The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools. (Book Reviews).Professor, Ross College of Education, Lynn University  This article or section is written like an .Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view. Mark blatant advertising for , using . , Boca Raton Boca Raton (bō`kə rətōn`), city (1990 pop. 61,492), Palm Beach co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic; inc. 1925. Boca Raton is a popular resort and retirement community that experienced significant industrial development in the 1970s and 80s. , Fla. The authors of The Education Gap deserve credit for announcing up front they have written this work from a "personal point of view." William G. Howell, assistant professor of government at Harvard; Paul Peterson For the actor and novelist William Paul Petersen, see Paul Petersen. Paul Peterson, also known as St. Paul, is a musician best known for his memberships in the bands The Family and The Time. , professor of government at Harvard; Patrick Wolf For the Canadian politician, see . Patrick Wolf (born Patrick Apps on June 30, 1983 at St Thomas' Hospital, London[1]) is an English singer-songwriter from South London. , assistant professor at Georgetown; and David Campbell, a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton based their work on a three-year study of school choice and vouchers in three cities--New York City, Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. The authors have been diligent in their data gathering to advocate their position in support of school choice and vouchers. This reviewer counted 52 tables and figures in the main text and six additional tables in the appendices. The researchers appropriately point out the obvious: Middle-class families have enjoyed school choice for years because they can move to another community with higher-performing or better-funded schools. The Education Gap reports that school choice had the greatest impact on achievement gains of African American African American Multiculture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. See Race. students, while the economically disadvantaged in all ethnic categories believe school choice provides an improved "educational climate" for the students. One notable finding in the evaluation of vouchers was that the test scores of African American students in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of City's privately funded programs were higher than the comparable test scores of students in public schools. The researchers found less certain results in the Washington, D.C., study, possibly because of the large number of charter schools in that city. Administrators who read this book will be impressed by the amount of data cited by the authors to support their viewpoint. Whether they agree with that viewpoint is another matter. (The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools, by William C. Howell and Paul Peterson with Patrick J. Wolf and David E. Campbell, Brookings Institution Brookings Institution, at Washington, D.C.; chartered 1927 as a consolidation of the Institute for Government Research (est. 1916), the Institute of Economics (est. 1922), and the Robert S. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (est. 1924). Press, Washington, D.C., 2002, 275 pp., $28.95 hardcover) |
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