San Antonio College Library

Since the early 1990s, the federal role in education - exemplified by the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) - has expanded dramatically. Yet states and localities have retained a central role in education policy, leading to a growing struggle for control over the direction of the nation's schools. In An Education in Politics, Jesse H. Rhodes explains the uneven development of federal involvement in education. While supporters of expanded...

"A political history of the debate over preschool education policy in the United States. In the United States, preschool education is characterized by the dominance of a variegated private sector and patchy, uncoordinated oversight of the public sector. Tracing the history of the American debate over preschool education, the author argues that the current state of decentralization and fragmentation is the consequence of a chain of reactions and counterreactions...

In this book takes a look at school reform since the launch of Sputnik. The authors scrutinize school reform events, proposals, and policies from the last 60 years through the lens of critical social theory and examine the ongoing tensions between the need to keep a vibrant unitary system of public education and the ongoing assault by corporate and elite interests in creating a dual system. Some of events, proposals, and policies critiqued include...

How can we "fix" our schools? Improve graduation rates in college? What works? These are questions that make the headlines and vex policy makers, practitioners, and educational researchers. While they strive to improve society, there are frequently gulfs of mutual incomprehension among them. Academics, longing for more influence, may wrongly fault irrationality, ideology, or ignorance for the failure of research to inform policy and practice more...

The letters in this volume reflect citizens' views on the strengths and weaknesses of public education in America, including what to change about the system and what should stay the same.

Publisher's description: This book brings to light fascinating details about the real cost of public education--one of America's biggest industries. It demonstrates that government statistics on the costs of public education substantially understate the actual costs to taxpayers. The phasing in of new and more accurate reporting requirements by 2006 will help in determining the real cost of public education. Controversy over the new reporting requirements...

"From the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, "whistleblower extraordinaire" (The Wall Street Journal), one of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States, author of the best-selling The Death and Life of the Great American School System; The Language Police ("Impassioned ... Fiercely argued ... Every bit as alarming as it is illuminating"--The New York Times); and the now-classic Great School...