This compelling new book asks: How can American education policy be consistent with democratic ideals? Robust democracy is the combination of participation, self-rule, equality, understanding, and inclusion, but these norms can produce contradictory policy. Local control in education policy can undermine educational equality. Participation in teachers unions can improve working conditions but thwart self-rule by local taxpayers. The Democratic Dilemma of American Education draws on contemporary research in political science and education policy to offer remarkably balanced insights into these challenging issues. Expertly navigating through local, state, and federal layers of education policy, Arnold Shober examines contemporary controversies over education governance, teachers unions and collective bargaining, school funding, school choice, academic accountability, and desegregation. Shober describes the inherent practical dilemmas of current policy and the difficulties policymakers face in overcoming them to produce lasting educational reform in a democratic, federal system of government. Timely, engaging, and accessible, this is the ideal resource for courses in public policy as well as education and politics.

Two persistent dilemmas haunt school reform: curriculum politics and classroom constancy. Both undermined the 1960s' new social studies, a dynamic reform movement centered on inquiry, issues, and social activism. Dramatic academic freedom controversies ended reform and led to a conservative restoration. On one side were teachers and curriculum developers; on the other, conservative activists determined to undo the revolutions of the 1960s. The episode brought a return to traditional history, a turn away from questioning, and the re-imposition of authority. Engagingly written and thoroughly researched, The Tragedy of American School Reform offers a provocative perspective on current trends.

A provocative examination of school desegregation in America and how it does-and does not-succeed. In this powerful tract on school desegregation, Jennifer Hochschild formulates the most searching challenge to the theory of incrementalism that I have come across in recent years. -David Braybrooke A comprehensive synthesis of what is known about the processes of school desegregation and a powerful policy-oriented argument on a subject whose crucial significance Americans have been unable to wish away. -Paul E. Peterson, Brookings Institution A well-written, insightful survey and analysis of the pattern of school desegregation in American society since the Supreme Court's Brown decisions and a first-rate analysis of the implementation of public policy in the US, with perceptive remarks on incrementalism as a method of change.-Choice The New American Dilemma is policy analysis as it should be done, thorough in its consideration of evidence and bold in its examination of fundamental issues of political practice and social theory.-Clarence N.Stone, Ethics The New American Dilemma challenges almost all positions cherished by liberals and leftists, blacks and whites, including gradualism, democratic participation and ethnic solidarity. Because of that alone, The New American Dilemma is invaluable. -Richard H. King, Journal of American Studies A solid contribution to the literature on desegregation...This thought-provoking book provides an excellent perspective on the thirty years of desegregation since Brown. -Mary Jo Newborn, Michigan Law Review

American Education, Democracy, and the Second World War examines how U.S. educational institutions during World War II responded to the dilemma of whether to serve as "weapons" in the nation s arsenal of democracy or "citadels" in safeguarding the American way of life. By studying the lives of wartime Americans, as well as nursery schools, elementary and secondary schools, and universities, Charles Dorn makes the case that although wartime pressures affected educational institutions to varying degrees, these institutions resisted efforts to be placed solely in service of the nation s war machine. Instead, Dorn argues, American education maintained a sturdy commitment to fostering civic mindedness in a society characterized by rapid technological advance and the perception of an ever-increasing threat to national security.

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

Voters cannot answer simple survey questions about politics. Legislators cannot recall the details of legislation. Jurors cannot comprehend legal arguments. Observations such as these are plentiful and several generations of pundits and scholars have used these observations to claim that voters, legislators, and jurors are incompetent. Are these claims correct? Do voters, jurors, and legislators who lack political information make bad decisions? In The Democratic Dilemma, Professors Arthur Lupia and Mathew McCubbins explain how citizens make decisions about complex issues. Combining insights from economics, political science, and the cognitive sciences, they seek to develop theories and experiments about learning and choice. They use these tools to identify the requirements for reasoned choice - the choice that a citizen would make if she possessed a certain (perhaps, greater) level of knowledge. The results clarify debates about voter, juror, and legislator competence and also reveal how the design of political institutions affects citizens' abilities to govern themselves effectively.