Has higher education become too successful? Are the expectations for higher education too grandiose? Lazerson discusses both the problems and the accomplishment of American universities with equal care. The book delivers a penetrating, nuanced account of American universities in the twenty-first century. Tackles topics that range from the rise of the managerial class to the failed attempts to reform practice in the classroom.

From curriculum standards and testing to school choice and civic learning, issues in American education are some of the most debated in the United States. The Institutions of American Democracy, a collection of essays by the nation's leading education scholars and professionals, is designed to inform the debate and stimulate change.
In association with the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands and the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, The Institutions of American Democracy is the first in a series of books commissioned to enhance public understanding of the nature and function of democratic institutions. A national advisory board--including, among others, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, David Boren, John Brademas, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, David Gergen, and Lee Hamilton--will guide the vision of the project, which includes future volumes on the press and the three branches of government.
Each essay in The Institutions of American Democracy addresses essential questions for policymakers, educators, and anyone committed to public education. What role should public education play in a democracy? How has that role changed through American history? Have the schools lost sight of their responsibility to teach civics and citizenship? How are current debates about education shaping the future of this democratic institution?
Among the contributors are William Galston, Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland;Clarence Stone, Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland - College Park and editor of Changing Urban Education and RegimePolitics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988 (University Press of Kansas, 1998).; Susan Moore Johnson, Pforzheimer Professor of Education in Learning and Teaching, Harvard University; Michael Johanek, Executive Director of K-12 Professional Development, College Board; Kathy Simon, co-executive director of the Coalition for Essential Schools and author of Moral Questions in the Classroom (Yale University Press, 2001); and Jennifer Hochschild, Professor of Government and Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University and author of Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul ofthe Nation (Princeton University Press, 1995).

An Education of Value is about the problems involved in reforming American schools - in the past and in the decades to come. The authors consider the historical, political, and philosophical tensions between the perennial twin goals of American education: equality and excellence. They discuss the necessary preconditions for enduring progress: enhancing the conditions of teaching, improving the education and re-education of teachers, rethinking the curriculum, developing learning through the use of computers, and strengthening the leadership of schools. The issues raised in this book concern every modern society, and the authors' ideas will challenge a wide audience.

Do you want your children to succeed? Do you want to reduce poverty and to create a good society? Do you want the U.S. to be competitive internationally, and to meet the challenges of the Knowledge Revolution? Then education must be the answer. Or is it? This critical history of the Education Gospel reveals the allure-and the fallacy-of the longstanding American faith that more schooling for more people, to develop occupational skills, is the solution to virtually all social and economic problems. Grubb and Lazerson show how all levels of education were transformed over the twentieth century into preparation for vocations and professions. As a result high schools, colleges, universities, short-term job training, and other forms of "life-long learning" expanded enormously. But Grubb and Lazerson argue that the promises of the Education Gospel and the changes of the Knowledge Revolution are exaggerated. The abilities developed in schooling and the competencies required at work are often mismatched. At least a third of all Americans are already over-educated for the jobs they hold, and little more than 30 percent of jobs in the coming decade will require some college- hardly justifying College for All. The drive for personal advancement and workforce preparation has also squeezed out civic education-not to mention learning for its own sake. Worst of all, Grubb and Lazerson show, the vocational focus of schooling has reinforced social inequality. The challenges over the next century are to create forms of education incorporating both occupational and civic goals, and to reverse the preoccupation with narrow work skills, empty credentialism, and schooling as the only source of salvation. W.Norton Grubb is the David Gardner Chair of Higher Education at the University of California at Berkeley. Marvin Lazerson is the Howard P. and Judith R. Berkowitz Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.