School Choice

School Choice PDF Author: Virginia Walden Ford
Publisher: Beaufort Books
ISBN: 0825308216
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Silver Nautilus Book Award On a cold winter night in February of 1967, a large rock shattered a bedroom window in Virginia Walden Ford's home in Little Rock, Arkansas, landing in her baby sister's crib. Outside, members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her family's lawn. Faceless bigots were terrorizing Virginia, her parents, and her sisters–all because her father, Harry Fowler, dared to take a job as the assistant superintendent of personnel for the Little Rock School District. He was more than qualified, but he was black. In her searing new memoir, legendary school choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford recounts the lessons she learned as a child in the segregated south. She drew on those experiences—and the legacies handed to her by her parents and ancestors—thirty years later, when she built an army of parents to fight for school choice in our nation's capital. School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, tells the dramatic true story of how poor D.C. parents, with the support of unlikely allies, faced off against some of America's most prominent politicians—and won a better future for children.

School Choice

School Choice PDF Author: Virginia Walden Ford
Publisher: Beaufort Books
ISBN: 0825308216
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Silver Nautilus Book Award On a cold winter night in February of 1967, a large rock shattered a bedroom window in Virginia Walden Ford's home in Little Rock, Arkansas, landing in her baby sister's crib. Outside, members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her family's lawn. Faceless bigots were terrorizing Virginia, her parents, and her sisters–all because her father, Harry Fowler, dared to take a job as the assistant superintendent of personnel for the Little Rock School District. He was more than qualified, but he was black. In her searing new memoir, legendary school choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford recounts the lessons she learned as a child in the segregated south. She drew on those experiences—and the legacies handed to her by her parents and ancestors—thirty years later, when she built an army of parents to fight for school choice in our nation's capital. School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, tells the dramatic true story of how poor D.C. parents, with the support of unlikely allies, faced off against some of America's most prominent politicians—and won a better future for children.

Making Up Our Mind

Making Up Our Mind PDF Author: Sigal R. Ben-Porath
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022661963X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
If free market advocates had total control over education policy, would the shared public system of education collapse? Would school choice revitalize schooling with its innovative force? With proliferating charters and voucher schemes, would the United States finally make a dramatic break with its past and expand parental choice? Those are not only the wrong questions—they’re the wrong premises, argue philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath and historian Michael C. Johanek in Making Up Our Mind. Market-driven school choices aren’t new. They predate the republic, and for generations parents have chosen to educate their children through an evolving mix of publicly supported, private, charitable, and entrepreneurial enterprises. The question is not whether to have school choice. It is how we will regulate who has which choices in our mixed market for schooling—and what we, as a nation, hope to accomplish with that mix of choices. Looking beyond the simplistic divide between those who oppose government intervention and those who support public education, the authors make the case for a structured landscape of choice in schooling, one that protects the interests of children and of society, while also identifying key shared values on which a broadly acceptable policy could rest.

How The Other Half Learns

How The Other Half Learns PDF Author: Robert Pondiscio
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525533753
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
An inside look at America's most controversial charter schools, and the moral and political questions around public education and school choice. The promise of public education is excellence for all. But that promise has seldom been kept for low-income children of color in America. In How the Other Half Learns, teacher and education journalist Robert Pondiscio focuses on Success Academy, the network of controversial charter schools in New York City founded by Eva Moskowitz, who has created something unprecedented in American education: a way for large numbers of engaged and ambitious low-income families of color to get an education for their children that equals and even exceeds what wealthy families take for granted. Her results are astonishing, her methods unorthodox. Decades of well-intended efforts to improve our schools and close the "achievement gap" have set equity and excellence at war with each other: If you are wealthy, with the means to pay private school tuition or move to an affluent community, you can get your child into an excellent school. But if you are poor and black or brown, you have to settle for "equity" and a lecture--about fairness. About the need to be patient. And about how school choice for you only damages public schools for everyone else. Thousands of parents have chosen Success Academy, and thousands more sit on waiting lists to get in. But Moskowitz herself admits Success Academy "is not for everyone," and this raises uncomfortable questions we'd rather not ask, let alone answer: What if the price of giving a first-rate education to children least likely to receive it means acknowledging that you can't do it for everyone? What if some problems are just too hard for schools alone to solve?

