School Choice: Why You Need It--how You Get itSchool choice is the hottest and most controversial idea in educational reform today. As dissatisfaction with the public schools continues to grow, more and more people are turning to choice to provide real reform. Milwaukee has implemented a voucher plan that gives low-income students state-funded vouchers to attend inner-city private schools, and Wisconsin state representative Polly Williams and Mayor John Norquist, both Democrats, are pushing to widen the program. In Minnesota, 15 percent of the state's public school students participate in choice programs, and 11 states now have state-wide public school choice. School choice has also been on the ballot in Colorado as well as California. The author, David Hanger, explains why the public schools no longer work, why they resist reform, and why choice is the reform that will work. He also gives us the inside story of California's pioneering 1993 Parental Choice in Education initiative and the education establishment's successful $16-million campaign to defeat it. Hanger explains how other states can adapt the initiative to their needs and what lessons can be learned from its defeat. For taxpayers concerned about rising costs, for employers and educators concerned about school quality, and especially for parents concerned about their children's future, School Choice is must reading. |
Contents
Centralization and the Decline of Everything | 49 |
Independent School Performance | 67 |
Objections and Answers | 103 |
The Attack | 129 |
Postmortem | 147 |
Why Choice Works | 161 |
Making It Happen | 177 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 189 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
academic administrators American Association attend average ballot Bill Bill Bennett budget bureaucratic California campaign Catholic school Cato Institute child Choice in Education choose Chubb and Moe church-sponsored classroom competition condoms cost David Boaz dent educa education establishment Education Initiative educrats employees enrollment EXCEL funding government school students government school system grade high school improvement independent school students Inner City John Taylor Gatto kids LAUSD learning legislature Marcus Garvey math ment school million Milton Friedman Milwaukee NAEP National October October 25 opponents Orange County edition Parental Choice pendent school percent political poll Polly Williams poor private schools proposal Proposition 174 Proposition 98 regulation reports requirements says scholarship-redeeming school school boards school choice School Vouchers scores Section spending statewide superintendent taxpayers teachers unions teaching tests Thomas Sowell tion tuition vouchers U.S. Department Unified School District vote voters voucher initiative Wall Street Journal writes
Popular passages
Page 9 - States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.
Page 4 - You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.