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The debate over public schools has become highly politicized, featuring movements dedicated to privatizing public schools and diminishing teacher professionalism. People who had long treasured their local public schools are now being told that our nation's schools are "failing," that we are not preparing children for "the global economy." Many of these purveyors of doom and gloom are working to disrupt public schools and have created their own purposely deceptive vocabulary to assist their effor...

Education has the potential to open incredible doors of opportunity for students. Yet despite unprecedented levels of public school funding and numerous reforms, far too many young people in America's school system today never enjoy the opportunities afforded to students by a quality education. In Education and Opportunity, Michael McShane proposes a market-based approach to education-one that fosters innovation and encourages competition, through charter schools, education savings accounts, an...

In his new book, Zachary W. Oberfield investigates the question of whether charter schools cultivate different teaching climates from those found in traditional public schools. To answer this question, Oberfield examined hundreds of thousands of teacher surveys from across the nation. The result is a trenchant analysis that deepens our understanding of what the charter experiment means for the future of US public education. Are Charters Different? shows that the teaching climates of charter and...

Charter Schools at the Crossroads offers a frank and nuanced analysis of the successes and shortcomings of the charter movement, and outlines possible directions for the future. Few observers present at the creation of the first charter schools a quarter-century ago could have predicted how rapidly this movement would spread or how thoroughly it would come to dominate the education reform agenda. And few recent debates in education have been as highly charged as those over charter schools' roles...

Moving beyond the debate over whether or not charter schools should exist, A Smarter Charter wrestles with the question of what kind of charter schools we should encourage. The authors begin by tracing the evolution of charter schools from Albert Shanker's original vision of giving teachers room to innovate while educating a diverse population of students, to today's charter schools where student segregation levels are even higher than in traditional public schools. In the second half of the boo...

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 some...

In this provocative volume, Amy Stuart Wells and her co-authors provide evidence that the laissez-faire policies of charter school reform often exacerbate existing inequalities in our schools. Providing the most comprehensive, critical review of charter schools to date, this timely volume is based on the authors' in-depth study of 10 urban, suburban, and rural school districts and 17 diverse charter schools in California, plus their analysis of other charter school studies from around the countr...

"In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School Distric...

For more than a decade, school choice has been a flashpoint in debates about our nation's schooling. Perhaps the most commonly advanced argument for school choice is the notion that markets will force public schools to improve, particularly in those urban areas where improvement has proved so elusive. However, the question of how public schools respond to market conditions has received surprisingly little attention. Revolution at the Margins examines the impact of school vouchers and charter sch...

Inside Full-Service Community Schools combines the on-site knowledge of school principal Sue Maguire, who has created a model full-service community school, with the deep experience and understanding of research-advocate Joy Dryfoos, who has tracked the development of these school transformation models across the country. The result is a highly practical, real-world guide with a unique local--national perspective. Topics include: - Getting started - Providing a range of services - Staffing:...