A heartfelt and ambitious look at education reform hampered by methodology limitations.
A work offers a critical evaluation of the shortcomings of public schools in the United States.
In this education policy book, Kugushev (Immigrants in Their Own Voice, 2012, etc.) compares attributes of successful and unsuccessful high schools around the country in an effort to identify the factors that contribute to college and career readiness and to suggest winning strategies. The author sees a lack of parental involvement and a culture that places a low value on intellectual development as the key factors limiting student achievement (“At a mass level, our culture is rooted in earlier times and acquiesces to educational mediocrity without giving it much thought”). The volume divides schools into “nimble mouses” and “ponderous elephants,” using the animal metaphors to highlight common characteristics. After capsule descriptions of several dozen schools in each category, Kugushev moves to solutions, offering proposals for improved teacher training, increased professionalization, expanded parental outreach, and reallocation of funding. Recommendations include a de-emphasis on or elimination of athletic programs, training parents to be effective partners in their children’s education, and expanding and enhancing guidance counseling. The book’s analysis of school qualities is somewhat limited: Kugushev uses Advanced Placement tests as a proxy for college readiness, with no mention of actual college entrance rates, and conclusions drawn from school websites about parental involvement and local culture stretch credibility (“McClymonds’s meaningless website signals the utter hopelessness of some inner-city environments). In addition, broader issues are ignored (“absence of parental engagement” is blamed for low performance in Flint, Michigan, while the city’s ongoing water crisis makes no appearance). The author includes schools’ racial statistics “with great reluctance,” and the hesitancy shows in the lack of engagement with the history of discrimination in public education and in clumsy language (“Why, in a mainstream white community, do only one-third take readiness tests?”; “Uninvolved, low-income black parents presumably define truly poor schools”). There is also no discussion of the impact of special education, with its substantial effect on both policy and funding.
A heartfelt and ambitious look at education reform hampered by methodology limitations.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5397-8515-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A nifty case study of the tangled trail—from policy idea to law—of the bill that established the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, the program known as AmeriCorps. Waldman, a national correspondent for Newsweek, decided to adapt the magazine's ``inside story'' approach to presidential races and apply it to an examination of one campaign promise. He chose national service because he thought it typified Clinton's vision and tested his ``expansive idealism and aggressive pragmatism.'' Waldman's thorough narrative of the un-pretty process profiles policy aides, lobbyists, and bureaucrats to show how pressure and politics, more than logic, shaped the final bill. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council (which Clinton helped found) had long advocated a required national service that would be a civilian analogue of the military draft. But candidate Clinton sugared the plan by proposing a service corps made up of volunteers who would receive college-tuition aid. The mix of service and reward, of community obligation and governmental activism, stirred campaign audiences, but the proposal got little scrutiny. Clinton wanted a $9.4 billion program over five years, but he ended up with a $1.5 billion program over three years after the bill went through a Mixmaster of interests, including banks, students, unions, and veterans. Congressional debate, the author notes, focused on whether loans should be directed through universities rather than on the more complex issue of how long students should make percentage-of-income repayments. Nor was another vital Clinton interest—the role of national service in fostering diversity- -debated. Waldman deplores the follies involved but still finds the proposal a rare, even noble, federal endeavor. A more lively tale of early Clintonism than some of the recent overviews.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-85300-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A searing response to the pseudo-science on the connection between race and intelligence put forth in the best-selling The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein (not reviewed). An impressive array of intellectuals address different aspects of the fiery debates that have taken place around the book. In an essay entitled ``Curveball,'' Stephen Jay Gould argues that the social Darwinism theory that Herrnstein and Murray construct lacks scientific documentation and fails because of its shaky premises. Gould also points out that any theory about racial differences in IQ will always be fallacious until there is truly equal opportunity. Howard Gardner makes the point that the theories to which Herrnstein and Murray give so much weight have been used as a justification of racial oppression for hundreds of years. This leads to a powerful discussion that goes beyond the question of why The Bell Curve to the question, Why now? Gardner links the weak scientific argument of the book to its powerful policy analysis of programs such as welfare that are often cloaked in racial issues. Not all of the essays here come down against the book. Thomas Sowell calls it ``a very sober, very thorough and very honest book.'' Sowell posits that too often discussions about race are so overtaken by passion that reason cannot enter the debate. He takes the science of The Bell Curve seriously and says the problem is not in the book itself, but in an environment that cannot sustain intellectual discussions about ``touchy social issues.'' The theories of The Bell Curve are really so flat, so weak that they are easy to dispute. What the writers in this book do is take the ideas and flesh them out with history, science, and rigorous questioning. It seems that the true meat of thought is here and not in the book they are responding to.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-00693-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
