{"product_id":"someone-has-to-fail-the-zero-sum-game-of-public-schooling","title":"Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling","description":"What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children―but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way “this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do.”\n\nEver since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult.\n\nAt the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes―to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own.\n\nProvocative, unflinching, wry, Someone Has to Fail looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 0674063864\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: 31UI5600409P_ns\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Labaree, David F\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: The item shows wear from consistent use, but it remains in good condition and works perfectly. All pages and cover are intact  including the dust cover, if applicable . Spine may show signs of wear. Pages may include limited notes and highlighting. May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43482936574013,"sku":"31UI5600409P_ns","price":8.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/0674063864-0.jpg?v=1787087290","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/someone-has-to-fail-the-zero-sum-game-of-public-schooling","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}