Children as Pawns: The Politics of Educational Reform
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Book Overview
Head Start. Bilingual education. Small class size. Social promotion. School funding. Virtually every school system in America has had to face these issues over the past thirty years. Advocates and dissenters have declared confidently that "the research" is on their side. But is it?
In the first book to bring together the recent history of educational policy and politics with the research evidence, Timothy Hacsi presents the illuminating, often-forgotten stories of these five controversial topics. He sifts through the complicated evaluation research literature and compares the policies that have been adopted to the best evidence about what actually works. He lucidly explains what the major studies show, what they don't, and how they have been misunderstood and misrepresented. Hacsi shows how rarely educational policies are based on solid research evidence, and how programs that sound plausible simply do not satisfy the complex needs of real children.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0674012496
ISBN13:9780674012493
Release Date:September 2003
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Length:272 Pages
Weight:0.90 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 5.6" x 9.8"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
An Educational Reform Primer
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
Political leaders are not using evaluation evidence as a leading determinant in selecting educational policies, and we need to better evaluate school reform measures to intelligently apply our less-than-infinite school funding resources to improve our schools. Mr. Hacsi, with lucid writing and great intellect, lays out his primary arguments. In his well reasoned introduction and conclusion he states that most of the studies of existing programs are inconclusive or provide conflicting evidence. He asserts that advocates and opponents of education reform initiatives often misuse the available program evaluation information to support their positions. He then reviews five highly-controversial educational issues, Head Start, bilingual education, class size, social promotion, and public funding of education. For each of these he summarizes the positions of the proponents and opponents, reviews the evaluations that were done on each, the quality and reliability of these evaluations, and provides a brief history. All of this is done in an even-handed manner, and conclusions about particular issues are left to the reader.
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