Customer Reviews

Charter Schools: A Descriptive Study of Empowerment within the Operation of Charter Schools

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Well, the good news is, I borrowed this book from a library so I didn't waste money on it. The bad news is, it was a complete waste of time to read.

First off, from what I can tell, this was Jefferson's dissertation for his PhD. I arrive at that conclusion because when looking at the publisher, [...]. I haven't looked into the issue further so I am not willing to bet any pertinent body parts on this, but it makes complete logical sense when reading the book. If I had known that going into the book, I would have expected something much different than what I got.

Let me summarize the book in a nutshell: There was a person who did a study of an inner-city school in Arizona - a school that used Montessori methods, was started by community members (in particular political leaders), and had a problem in the beginning with cronyism. Jefferson wanted to complete the same study, but do it on a rural school in California, and see what sort of a difference that made in how the schools turned out. The school in California was sponsored and started by the school district itself, it also used Montessori methods, and there were no problems with cronyism.

That's pretty much it. Jefferson spent a whole lot of time talking about how the first study asked this question, so he asked a question similar to it, but changed it just a bit so it read this way. It was that sort of mentality, where he was almost more focused on what the other study did and how he compared to that study, that unless you were the author of the original study, you were bored to death reading it. I kept thinking that the only person who'd want to read the book would be the original study's author. No one else would care.

He also repeated a lot. A lot. Like, a whole lot. See how annoying that is? Now imagine reading something, and then reading that same idea two pages later, with almost the same wording. And again a chapter later, again with extraordinarily close wording. It's as if he had a word count to meet, and he wasn't going to stop copying and pasting phrases until he met it. He also followed the idea of saying what you're going to say, saying it, and then saying what you just said. Complete waste of time to read.

I cannot figure out how this book garnered otherwise high ratings. Perhaps I just went into with the wrong idea in mind. If I had known it was a dissertation that was going to focus primarily on reporting results and comparing those results to another researcher's results (a research project I hadn't even heard of before picking up this book) then I would have been happy to read it, because I would have been expecting what it gave me. Instead, I went into it thinking that I was going to be reading a book that compared and contrasted the Montessori method to other methods, with lots of scientific research on why Montessori is a good program to use, and I thought I was going to be reading a lot on how the schools themselves were set up - what they did in the classrooms, what the teachers said, what the administrators said...A book more along the lines of "Making Schools Work : A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education They Need" where the researcher goes in and finds things out, and then presents an interesting and well-written account of many different schools, weaving them all together and helping me learn with every turn of the page. Since absolutely none of that happened in this case...well, I stand by my original statement: At least I didn't pay for it.

Not recommended to anyone, expect perhaps the author of the original study.

As a teacher currently working in the field, I have been contemplating going the Charter School route. I found this book to be quite useful in helping identify issues faced by Charter Schools and the people that work in them. I would highly recommend this book.

Steve Jefferson's book, Charter Schools- A Descriptive Study
of Empowerment within the Operation of Charter Schools is magnificent view of the need for charter schools in the U.S. today. As a Special Education Teacher in Los Angeles, the strategies outlined are beneficial to my students who are working below grade level. In addition, I strongly feel that today's schools must be centered around community empowerment and high expectations which were evident from the research in this book.