Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America's Schools

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Description

Final Test describes a powerful new movement that has emerged across America in recent years to bridge the wide gap still separating the Afro-American and Latino students from the white and Asian counterparts more than half a century after Brown v. Board. In the past 15 years, scholars, judges, and advocates for poor children have begun to develop a progressive school approach to education in which public policies and funding are based on calculations of 'adequacy' - what it actually takes in teachers, books, facilities, and other resources to educate each child. While Schrag explains the legal and legislative battles for reform with great insight and clarity, he also never loses sight of the human side of the story, 'describing in poignant detail the impact of funding inequities on individual students and why 'money matters' in rectifying educational inadequacies' (Advocacy Central For Children's Educational Success with Standards.) As the California Journal raved, 'few writers can translate complex ideas into compelling non fiction like Peter Schrag.'

Reviews

"This thoughtful and insightful book shows whats being done to fulfill the promise America made to itself almost fifty years ago." —Robert B. Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor

"Schrag raises important questions: Who decides whats adequate And what happens when adequate funding fails to produce adequate progress" American School Board Journal

Author Bio

Peter Schrag served for nineteen years as the editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. He has written about schools for over 40 years and his articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and Playboy. The author of Paradise Lost, a New York Times Notable Book, he lives in California.