School Choice Hoax: Fixing America's Schools

According to Corwin (sociology, The Ohio State U.) and Schneider (National Policy Board for Educational Administration), current arguments for existing forms of charter school and school vouchers contain "torrents of irresponsible half truths" that obscure the fact that many charter schools are fraudulent, marginal, and inept and that many of their most outstanding features are already found in public school districts in the form of specialized schools, magnets, school-based management, small schools, and other special programs. In addition to reviewing the evidence exposing the fraudulence of charter school advocate arguments, they do believe that there is enough good in charter school models to make them worth fixing. They therefore offer a number of proposals for improving charter schools, incorporating such models as open enrollment, small high schools, Boston's Pilot Schools, school-based management, and the Coalition of Essential Schools, and discus ways that public school districts can plan, monitor, and implement their own charters. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 2005. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ronald G. Corwin is professor emeritus of sociology at The Ohio State University. He also served as director of basic research in the U.S. Department of Education, vice president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and various elected positions in the American Sociological Research Association. Author or co-author of 15 books and two dozen contributed chapters, he also edited a series of books on educational research. His work has appeared in the American Sociological Review and other sociological journals, including Sociology of Education for which he served as an associate editor.

E. Joseph Schneider serves as distinguished senior fellow, National Policy Board for Educational Administration, Washington, D.C., and was the deputy executive director of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA). He has also served as president of Leadership Development Resources, executive secretary of the National Policy Board for Educational Administration, and the CEO of a Washington-based education association.