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Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses

on Jun 23, 2009 by The EEP Team

The new book by Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth (Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses) helps to provide an analytical backdrop to our campaign to improve the nation's schools. It vividly demonstrates the individual and societal costs of not bringing our students up to their full potential. It focuses on how school finance and policy can be brought to bear to raise student achievement and to close the gaps that exist. We urge you carefully to consider both their diagnosis and their solutions.

In many ways, their prescription is consistent with the policies and ideals of EEP. In their words, "focus funding and policy decisions on student outcomes, provide incentives and funding to achieve outcome
goals, and evaluate whether what is being done is consistent with improving student outcomes." In reaching these conclusions, they provide a powerful critique of how we have gone wrong in the past, including an analysis of both legislative and court actions.

Their performance‐based funding proposal ‐‐ which measures the money we invest against the results we achieve ‐‐ is a practical outline for action. We encourage you to read Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and
Statehouses: Solving the Funding‐Achievement Puzzle in America's Public Schools and to make sure that this book informs the public debate on how to make our schools better for our children.

In addition, the Education Equality Project is proud to announce that Eric Hanushek, senior fellow at Stanford University, has agreed to become a signatory for EEP. Eric has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and his work on efficiency, resource usage, and economic outcomes of schools has entered into the design of both national and international educational policy. His research spans such diverse areas as the impacts of teacher quality, high stakes accountability, and class size reduction on achievement and the role of cognitive skills in international growth and development. EEP is proud to welcome Eric Hanushek to the EEP Team.

FRONT AND BACK COVER

READ ERIC HANUSHEK'S BIO

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