All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools Through Public School Choice

by Richard D. Kahlenberg

Book Overview

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This provocative book asks a simple question: since we know that middle class schools tend to work best, why not give every child in America the opportunity to attend a public school in which the majority of students come from middle class households? Economically integrated schools, the author argues, will do far more to promote achievement and equal opportunity than vouchers, standards, class size reduction, or any of the other leading education...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815748108
• ISBN13: 9780815748106
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Insightful

Richard Kahlenberg takes a new approach to improving the public school system. Kahlenberg only gives one major way to fix schools ( social integration). This is not a fix all for schools although it does open up the idea of how one idea might improve our school systems if the city is large enough. A thought provoking read.

Informative, challenging, and occasionally inspiring

In All Together Now: Creating Middle-Class Schools Through Public School Choice, Richard Kahlenberg (senior fellow at The Century Foundation), advocates giving every child in American the opportunity to attend a public school in which the majority of students come from middle class households. He persuasively argues that the only way to make good on the American assumption that public schools will provide equal educational opportunity is by teaching disadvantaged and advantaged children together within the same facilities, with the same faculties, the same curriculums, and the same educational resources. The only way to achieve this socioeconomic integration is to establish a critical mass of middle-class students within all schools. The recommendations offered in All Together Now outline a blueprint for creating middle class schools and draw upon the experiences of current experiments with economic integration in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Connecticut, and elsewhere. Based on these case examples are practical ways to bring about integrated schools for the future, and guidance for successfully overcoming political, logistical, and legal obstacles to an economic desegregation. All Together Now is informative, challenging, and occasionally inspiring reading which is particularly recommended to education reform activists, policy makers, school administrators, faculty members, and concerned parents.