School Reform: The Critical Issues
By Pamela A. Riley, Lance T. Izumi and Williamson M. Evers

This book was added to the web site on June 27, 2006.

This book explores a wide range of critical areas in education, examines the basic nature of our education problems, provides a clear understanding of underperformance, and proposes reasonable and effective strategies for success.

Please visit the Hoover Press web site for more information on this book or to place an order:
http://www.hooverpress.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=945

Full-text PDF versions of each chapter can be accessed below by clicking on the desired chapter title. (PDF files require Adobe Reader. If you do not already have this software installed, click here to download it for free from the Adobe web site.)

Copyright © 2001 the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• School Reforms Hinder Learning, Crusader Argues
• A Unique School or Out of Step?
• Opposing Approaches So Johnny Can Read: Finding the Answers in Drills and Rigor
• The Schools They Deserve: Howard Gardner and the Remaking of Elite Education
• Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism in Elementary and Secondary Schools
• Should Schools Be Wired to the Internet?: No—Learn First, Surf Later
• The Learning Revolution
• Effective Education Squelched
• The Concept of Grouping in Gifted Education: In Search of Reality—Unraveling the Myths about Tracking, Ability Grouping, and the Gifted
• Ready, Read!
• Failure Outside the Classroom
• Student Customers Being Sold a Bad Product
• Why Johnny Can’t Fail: How the “Floating Standard” Has Destroyed Public Education
• The Parent Trap
• Who Teaches the Teachers?
• Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach
• The Truth About Teacher Salaries and Student Achievement
• Why It’s Too Hard to Fire Bad Teachers
• How Teachers’ Unions Handcuff Schools
• Put Teachers to the Test
• Top-Notch Teachers Are Key to Better Schools
• School Unions Shortchange Students
• A Taboo Erodes
• Loco, Completamente Loco: The Many Failures of “Bilingual Education”
• Defining Disability Down: Why Johnny Can’t Read, Write, or Sit Still
• Why Ritalin Rules
• The Scandal of Special Ed
• Developing and Implementing Academic Standards: A Template for Legislative Reform
• The War Against Testing
• Making America’s Schools Work
• Half of Choice Schools Spend Less than State Allots
• Money and School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiments
• Public Schools: Make Them Private
• Fighting for School Choice: It’s a Civil Right
• Whittling Away the Public School Monopoly
• A Private Solution
• Class Acts: How Charter Schools Are Revamping Public Education in Arizona—and Beyond
• Healthy Competition
• The Elixir of Class Size
• Where Everybody Knows Your Name
• Title I’s $118 Billion Fails to Close Gap
• Special Ed: Factory-like Schooling May Soon Be a Thing of the Past
• “Doing Something” in a Catholic School
• Index
• Permissions