The American Dream and the Public Schools

The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual education, and ability grouping. While these are all separate problems, much of the contention over them comes down to the same thing--an apparent conflict between policies designed to promote each student's ability to succeed and those designed to insure the good of all students or the nation as a whole. The authors show how policies to promote individual success too often benefit only those already privileged by race or class, and often conflict with policies that are intended to benefit everyone. They propose a framework that builds on our nation's rapidly changing population in order to help Americans get past acrimonious debates about schooling. Their goal is to make public education work better so that all children can succeed.

• Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach (Applied Social Research Methods)
• Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation, 4th Edition
• The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession
• Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools
• School: The Story of American Public Education
• The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
• White Teacher
• The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change
• Making Rights Real: Activists, Bureaucrats, and the Creation of the Legalistic State (Chicago Series in Law and Society)
• How Policy Shapes Politics: Rights, Courts, Litigation, and the Struggle Over Injury Compensation (Studies in Postwar American Political Development)