Not as Good as You Think

Not as Good as You Think PDF Author: Lance T. Izumi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781934276068
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Parents know how important good schools are when they are deciding where to buy a new house. That's why they are willing to stretch their budget for a home near a "good" school. But they should not be fooled by the tree-lined streets and expensive real estate - the neighborhood schools may not be as good as they think, according to the findings in Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice. The book takes readers on a driving tour of some of California's best neighborhoods and supposedly some of its best schools. Many parents have found out the hard way that despite what they have been told about their neighborhood schools, many of these students are not performing at grade level, let alone ready for college.

Exploring the School Choice Universe

Exploring the School Choice Universe PDF Author: Kevin G. Welner
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1623960452
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations gives readers a comprehensive, complete picture of choice policies and issues. In doing so, it offers cross-cutting insights that are obscured when one looks only at single issue or a single approach to choice. The book examines choice in its various forms: charter schools, home schooling, online schooling, voucher plans that allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools, tuition tax credit plans that provide a public subsidy for private school tuition, and magnet schools and other forms of public school intra- and interdistrict choice. It brings together some of the top researchers in the field, presenting a comprehensive overview of the best current knowledge of these important policies. The questions addressed in Exploring the School Choice Universe are of most importance to researchers and policy makers. What do choice programs actually do? What forms do they take? Who participates, and why? What are the funding implications? What are the results of different forms of school choice on outcomes that matter, like student performance, segregation, and competition effects? Do they affect teachers’ working conditions? Do they drive innovation? The contents of this book offer reason to believe that choice policies can further some educational goals. But they also suggest many reasons for caution. If choice policies are to be evidence-based, a re-examination is in order. The information, insights and recommendations facilitate a more nuanced understanding of school choice and provide the basis for designing sensible school choice reforms that can pursue a range of desirable outcomes.

School Choice

School Choice PDF Author: Herbert J. Walberg
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1933995041
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
School Choice: The Findings is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey available, summarizing the research on charter schools, vouchers, and public versus private school effectiveness, from one of the country's most distinguished education scholars. The focus is on rigorous studies' those using randomized control groups (as in medical research), those that monitor achievement changes over time, and those based on large numbers of students.

Break These Chains

Break These Chains PDF Author: Daniel McGroarty
Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
ISBN:
Category : Current Events
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Frustrated and angry that their children are not getting the solid education their tax dollars should provide, parents everywhere have lost faith in the public school system. A testimony to this frustration, low-income parents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, seized their district's school choice initiative and used it to renounce public education, demanding the right to send their children to successful schools where learning counts. "A story that must be told. . . . Wonderfully told." -- Ben J. Wattenberg, author of "Values Matter Most "Break These Chains is a street-level account of Milwaukee's school-choice program, the first such publicly funded program in the United States. Daniel McGroarty details the battle of these inner-city parents fighting to free their children from a failing public education system. The reader goes inside the classrooms and courtrooms, down the hallways of bureaucracies, and right into the middle of political and personal power struggles. "Break These Chains is the story of individuals who, despite relentless opposition from teachers' unions, school boards, and local politicians, demanded the right to send their children to good schools and won. In detailed, heart-wrenching accounts, McGroarty illustrates what can happen when low-income parents fight institutionalized poverty. This book shows how school choice can work effectively, offering parents an alternative to the public schools assigned to them and hope for those trapped in a stagnant system. "Break These Chains demonstrates how school choice is a revolution for education in America.

