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Store: An Independent Institute Book
SCHOOL CHOICES
True and False
By
John D. Merrifield
The school choice movement has gained political momentum in recent years, with programs having been established in Milwaukee, Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. But today’s programs are nothing like the “free market in education” proposed four decades ago by the early proponents of school choice.
Economist John Merrifield shows that the “school choice” movement has become mired in false alternatives, petty distinctions, and diminished vision. Yet, he argues that programs providing real educational choices must not be allowed to fail like so many government programs—a freely competitive market for education must remain the ultimate goal. School Choices: True and False charts a course for the achievement of this goal.
Detailed Summary |
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Where We Stand—The Achievement Deficit and its Causes
Chapter 3: Problems of the Reform Debate
Chapter 4: Problems with Current Voucher and Choice Reforms
Chapter 5: What Side-Tracked The School Choice Movement?
Chapter 6: Loose Lips Sink Causes
Chapter 7: Getting There—Back Up, then Move Forward
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Index
Praise for School Choices “Professor Merrifield asks this question: what is meant by and what is the intended consequence of reforms bearing such labels as vouchers, school choice, charter schools, privatization, and competition? This book brilliantly and clearly exposes the superficiality and extraordinary fuzziness of those labels.”
—SEYMOUR B. SARASON, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Yale University
“In School Choices, Merrifield has produced a scholarly call-to-arms...deserves serious consideration by the strategists of the choice movement.”
—ERIC A. HANUSHEK, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
“It is always important to subject movements to re-evaluation, so School Choices: True and False is a useful publication . . . This monograph reminds us of the ultimate goal, which is universal choice. This is a valuable contribution.”
—CLINT BOLICK, Vice President, Institute for Justice
“Creating an authentic market is one necessary condition of ending the servitude of the working class and the poor to the government schools. . . . As Professor Merrifield well knows, the integrity of the family and its contractual authority over curriculum and method are foundational objects that will require prudence in selection of policy measures. So understood and domesticated, his book, School Choices, is an important and very timely contribution.”
—JOHN E. COONS, Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley
“School Choices is a provocative and first rate analysis of how the school choice idea has been dumbed down and what it will take to develop the critical elements of a competitive education industry.”
—BRUNO V. MANNO, former Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy and Planning, U.S. Department of Education and former Director of Planning for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement
About the Author John Merrifield is an associate professor of economics at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and a Senior Research Associate at the Education Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.
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