San Antonio College Library

Present and Past provides a critical analysis of major public school issues. The narrative is organized around problems created in the public schools by a lack of social justice in the broader society. Rather than a chronological treatment of educational history, historical incidents and case studies are used to provide perspectives on crucial issues. The author's point of view is explicit, but throughout the text, he invites challenges to his interpretation...

Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public school funding, the United States now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. Yet American students still achieve less than their foreign counterparts, their performance has been flat for decades, millions of them are failing, and poor and minority students remain far behind their more advantaged peers. In this book, the authors trace the history of reform...

In this volume, Graham offers a history of American education in the last century. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from government reports to anecdotes, Graham illustrates Americans' changing demands for our schools, and how schools have responded by providing what critics want, though never as completely or as quickly as they would like. In 1900, as waves of immigrants swept the nation, the American public wanted schools to assimilate students...

Nearly the whole of America's partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions--because...

"Traces the evolution of school-prayer battles from the early 1800s, when children were beaten or expelled for refusing to read the King James Bible, to current disputes over prayer at public-school football games ... explores the enduring tension between people of goodwill who wish the schools to promote majoritarian beliefs, and equally well-meaning (and often religious) people who deplore any government influence in religious matters."--Jacket....

This book, the second in the Twentieth Century Fund's series of studies on the privatization of public services, finds that current arguments for privatizing schools are based on wishful thinking. After examining what the actual experience has been with privatization around the country, Hard Lessons concludes that the promise of saving money and improving educational quality through privatization is, at minimum, being oversold. While this report is...

"Many Americans may believe that religion in the schools is a controversial subject only in the United States. But around the world, the subject has gained widespread notoriety, media coverage, and attention from governing bodies, school administrations, and individuals. In France, conflict erupted when a young girl wore a headscarf to her school; the government there got involved to reassert the "rule" that no outward display of religion will tolerated....

A comparative study of the spread of mass education around the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book demonstrates the gulf between the intentions of governments and the reality on the ground.

For parents, educators and policymakers, an explosive new look at public education in America that focuses on treating good teachers like the experienced professionals they are and eliminating the incompetents.