Teach Truth to Power

Teach Truth to Power PDF Author: David R. Garcia
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262367610
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
How academics and researchers can influence education policy: putting research in a policy context, finding unexpected allies, interacting with politicians, and more. Scholarly books and journal articles routinely close with policy recommendations. Yet these recommendations rarely reach politicians. How can academics engage more effectively in the policy process? In Teach Truth to Power, David Garcia offers a how-to guide for scholars and researchers who want to influence education policy, explaining strategies for putting research in a policy context, getting “in the room” where policy happens, finding unexpected allies, interacting with politicians, and more. Countering conventional wisdom about research utilization (also referred to as knowledge mobilization), Garcia explains that engaging in education policy is not a science, it is a craft—a combination of acquired knowledge and intuition that must be learned through practice. Engaging in policy is an interpersonal process; academics who hope to influence policy have to get face-to-face with the politicians who create policy. Garcia’s experience as trusted insider, researcher, and political candidate make him uniquely qualified to offer a roadmap that connects research to policy. He explains that academics can leverage their content expertise to build relationships with politicians (even before they are politicians); demonstrates the effectiveness of the research one-pager; and shows how academics can teach politicians to be champions of research.

The Economics of School Choice

The Economics of School Choice PDF Author: Caroline M. Hoxby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226355349
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared school voucher programs constitutional, the many unanswered questions concerning the potential effects of school choice will become especially pressing. Contributors to this volume draw on state-of-the-art economic methods to answer some of these questions, investigating the ways in which school choice affects a wide range of issues. Combining the results of empirical research with analyses of the basic economic forces underlying local education markets, The Economics of School Choice presents evidence concerning the impact of school choice on student achievement, school productivity, teachers, and special education. It also tackles difficult questions such as whether school choice affects where people decide to live and how choice can be integrated into a system of school financing that gives children from different backgrounds equal access to resources. Contributors discuss the latest findings on Florida's school choice program as well as voucher programs and charter schools in several other states. The resulting volume not only reveals the promise of school choice, but examines its pitfalls as well, showing how programs can be designed that exploit the idea's potential but avoid its worst effects. With school choice programs gradually becoming both more possible and more popular, this book stands out as an essential exploration of the effects such programs will have, and a necessary resource for anyone interested in the idea of school choice.

Our School

Our School PDF Author: Sam Chaltain
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807772887
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Almost every major American city is experimenting with school choice—a deeply controversial idea that is dramatically reshaping public education. Will the wider array of school options help parents and educators identify better strategies for helping all children learn? Or will the high stakes of the marketplace end up privatizing this most public of institutions? Education activist Sam Chaltain believes that before we can answer these questions, we must put a human face on the modern landscape of teaching and learning. Our School documents a year in the life of two schools in the nation’s capital—one a new charter school just opening its doors, the other a neighborhood school that first opened in 1924. Chaltain weaves together the observations and emotions of the people whose lives intersect there, and the triumphs and the challenges they experience. The result is an unsettling, complex portrayal of American public education. Our School is important reading for educational policymakers, administrators, parents, the media, and anyone who aspires to be a teacher. Book Features: Specific recommendations for creating a healthy, high-functioning school. A detailed account of what school choice actually looks and feels like to the people who experience it. A vivid description of the modern classroom and what it’s really like to teach in public school. An important focus on the humanity of teachers (their personal histories, their reasons for entering the profession, their day-to-day challenges). An intimate look at the inner lives of children (their biggest fears and needs, their moments of triumph and understanding). Sam Chaltain is a national educator and organizational change consultant based in Washington, DC. He was the National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project. Visit his blog at samchaltain.com. “What Our School shows with passion and precision is that education is about real people leading real lives in real places. If school doesn’t engage them, it doesn’t work, no matter what the accountants and policymakers may say. That’s what this book is really about and why it’s so important for anyone who genuinely cares about schools, communities, and their children.” —From the Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned author and educator “This is an important book. Our School is vibrant and alive. Sam Chaltain’s keen insights and warm, readable prose invite readers to experience the complex, challenging, often frustrating, and occasionally triumphant lives of four caring teachers and their students. I urge you to accept the invitation.” —John Merrow, education correspondent, PBS NewsHour, and president and executive producer, Learning Matters , Inc. “Sam Chaltain is one of the most important voices in public education today, and he writes wonderfully well. In Our School, Sam puts a human face on urban education, showing us what it’s like to be a teacher, student, or parent in the Brave New World of school choice. Parents, educators, and policymakers should read this book. The result will be a more informed and creative conversation about what public education ought to be, and how to make it that way.” —Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, The Courage to Teach, and Let Your Life Speak