Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education.
Chester E., Jr. Finn, Gregg Vanourek
I did an in-depth research paper on charter schools for my college English class last semester, and I just happened to pick this book up from the library. I cannot believe how much it helped me. I usually try to stick with more recent books because I figure that since there are so many books on the subject of charter schools, I need to read the most recent ones because they're probably going to be the most applicable to the situation today. However, I'm glad that I broke that rule and read this book from 2001. I will say that the statistics on charter schools were of course completely wrong, and there is nothing in there about the Race to the Top initiative or anything else that has recently been put in place.
Despite that major drawback, this was an excellent book to read because it gave such a good foundation (for me at least) of how the charter school movement got started, where it went, and where the authors hoped to see it go in the future. It was rather depressing to read what they hoped would be in place by 2010 - we're nowhere even close, although we are closer than we were in 2001, of course.
Just as a side note: When I was doing the research for this paper, I would take small post-it notes and mark pages with interesting passages that I could quote in my paper or items that I wanted to research further. When I finished this book, I had 87 post-it notes lining the edge of the book. I think that says it all.
My only complaint is the date. Would the authors consider doing a new and updated version? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I think this book is the gold standard in charter school books. If you want to read a book to give you great background information on the subject, make this one it!
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