by Herbert J. Walberg
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Product Description
School Choice: The Findings is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey available summarizing the research on charter schools, vouchers, and public versus private school effectiveness. The focus is on rigorous studies - those using randomized control groups (as in medical research), those that monitor achievement changes over time, and those based on large numbers of students. The findings reviewed here go beyond academic achievement, covering students' civic engagement, cost comparisons across school types, and public and parental opinion about schools and school choice. The consensus of this research overwhelmingly favors competition and parental choice in education.
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Average Customer Review:
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Short, concise, well-written summary of the evidence, 2008-01-17
In this book, one of America's most experienced scholars on education gives an objective review of the evidence on school choice. In a slim volume that comes in at just over 100 pages, he surveys and summarizes the evidence. What is shows is: (1) America's public schools are remarkably bad, we both spend more and get less than nearly any other advanced nation; and (2) every form of choice (charter schools and vouchers) consistently improves the performance of schools.
There are, of course, those who contest this conclusion. The teacher's unions have commissioned a number of studies which try to prove that charter schools and vouchers are no good. As Walberg discusses, these studies are deeply flawed. They either pick only a very small and unrepresentative sample, and/or they look only at how the school compares to the national average, not how much they have improved. Most charters or vouchers draw upon children from the worst schools, so they come into them doing very badly. Thus, even if the choice schools greatly improve their performance -- as they often do -- their performance may still lag behind the national average.
This study confirms what common sense suggests. Our present, overly-bureaucratic public schools are nightmares. The single best way to reform them is to give parents choice, either through having more charter schools, or, even better, through vouchers.
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