The Education Debate What Everyone Needs to Know®

A compelling overview of the major debates in contemporary education policy.

In statehouses, school boards, and communities across the US, battles are raging over the direction of education policy--from the standards that are shaping what students learn to how test results are being used to judge a teacher's performance. These battles are being waged against a backdrop of shifting demographics, rapidly developing technology, a transforming economy and workplace. What's more, the COVID-19 pandemic is prompting educators to rethink the school's mission in society.

In The Education Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know®, nationally recognized education authority David Kirp and Kevin Macpherson provide a balanced, accessible overview of the key policy and practice issues in pre k-12 education today. They expose the fault lines of the major debates--what values should guide education and how can those values best be incorporated in policy and practice. They focus on equity and equality of opportunity as well as the tension between market and bureaucratic mechanisms as drivers of school improvement. Many of the topics they address, including racial integration, charter schools, student rights and teachers' unions, are hotly contested. In an area where partisanship reigns, Kirp and Macpherson take an approach guided by research and not driven by ideology. A primer for educational policymakers and administrators, parents, and undergraduate and graduate students in education courses, The Education Debate offers a solid grasp of the major debates in contemporary education policy.

David Kirp is a Professor of the University and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education, a frequent contributor to The New York Times and Washington Post, and a
senior scholar at the Learning Policy Institute. His most recent books are The College Dropout Scandal (Oxford, 2019) and Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools (Oxford, 2013), which was awarded the 2014 Outstanding Book Award,
American Educational Research Association.

Kevin Macpherson is an Improvement Specialist on WestEd's improvement science team. He has served as a classroom teacher and district-level special education administrator. Macpherson currently works with state education agencies within the National Center for Systemic Improvement (NCSI). He earned
his Ph.D. in Special Education from UC Berkeley, where he researched how social-psychological factors shape student outcomes.