Over the past several years, privately run, publicly funded charter schools have been sold to the American public as an education alternative promising better student achievement, greater parent satisfaction, and more vibrant school communities. But are charter schools delivering on their promise? Or are they just hype as critics contend, a costly experiment that is bleeding tax dollars from public schools? In this book, Jack Buckley and Mark Schneider tackle these questions about one of the thorniest policy reforms in the nation today.

Using an exceptionally rigorous research approach, the authors investigate charter schools in Washington, D.C., carefully examining school data going back more than a decade, interpreting scores of interviews with parents, students, and teachers, and meticulously measuring how charter schools perform compared to traditional public schools. Their conclusions are sobering.

Buckley and Schneider show that charter-school students are not outperforming students in traditional public schools, that the quality of charter-school education varies widely from school to school, and that parent enthusiasm for charter schools starts out strong but fades over time. And they argue that while charter schools may meet the most basic test of sound public policy--they do no harm--the evidence suggests they all too often fall short of advocates' claims.

With the future of charter schools--and perhaps public education as a whole--hanging in the balance, this book supports the case for holding charter schools more accountable and brings us considerably nearer to resolving this contentious debate.

""Choosing Schools" is a valuable contribution to the highly contentious, emotionally charged debate about school choice. Schneider, Teske, and Marschall have written a careful, reasonable, balanced and fair assessment of the evidence. Their quietly persuasive book deserves a wide readership."--Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education in the U.S. Department of Education and author of "The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980"

"The authors' careful and judicious reading of their evidence will be greatly appreciated by those who are frustrated by the selective and inflated claims that more typically have dominated the school choice debate. While the published articles of these authors are familiar to those who have followed the school choice debate carefully, the integration of the various pieces into this book gives that content a sense of freshness, greater complexity, and added empirical horsepower."--Jeffrey Henig, author of "Rethinking School Choice" and coauthor of "The Color of School Reform"

"There is not much empirical evidence on how school choice programs work in practice--which is perhaps the central concern in the debate over choice, political and intellectual. This book provides interesting new evidence on a wide range of choice-related topics, and ties it together with theories from economics, social psychology, sociology, and public opinion. In so doing, it offers a firm basis for gaining perspective on the performance of school choice and judging its prospects. There is nothing like it in the literature. It is a tour de force."--Terry M. Moe, Hoover Institution and Stanford University

The United States, long considered to have the best higher education in the world, now ranks eleventh in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college degree. As other countries have made dramatic gains in degree attainment, the U.S. has improved more slowly. In response, President Obama recently laid out a national "completion agenda" with the goal of making the U.S. the best-educated nation in the world by the year 2020. "Getting to Graduation" explores the reforms that we must pursue to recover a position of international leadership in higher education as well as the obstacles to those reforms.

This new completion agenda puts increased pressure on institutions to promote student success and improve institutional productivity in a time of declining public revenue. In this volume, scholars of higher education and public policymakers describe promising directions for reform. They argue that it is essential to redefine postsecondary education and to consider a broader range of learning opportunities--beyond the research university and traditional bachelor degree programs--to include community colleges, occupational certificate programs, and apprenticeships. The authors also emphasize the need to rethink policies governing financial aid, remediation, and institutional funding to promote degree completion.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2005 im Fachbereich BWL - Controlling, Note: 1,7, Hochschule fur Angewandte Wissenschaften Neu-Ulm; fruher Fachhochschule Neu-Ulm, 20 Quellen im Literaturverzeichnis, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Durch die fortschreitende Spezialisierung der Betriebe, den Einsatz neuer Technologien und die steigende Produktkomplexitat kommt der Arbeitsvorbereitung als Bindeglied zwischen Konstruktion und Fertigung eine immer umfangreichere Bedeutung hinsichtlich der Sicherstellung einer wirtschaftlichen Fertigung zu. Aus diesem Grund ist heute eine genaue Kenntnis der Ablaufe in der Arbeitsvorbereitung unerlasslich. Je grosser ihr Stellenwert innerhalb des Unternehmens ist, um so wichtiger ist eine effiziente Gestaltung der Prozesse. Die Einfuhrung der Prozesskostenrechnung kann hier einen wertvollen Anstoss geben, um die Vorgange innerhalb der Abteilung genauer zu analysieren. Im ersten Teil wird zunachst die Arbeitsvorbereitung selbst und ihre Stellung im Unternehmen behandelt, um vorab die wichtigsten Inhalte und Begriffe zu klaren. Gleichzeitig werden die allgemeinen Aufgaben der Arbeitsvorbereitung naher erlautert, die spater noch einmal aufgegriffen werden. Das zweite Kapitel befasst sich umfassend mit der Prozesskostenrechnung im Allgemeinen. Nach den grundlegenden Eigenschaften und Definitionen wird die Systematik und Vorgehensweise bei ihrer Einfuhrung erlautert, ehe auf die Hintergrunde ihrer Anwendung und die verfolgten Ziele eingegangen wird. Im letzten Teil erfolgt schliesslich die Anwendung der Prozesskostenrechnung in der Arbeitsvorbereitung anhand eines Fallbeispiels, wobei gezeigt werden soll, welche Ergebnisse bei der Einfuhrung zu erwarten s

Leaders provides six in-depth studies of leaders who demonstrate a new style of leadership for the 21st century. W. Henry Lambright describes how Dr. Francis Collins is leading the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health. Norma Riccucci presents a case study of how Dr. Helene Gayle led the nation's fight against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Beryl Radin analyzes the leadership style of Donna Shalala at the Department of Health and Human Services. Robert B. Denhardt and Janet Vinzant Denhardt present case studies of three local government leaders who are redefining the job of the local government executives. Paul A. Teske and Mark Schneider describe how principals are changing the New York City school system. Mark Huddleston presents his conversations with the federal government's leading senior civil servants. From these case studies, Mark A. Abramson and Kevin M. Bacon describe how 21st century leaders differ from their predecessors and what organizations can do today to develop future 21st century leaders.