NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT-OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price while supplies last Report of the White House Domestic Policy Council concerning the limiting of education options available to low-income urban families due the the rapid disappearance of faith-based schools in America's cities.

On April 24, 2008, President George W. Bush convened an array of education and community stakeholders in Washington, D.C. to address the quickening disappearance of faith-based schools in America's cities. The disappearance of these schools, which have played a fundamental role in the American story of religious freedom and tolerance, community development, immigration and assimilation, is sadly impacting many disadvantaged families. For many urban parents, the moral grounding, community ethic, safe and structured environment, and academic rigor of faith-based schools are particularly prized because of the unfortunate alternatives many of these children and families face. Challenges and potential solutions for these schools are presented based on edited transcripts of panel participants (appended): (1) Opening Presentation (Karl Zinsmeister); (2) Faith-based Schools and the Common Good (Karl Zinsmeister, Charles Glenn, Joseph Viteritti, William Jeynes and Floyd Flake); (3) Speech by President George W. Bush (introduced by Aysia Mayo-Gray); (4) Practical Realities on the Ground (Jay Hein, Phylicia Lyons, Joseph O'Keefe, Vernard Gant and Virginia Walden-Ford); (5) Education Options and America's Cities (Margaret Spellings, Roy Bernardi, Steve Goldsmith and Nancy Grasmick); (6) Community Solutions (Scott Hamilton, Mary McDonald, Tom Tillapaugh, B. J. Cassin, Timothy Scully and David Zwiebel); and (7) Public Policy Options (Ray Simon, Anthony Picarello, Anthony Williams, Ronald Bowes, Lawrence Weinberg). (Contains 239 notes, 27 figures and 1 table.).

Manpower reductions in the Department of Defense and in the defense industry are focused on making personnel strengths match shrinking budgets. These reductions neither account for the strategic value of human capital nor for the possible consequences of its depletion and the resulting dispersal and loss of strategic knowledge, skills and experience. Strategic human capital-and its probable dispersal and loss-is critical to defense industry production capability because it takes a long time to develop, embodies perishable skills, is not easily substitutable, and cannot be passively mothballed like physical capital. Trained, skilled, experienced employees are being lost to the defense establishment by current "downsizing" requirements. Rather than relinquishing these valuable assets to job market forces they should be strategically re-employed in industries that can best make use of their specialized training and experience.

For more than two generations, the traditional urban school system—the district—has utterly failed to do its job: prepare its students for a lifetime of success. Millions and millions of boys and girls have suffered the grievous consequences. The district is irreparably broken. For the sake of today’s and tomorrow’s inner-city kids, it must be replaced. The Urban School System of the Future argues that vastly better results can be realized through the creation of a new type of organization that properly manages a city’s portfolio of schools using the revolutionary principles of chartering. It will ensure that new schools are regularly created, that great schools are expanded and replicated, that persistently failing schools are closed, and that families have access to an array of high-quality options. This new entity will focus exclusively on school performance, meaning, among other things, our cities can thoughtfully integrate their traditional public, charter public, and private schools into a single, high-functioning k-12 system. For decades, the district has produced the most heartbreaking results for already at-risk kids. The Urban School System of the Future explains how we can finally turn the tide and create dynamic, responsive, high-performing, self-improving urban school systems that fulfill the promise of public education.