social promotion. School funding. Virtually every school system in America has had to face these issues over the past thirty years. In the first book to bring together the recent history of educational policy and politics with the research evidence, Timothy Hacsi presents the illuminating, often-forgotten stories of these five controversial topics. He sifts through the complicated evaluation research literature and compares the policies that have been adopted to the best evidence about what actually works.
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2003
- The Classroom and the Chancellery
- Allen Sinel
- The efforts of Dmitry Tolstoi's ministry resulted in comprehensive reforms that shaped the Russian school system until early in the twentieth century. Beginning with the historical, political, biographical, and administrative contexts for Tolstoi's reforms, Sinel then provides a detailed examination of Tolstoi's transformation of Russian education at all levels, particularly the secondary level, which was the cornerstone of his program.
- Hardcover 1973
- The Dewey Experiment in China
- Barry Keenan
- Hardcover 1977
- The Education Gospel
- W. Norton Grubb
- Marvin Lazerson
- In this hard-hitting history of "the gospel of education," W. Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson reveal the allure, and the fallacy, of the longstanding American faith that more schooling for more people is the remedy for all our social and economic problems--and that the central purpose of education is workplace preparation.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007
- Hope and Despair in the American City
- Gerald Grant
- Hardcover 2009
- Inside Charter Schools
- Edited by Bruce Fuller
- Deepening disaffection with conventional public schools has inspired flight to private schools, home schooling, and new alternatives, such as charter schools. Barely a decade old, the charter school movement has attracted a colorful band of supporters, from presidential candidates, to ethnic activists, to the religious Right. Inside Charter Schools provides shrewd and illuminating studies of the struggles and achievements of these new schools, and offers practical lessons for educators, scholars, policymakers, and parents.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2002
- Judging School Discipline
- Richard Arum
- Judging School Discipline is a powerfully reasoned account of how decades of mostly well-intended litigation have eroded the moral authority of teachers and principals and degraded the quality of American education. In a rigorous analysis enriched by vivid descriptions of individual cases, the book explores 1,200 cases in which a school's right to control students was contested.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
- Learning on the Job
- Steven F. Wilson
- In the 1990s, some failing school systems turned to private education management organizations to manage their schools. In Learning on the Job, industry insider Steven Wilson, the founder and CEO of Advantage Schools, looks back on the first tumultuous decade of this social experiment. Digging deep into the academic, financial, logistic, and political records of seven leading EMOs, he reveals the potential and pitfalls of their business and educational models, and their actual successes in the classrooms and the boardrooms.
- Hardcover 2006
- Lessons from Privilege
- Arthur Powell
- Around 10,000 American tax dollars will put a child through many public schools for a year. About 10,000 private dollars will put him through prep school. Why, then, is one system troubled and the other thriving? In this book, a renowned historian of education searches out the lessons that private schooling might offer public education.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1998
- Oversold and Underused
- Larry Cuban
- In Oversold and Underused, one of the most respected voices in American education argues that when teachers are not given a say in how the technology might reshape schools, computers are merely souped-up typewriters and classrooms continue to run much as they did a generation ago. In his studies of early childhood, high school, and university classrooms in Silicon Valley, Larry Cuban found that students and teachers use the new technologies far less in the classroom than they do at home, and that teachers who use computers for instruction do so infrequently and unimaginatively.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2003
- Politics, Persuasion, and Educational Testing
- Lorraine M. McDonnell
- Exploring the political struggles inspired by mass educational tests, McDonnell analyzes the design and implementation of statewide testing in California, Kentucky, and North Carolina in the 1990s. McDonnell draws lessons from these stories for the federal No Child Left Behind act, with its sweeping directives for high-stakes testing. To read this book is to witness the unfolding drama of America's educational culture wars, and to see hope for their resolution.
- Hardcover 2004
- The Sandbox Investment
- David L. Kirp
- The rich have always valued early education, and for the past forty years, millions of poorer kids have had Head Start. Now, more and more middle class parents have realized that a good preschool is the smartest investment they can make in their children's future in a competitive world. Writing with the verve of a magazine journalist and the authority of a scholar, Kirp makes the ideal guide to this quiet movement and campaign.
- Hardcover 2007 / Paperback 2009
- Seeking Common Ground
- David Tyack
- Seeking common civic ground in public schools has never been easy in a society where schoolchildren followed different religions, adhered to different cultural traditions, spoke many languages, and were identified as members of different "races." In this wise and enlightening book, filled with vivid characters and memorable incidents that make history but don't always make history books, David Tyack describes how each American generation grappled with the knotty task of creating political unity and social diversity.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2007
- Speaking Up
- Anne Proffitt Dupre
- Dupre examines the way courts have wrestled with student expression in school. Speaking Up offers eye-opening history for students, teachers, lawyers, and parents seeking to understand how the law attempts to balance order and freedom in schools.
- Hardcover 2009
- Tinkering toward Utopia
- David Tyack
- Larry Cuban
- Tinkering toward Utopia documents the dynamic tension between Americans' faith in education as a panacea and the moderate pace of change in educational practices. David Tyack and Larry Cuban suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and also to keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.
- Hardcover 1995 / Paperback 1997
- Who Controls Teachers' Work?
- Richard M. Ingersoll
- Drawing on large national surveys as well as wide-ranging interviews with high school teachers and administrators, Ingersoll reveals the shortcomings in the two opposing viewpoints that dominate thought on this subject: that schools are too decentralized and lack adequate control and accountability; and that schools are too centralized, giving teachers too little autonomy.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2006
- Whose America?
- Jonathan Zimmerman
- As a result of years of urging from various ethnic groups, textbooks and curricula now offer an inclusive account of American progress in freedom and justice. However, moral and religious education remain on much thornier ground. In this absorbing book, Jonathan Zimmerman tells the dramatic story of compromise and conflict over the teaching of history and morality in twentieth-century America.
- Hardcover 2002 / Paperback 2005