The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is bolder than all previous federal education laws, setting ambitious goals for universal student achievement and authorizing severe remedies for schools not reaching them. In a nation where most youngsters are far from proficient in reading and mathematics and where innumerable efforts to boost learning levels have fallen short, NCLB makes a huge policy wager: that failing schools and school districts can be set right and that all children can master reading and math.

Today, however, it seems the law's implementation will fall far short of its potential. NCLB includes a series of compromises and accepts a number of constraints that will prevent it from really working. In their new book, Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), the members of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K–12 Education undertake this crucial repair work. The book presents a midterm assessment of NCLB that closely examines its core elements and offers recommendations for practical reforms to save the law and strengthen some of its key principles—high standards, results-based accountability, parental options, and research-based practices.

Within Our Reach presents a compelling—and urgent—case for revising NCLB and protecting its ambitious goals for America's children.

  • The research, assessment, and recommendations are the work of the nationally recognized and highly respected Koret Task Force on K–12 Education.

  • The contributors are among the nation's most respected education scholars.

  • Within Our Reach delivers timely and insightful "real world" recommendations for attaining the goals set forth in that landmark statute.

  • In their latest work, the members of the Koret Task Force again demonstrate the unmatched wealth of experience and expertise they bring to meeting current challenges in public education.

Contributors include Hoover research fellow Williamson M. Evers; Hoover senior fellow Eric A. Hanushek; Harvard economist Caroline M. Hoxby; Lance T. Izumi, director of Education Studies for the Pacific Research Institute; Hoover senior fellow Terry M. Moe; Harvard professor Paul E. Peterson; New York University professor Diane Ravitch, author of the Language Police; and Herbert J. Walberg, University Scholar at the University of Illinois.

The editor, John Chubb, is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the chief education officer and one of the founders of Edison Schools, a private manager of public schools, including many charter schools. Chubb is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the coauthor of A Lesson in School Reform from Great Britain and the author of Politics, Markets, and America's Schools.

Within Our Reach is published in association with the Hoover Institution.

Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child
Edited by John Chubb
ISBN: 0-7425-4887-2 $60.00
200 pages March 2005

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