Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
"No Size Fits All" is a book that will break the public policy deadlock over federal education standards in the United States. American debates about education policy are focused at the moment on two big policy disputes.
The first big dispute concerns the Common Core testing standards, which force American students into a dreary routine that makes millions of children hate school for no good reason. The second big dispute concerns the proposal of Education Secretary Betsy De Vos to siphon federal public school funding into "vouchers" that parents could use to send their children to private schools. Critics complain that this proposal is inherently a threat to the hard-won right to a tuition-free public education at the elementary and secondary levels.
The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform that its critics condemn as subversive. "No Size Fits All" interrupts this all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative--one that could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education policy.
Synopsis
"No Size Fits All" is a book whose time has come--a book that offers a proposal that could revolutionize public school policies in the United States at the federal, state and local levels. The book calls upon Congress to require all public school systems that benefit from federal funding to offer parents and children a choice of alternative schools, exempt from the broadly unpopular Common Core testing regime, some of which would use the time-tested Montessori, Waldorf and Sudbury methods to give American students more freedom in determining what they study and when. The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform--vouchers, as proposed by Betsy De Vos--that its critics condemn as subversive. No Size Fits All interrupts this all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative--one that could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education policy.
Synopsis
"No Size Fits All" makes the current all-or-nothing debates over public school policy pass by offering a bold and novel "third way" that could revolutionize American education.