All Else Equal

Private schools always provide a better education than public schools. Or do they? Inner-city private schools, most of which are Catholic, suffer from the same problems neighboring public schools have including large class sizes, unqualified teachers, outdated curricula, lack of parental involvement and stressful family and community circumstances. Straightforward and authoritative, All Else Equal challenges us to reconsider vital policy decisions and rethink the issues facing our current educational system.

All Else Equal: Are Public and Private Schools Different?

Education & Teaching

Rothstein, Richard

Carnoy, Martin

Benveniste, Luis

Schools & Teaching

Routledge

Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, “Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality.” In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school.
Features:
<ul>
<li> A summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more. </li>
<li> A look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools “beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices.” </li>
<li> Analysis of how the over-emphasis on standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.</li>
<li> Description of rarely-noticed racial and socio-economic gaps in “non-cognitive” skills.</li>
<li> Estimates of the cost of reforms that could help narrow the achievement gap, such as including early childhood, after-school, and summer programs into a broader definition of schooling.</li>
</ul>

Class And Schools: Using Social, Economic, And Educational Reform To Close The Black-White Achievement Gap

Teachers' College Press

According to conventional wisdom, American public schools have suffered a terrible decline and are in need of dramatic reform. Today's high school students, it is alleged, display an ignorance of things that every elementary student knew a generation ago. American business leaders warn that rising illiteracy and "innumeracy" threaten our competitiveness in the global marketplace. Political scientists worry that poor schooling is undermining the very foundations of our democracy as American adults exercise their citizenship on the basis of dumbed-down sound-bites. But are things really that bad? What evidence are these criticisms based on, and does it hold up under examination? In this book, Richard Rothstein analyzes the statistical and anecdotal evidence and shows that public schools, by and large, are not falling down on the job of educating our children. To the contrary, by many measures they are doing better than in the past. Minority students have improved their test scores significantly, and overall dropout rates have fallen. Moreover, our schools educate more poor children, and more children whose native language is foreign, than ever before. Further improvement in American education, Rothstein argues, should be based on an accurate appraisal of strengths and weaknesses rather than on exaggeration. Rothstein shows in convincing detail how standardized tests comparing American students' performance today with that of the past, and with student performance internationally, frequently confuse apples with oranges. The nation's student population today is very different from that of decades ago and from the student population in other nations. As critics of public education promote private alternatives and politicians debate the value of standardized national testing, The Way We Were? is especially timely.

The Way We Were?: The Myths and Realities of America's Student Achievement (Century Foundation/Twentieth Century Fund Report)

Business & Money

Economics

The Century Foundation

Keeping Jobs in Fashion: Alternatives to the Euthanasia of the U. S.

Medical Books

Medicine

Economic Policy Inst

Can Public Schools Learn From Private Schools? reports on case studies of eight public and eight private schools, conducted to determine whether there are any identifiable and transferable private school practices that public schools can adopt in order to improve student outcomes. The evidence from interviews with teachers, administrators, and parents yields a surprising answer, one that should inform our policy debates about school choice, vouchers, public school funding, and other education issues.

Can Public Schools Learn From Private Schools: Case Studies in the Public and Private Nonprofit Sectors

Economic Policy Institute

The Color of Law brilliantly recounted how government at all levels created segregation. Just Action describes how we can begin to undo it. In the six years since its initial publication, The Color of Law, "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson), has become a landmark work, which--through its nearly one million copies sold--has helped to define the fractious age in which we live. Aware that twenty-first-century segregation continues to promote entrenched inequality, Richard Rothstein has now teamed with housing policy expert Leah Rothstein to write Just Action, a blueprint for concerned citizens and community leaders. This book describes dozens of activities that readers and supporters can undertake in their own communities to make their commitment real, producing victories that might finally challenge residential segregation and help remedy America's profoundly unconstitutional past.

Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law

Rothstein, Leah

Religion & Spirituality

Liveright

In his best-selling book The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein demolished the de facto segregation myth that black and white Americans live separately by choice, providing "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to the reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson). This landmark work--through its nearly one million copies sold--has helped to define the fractious age in which we live. The Color of Law's unrefuted account has become conventional wisdom. But how can we begin to undo segregation's damage? "It's rare for a writer to feel obligated to be so clear on solutions to the problems outlined in a previous book," writes E. J. Dionne, yet Richard Rothstein--aware that twenty-first-century segregation continues to promote entrenched inequality--has done just that, teaming with housing policy expert Leah Rothstein to write Just Action, a blueprint for concerned citizens and community leaders. As recent headlines informed us, twenty million Americans participated in racial justice demonstrations in 2020. Although many displayed "Black Lives Matter" window and lawn signs, few considered what could be done to redress inequality in their own communities. Page by page, Just Action offers programs that activists and their supporters can undertake in their own communities to address historical inequities, providing bona fide answers, based on decades of study and experience, in a nation awash with memes and internet theories. Often forced to respond to social and political outrage, banks, real estate agencies, and developers, among other institutions, have apologized for past actions. But their pledges--some of them real, others thoroughly hollow--to improve cannot compensate for existing damage. Just Action shows how community groups can press firms that imposed segregation to finally take responsibility for reversing the harm, creating victories that might finally challenge residential segregation and help remedy America's profoundly unconstitutional past.

Just Action: Creating a Movement That Can End Segregation Enacted under the Color of Law

History

Americas

One of Publishers Weekly's 10 Best Books of 2017 Longlisted for the National Book Award
This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review).
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation―the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments―that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.
As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past. 13 illustrations

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize
This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past. 13 illustrations

Norton

It seems to be a common-sense argument that, if teachers know how to teach reading, or math, or any other subject, and if schools emphasize the importance of these tasks and permit no distractions, children should be able to learn regardless of their family income or skin color. But this perspective is misleading and dangerous. It ignores how social class characteristics in a stratified society like ours influence learning in school. For nearly half a century, the association between social and economic disadvantage and the student achievement gap has been well known to economists, sociologists, and educators. Most, however, have avoided the obvious implication of this understanding, that raising the achievement of lower-class children requires that public policy address the social and economic conditions of these children’s lives, not just school reform.

Class And Schools: Using Social, Economic, And Educational Reform To Close The Black-white...

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rothstein, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rothstein, Richard

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rothstein, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

All Else Equal: Are Public and Private Schools Different?

Class And Schools: Using Social, Economic, And Educational Reform To Close The Black-White Achievement Gap

The Way We Were?: The Myths and Realities of America's Student Achievement (Century Foundation/Twentieth Century Fund Report)

Keeping Jobs in Fashion: Alternatives to the Euthanasia of the U. S.

Can Public Schools Learn From Private Schools: Case Studies in the Public and Private Nonprofit Sectors

Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law

Just Action: Creating a Movement That Can End Segregation Enacted under the Color of Law

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Class And Schools: Using Social, Economic, And Educational Reform To Close The Black-white...