"Giving inner-city children a chance at better education is the best way to break the poverty cycle. The essays in this book make a powerful case for educational choice."
-Clint Bolick, Landmark Center for Civil Rights
American schools are in trouble, and inner-city students suffer the most. Despite ever-increasing funding for education, test scores have been falling since 1963, and today it is virtually impossible to get a decent education in an inner-city public school. There are, however, a few rays of hope--from research on what makes a good school to structural reforms that would give more students access to good schools.
In this thought-provoking book, 11 scholars and educators discuss the decline in the quality of urban education and offer alternative strategies for teaching America's youth. David Boaz offers a comprehensive analysis of the failure of government schools and the case for educational choice. William A. Niskanen speaks out against repeated government excuses for failed education reform programs. Bonita Brodt reports from the front lines. After months observing an inner-city public elementary school in Chicago, she concludes that "we are at risk of losing an entire generation of children to the culture of poverty." Schools should be accountable to students, parents, and teachers, not to bureaucrats, politicians, and interest groups, argue John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe in an encyclopedic set of questions and answers about choice programs. The goal of every essay in this volume is to return quality education to American classrooms.
David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute.
This book contains the papers presented at a Cato Institute conference on November 2, 1989.
1990/ c. 220 pp./$25.95 cloth ISBN: 0-932790-82-8/$13.95 paper ISBN: 0-932790-83-6
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