Politics, Markets, and America's Schools

If you want the broadest understanding of the problems in public education and the best directions forward, this is the one most important book to read (to my forever limited knowledge).

Politics, Markets, and America's Schools - John Chubb and Terry Moe

After one and a half years of working in an inner city public schools, I am convinced that Chubb and Moe have nailed the most serious problem in public education as it is currently structured.

If you care about public education and the future of education, schools, and kids, this is the single most important book I think you could have to understand the problems with our current arrangements and better suggestions for a path forward.

Milton Friedman also writes some of the best work on education reform that I have ever read. I would start at his foundation - The Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation - and check out his excellent comments on the nature of the higher education market and the K-12 education market for the strongest argument for school choice that I have ever read.

And if you have a more general distrust of conservatives like Milton and Rose (though Milton, to be fair, is on record as saying to the effect that he is more of a classical liberal than a conservative) and John Chubb and Terry Moe, I would recommend the best empirical research being conducted in education circles in America, right now, I believe, by Paul Peterson at his Program on Educational Policy and Governance at Harvard University.

That is all:).

Love,
Ben