Unproductive School Choice Debates

This book asserts a controversial proposition: that a system dominated by attendance-zoned, political process managed, uniformly comprehensive mega-schools (TPS) cannot adequately address unique educational needs and interests.

The book explains why we desperately need an “Open Education Industry.” It clearly defines the term, and the confusion about what can/should be done to improve schooling outcomes, and why over 30 years of efforts to improve schooling outcomes has left all 51 US school systems far short of what is needed to engage all schoolchildren in high value instruction. Because of past education failures, especially poor basic literacy in economic systems, many influential academics and activists have asserted the presence of adequate market forces where key elements of high-performing markets are absent, and have become pre-occupied with discussion of, and development of, devastating inappropriate generalizations about findings from studies of narrowly-targeted, restriction-laden expansions of access to alternatives to traditional public schools. The book compares those to transformational school choice expansions, and describes key steps towards the inertia that threatens the future or America as a prosperous and free republic.

Foreword by Terry Moe

Preface: Still a ‘Nation at Risk’

Memorial to Seymour Sarason

Part I: Key Underlying Factors

Introduction

1. Elements of an Open Education Industry
2. Hyped Experiments in Near Irrelevance
3. Chartered Public Schools – Mostly Chance, Not Choice

Part II: Issues in the Debate Over Parental Choice Expansion

4. Fallacies About School Choice
5. Government Regulation Issues
6. The Neglect of Costs
7. Fund Children or Institutions?
8. Federal, State, and Local Roles and Perspectives
9. Equity and Equality
10. Diversity Issues

11. Important Policy Choices
12. Strategic and Tactical Mistakes

13. Teachers

14. Outlook and Political Strategy

Bibliography

Index