AEI is rereleasing some of its most prescient and groundbreaking works from its earliest thinkers and innovators. These books, part of a series called AEI Classics, are available for download as Adobe Acrobat PDFs.
Education reform is among the most important and contentious issues facing the nation and local communities today. In Common Sense School Reform, leading education analyst Frederick M. Hess takes on conventional wisdom and presents a comprehensive and coherent approach to the challenge of improving our schools. He argues five integrated principles are needed:
Increased accountability of students, teachers, and administrators
More choice and flexibility
Greater openness in teacher recruitment
Better training of administrators in management and leadership
Enhanced use of technology to enable students, teachers, and management
Hess applies lessons from successful organizations to the educational sector and argues that educators, like everyone else, are more effective when performance is evaluated, success is rewarded, and ineffective workers are sanctioned. Engagingly written and drawing on real world experiences and examples, Common Sense School Reform will generate debate and help set the agenda for the future.
"Common Sense School Reform delivers exactly what it promises: a no-holds-barred, sensible approach to school reform, stripped bare of the utopian rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky promises that so many school reformers prefer. School leaders should read this book!"
--Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police and Research Professor, New York University
What lies ahead for Cuba after Castro? Mark Falcoff writes that an economically unviable and otherwise dysfunctional Cuba could in coming years pose an even bigger threat to the United States than in its communist heyday.
The promise of "healthy aging" offers significant opportunities for economic growth and development for Europe in the decades ahead--if governments and citizens are willing to grasp them.
