Education - Philosophy & Social Aspects, Educational Funding, Educational Reform, Multicultural Education, Ethnic & Minority Studies - Education, Education Policies, Privatization & Educational Vouchers, Educational Finance

Responsive Schools, Renewed Communities

Name: Responsive Schools, Renewed Communities
Author: Clifford W. Cobb
ISBN: 9781558152052

by Clifford W. Cobb

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Overview

Choice in education is an issue of community empowerment. As Clifford W. Cobb demonstrates in this persuasive look at school choice, the most effective schools are those founded in a community of parents, students, and teachers working together toward shared goals. Cobb maintains that this kind of mutually supportive organization is essential to rescue not only our children's education but also the communities that protect us from the increasing domination of our lives by large, bureaucratic institutions. We must begin, he believes, to trust parents to choose the schools that best serve their needs and the needs of their children - or to start their own schools if they have to. This book makes a convincing case that the best way to achieve meaningful choice is through a system of enrollment vouchers used in conjunction with deregulation of public schools. Cobb explains why watered-down plans restricting choice to state-controlled schools are sure to fail. Reform must be complete. In the system he proposes, vouchers would be distributed to families for all children of school age and could be redeemed at either public or nonpublic schools of those families' choice. At the same time, public schools would be allowed to operate as effectively as nonpublic schools, free of the dead hand of bureaucracy. This volume presents a wealth of evidence in support of vouchers, describing programs in the United States as well as voucher-like systems in other countries. The author recounts the success of a voucher system for higher education (the GI Bill) and cites functioning voucher programs for housing and daycare. He establishes that the contest surrounding vouchers is incorrectly seen as a struggle over public or private control of education. Instead, the political dialogue should be concerned with whether democracy is more likely to thrive where there is diversity fostered by choices. If we blot out the distinctive features of subgroups within the United States, Cobb warns