4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Should be required reading for legislators, June 30, 2009
This book is a very thoughtful and detailed analysis of the nation's school funding woes. In addition to offering a compelling critique of the manner in which educational dollars have been unthinkly pumped into the educational system (with scant attention to the return on investment), the authors lay out suggested reforms that could help us get more bang for our collective buck.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes sense of chaotic reform efforts, December 28, 2009
Coherence emerges from this thoughtful synthesis of reform initiatives that have come from lawyers, legislators, economists, activists and school district leaders. The author has been both a watchful observer, and in some cases, an involved participant. This gives him the benefit of both the insider's view and the outsider's perspective. The perfect book for anyone who cares to better understand the forces at work when educators, legislators and lawyers wrestle over school funding. The author is free of the ideological blinders that have hindered the debate.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Schoolhouses.... the complete source, September 14, 2009
The book Schoolhouses... is not an exercise in cheerleading for one of the many partisan agendas in the national debate over reforming and improving American public education. Instead, it is a dispassionate and widely inclusive assembly of fact and research, which informs that debate more fully by far than any of the numerous advocates who do carry an agenda.
As a one-time senior educator and current worrier about the future of my grandchildren and their peers, I find this the most informative and specifically constructive book, or source of any kind, I have yet encountered.
We have here facts from areas often overlooked but directly pertinent. "Fixing" our public education has been going on for several decades, so Hanushek and Lindseth are able to consider the results of policies set by political leaderships, by legislators and by judicial fiats. Lessons, both positive and negative, abound and are described.
Despite the public flurry over the years, however, the authors lament the paucity of detailed data that reveal what is happening with the growth of each child's intellectual strengths in the classroom. The data that do exist are sufficient to show that all the efforts taken, funds spent, and angst over education have brought us little or no improvement. And the authors make a persuasive case for predicting the impact on our economy and its future growth.
Meanwhile, as the US has flatlined the quality of our children's education and therefore their future for many decades, the majority of the industrialized world has passed us up.
The evidence assembled by Hanushek and Lindseth points a clear route out of stagnation. By page 218, we are led to "Guiding Principles: Back to Basics", a set of actions based on knowing what happens in each classroom to each student.
Every reviewer is obliged to include a telling quote. This is mine: after setting out their "Guiding Principles", the authors write "The proverbial Martian...presented with this list might say, `And you had to write a book about this?' Our answer: `Unfortunately, yes.' " The authors go on to say, "...the historic response has been `Yes, we see the logic in the arguments, but it really is hard.' Thus, it has been much easier to keep the general structure of current policy and finance and concentrate efforts on deepening and reinforcing existing incentives and operations. Easier, but mostly ineffective."
Schoolhouses... should be open on the desk - not the shelf - of every individual who has a role in and seeks to improve any slice of American public education, small or large.
Brad Hosmer
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
