UNSUSTAINABLE: A Strategy for Making Public Schooling More Productive, Effective, and Affordable

by Tim R. McDonald

Overview

UNSUSTAINABLE frames the problem of cost and effectiveness in America's public schooling system, and provides a strategy to address it. It argues something that many education professionals and policy makers have come to believe but rarely mention: That this country's system of K-12 schooling is not sustainable and is becoming a poorer value each year that goes by. It argues for improving the cost and effectiveness of public schooling through a strategy of innovation that targets productivity. Addressing the question how to do this, the book provides policy recommendations to the state, district, and federal levels. In a final chapter it outlines uncommon strategies for overcoming some of the most difficult political, practical, and structural roadblocks to improvement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607093657
Publisher:	R&L Education
Publication date:	02/16/2011
Series:	Innovations in Education , #9
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	138
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Tim R. McDonald is a fellow at the Center for Policy Studies, in the United States. He is an associate with Education|Evolving.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Foreword xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction xix

Part 1 A Strategy for Improvement 1

1 Redesigning the System 3

2 Change Requires a Viable Strategy 17

Part 2 The Current System of K-12 Is Not Sustainable 29

3 There Is a Productivity Paradox in K-12 Education 31

4 Redesigning Schools for Performance 43

Part 3 Design Matters 51

5 Redesigning Schools and the Public Schooling System 53

6 Understanding New Technologies in Education 65

7 Properly Applying Information Technologies in Education 73

Part 4 Moving the Strategy Forward 83

8 Policy Opportunities 85

9 Solutions to Barriers 95

Notes 107

Bibliography 109

About the Author 115

Editorial Reviews

…Let's build models of school governance, management, and practice on a new foundation of teacher leadership. Ultimately this gives us the blueprint to restructure our system and dismantle the existing bureaucratic hierarchy.

John Wright

McDonald recognizes the central importance of innovation in the design of schools…The right policies are critical to the design of our education systems for the 21st century.

Ron Johnson

This book's…major contribution is the set of new and non-traditional policy ideas. They should get broad and serious attention.

Ted Kolderie

In these pages McDonald points to how we can get better results at costs we can afford.

Curtis Johnson

In New York we are running the kind of split screen McDonald describes in this book. It is working for innovation, and we are strengthening it.

Eric Nadelstern