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When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Talereviewed by Dorothy Shipps - 2001 Title: When Schools Compete: A Cautionary Tale Author(s): Edward B. Fiske and Helen F. Ladd Publisher: Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. ISBN: 0815728360, Pages: 320, Year: 2000 Search for book at Amazon.com "Choice" and "decentralization" are two
popular solutions to the problems of urban education widely
promoted in recent decades. Along with "accountability" and
"standards," they form the core of our contemporary reform
rhetoric. Yet, too often, their invocation has more symbolic than
substantive meaning. Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd have found
substantive bedrock under these concepts. They have written a
clear-headed, compelling and skillful analysis of New
Zealand’s recent experience with school choice and
decentralization. And, although they never directly address it, the
implications of their study have much to say about the issue of
accountability. Their book should be this summer’s required
reading for every education policy maker in the United States.
When Schools Compete follows in a long tradition of
looking abroad for guidance about our own school reform efforts.
Fiske and Ladd sought out New Zealand in 1998 because its
experiment with parent governance, combined with nation-wide open
enrollment and school competition, was a "laboratory" in which to
study how "self-governing schools operate in a competitive
environment... (preview truncated at 150 words.)To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropriate membership. Please review your options below:
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- Dorothy Shipps
Teachers College, Columbia University E-mail Author Dorothy Shipps is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University currently researching the nexus of business, politics and school reform in Chicago. She is co-editor with Larry Cuban of Reconstructing the Common Good in Education: Coping with Intractable American Dilemmas, (Stanford University Press June, 2000) and lead author of "The Politics of Urban School Reform: Legitimacy, City Growth and School Improvement in Chicago" with Joseph Kahne and Mark Smylie (Educational Policy, 1999).
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