Burning Cash: How Costly Public School Failures have Charred the American Dream

(Paperback)

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With the Common Core poised to markedly amplify the accountability stakes in public education, the pressure to post steep outcomes gains has never been fiercer. Unsurprisingly, flashy and expensive school improvement initiatives that promise quick fix solutions have become pervasively en vogue across the K-12 landscape. As Justin A. Collins compellingly demonstrates in Burning Cash, these flashy acronym reform plans provide for abundantly vivid theatre, but offer no muscle for the heavy lifting required to transform instructional quality.

Collins pens a forceful case that despite the dizzying change swirling around the classroom walls, student engagement remains a fixture of a paramount importance. Taking a decided detour from the student engagement literature to date, Burning Cash spells out an entirely fresh means of numerically charting student engagement levels across all classrooms over time. Were the status quo to instead persist, a high school diploma will remain the end of the educational line for millions of schoolchildren.

By reliably quantifying the nature of student engagement at the classroom level, teachers and administrators are supplied a powerfully telling barometer by which to gauge educational quality. Also left at educational leaders disposal are data-informed guideposts that illuminate the improvement work left to be done. As Los Angeles Schools John Deasy champions in the books foreword, when student higher-order thinking balloons and disengagement is eradicated, test score spikes are extreme and sustained, no matter the school districts zip code. And that means the promise of the American dream is enlivened without additionally burdening deficit-riddled budgets.

Reviews

This book reads more like a novel because in so many instances, those of us that are in the trenches of K-12 find ourselves living in many of the pages of the manuscript. The book is familiar, yet hard to put down! -- Cedric Lewis, CFO of Rockford Schools
No region in the world is immune to the ill effects of a poorly educated populace, and America is no exception. Evidence strongly suggests that there is a direct correlation between educational attainment and quality of life, including everything from economic prosperity to life expectancy itself. Though billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are spent every year on public education, this has not always translated to better academic performance. And Collins' book clearly shows that we cannot simply buy our way to better educational outcomes. This unfortunate reality affects EVERY American. Now more than ever, educators must identify ways to maximize their use of public dollars. Within this book is a clear message that it cannot be just business as usual. The nations future is at stake. Read the book! -- Ron McPherson, executive director of finance, Knox County Schools
Burning Cashprovides an honest review of the struggles in American education. In the book, Collins skillfully provides a thoughtful analysis of educational best practices. Burning Cash offers common sense solutions to ensure that our nations students indeed achieve the American Dream. -- Marcus J. Newsome, superintendent of Chesterfield County Public Schools
Collins takes a different angle in challenging the longstanding debate on effective public educational reform....Burning Cash is a provocative attack on the status quo. -- Peter Cappelli, professor, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, George W. Taylor Professor of Management and Director of Whartons Center for Human Resources

Author Bio

Justin A. Collins holds undergraduate and master degrees from the University of Virginia along with MBA, Ph.D. (K-12 Educational Administration) and law degrees from the University of Missouri.