Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children
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Children's dreams about their future careers often begin when they are young students. The teacher featured in this gentle tribute dreamed of becoming a teacher when she was a student in that very same classroom. Over the years she taught children who in turn became doctors, politicians, parents, and grandparents.  Why did she stay in the same urban classroom when she could have taught in a different school or even retired? It was her love of teaching young people the joy of reading, writing, dancing, appreciating music, giving to others, and making a difference.

This warmly illustrated book by noted author and illustrator James Ransome makes a valuable addition to any collection and will help stimulate useful discussions about education and careers.
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About ten years ago, a "radical" friend of mine posed the question, "Why don't we teach economics in the public schools?"  That is, in my opinion, an extremely interesting question.

So, why don't we do it?  I imagine that the teacher unions are dead-set against it, and that is the end of that question, thank you very much.

The book itself has grown to 600 pages, and I regard it as my "vitamin book."  I read ten or twenty pages every day, and have been amazed by how often the book touches on modern issues and explains them.

For example, when the screams for "income equality" were becoming deafening, there was Thomas Sowell calmly and clearly explaining that the well-known figures for "household income" were highly misleading, for at least two reasons: (1) how many people live in that "household?" (2) who tracks the progress of individual human beings in America?  That is to say, it would not be a mind-blowing surprise that young people with few skills would begin at the bottom of the pyramid (and thus be classed as "poor") while the very same people might move into the lower middle-class within five years as they gained skills and experience --- and, by the time they were in their 50's, they might well be in the top ten percent.

In other words, and this idea may be hard to grasp for a lot of people, the figures on "household income" do not represent economic classes or castes, but simply the progress of people who learn how to earn more.  As for myself, I remember this exact same thing happening, where my first job paid (whoopee!) $16,000 a year, but seven years later I was suddenly worth $40,000, and by the end of my working life, I had a number of consulting jobs which paid $100 per HOUR.

Another example would be the people who claim that they want to destroy Wall Street.  They are apparently unaware that efficient financial systems are what makes a free economy run, in many senses, and they are also apparently unaware that (say) the Central African Republic has no such institutions, which helps to explain its extreme poverty.  Even Eastern Europe has not come up to speed yet, with some 70 percent of banks there coming from Western Europe.  Only a third of Poles have bank accounts, and only two percent (!) use credit cards.

I could go on, but every person on the planet needs to read this book.  This won't happen, but one can always hope.
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Beth and Robert Yarborough have written a comprehensive text that examines the basis for trade and its contribution to ecoonomic growth and development among nations.  As trade comes from general economic theory, the authors carefully present and analyze economic principles and how they can be applied to international markets and policies.  The basic foundation for the study of economics is that humans have limitless desires but finite resources and alternatives available to them to attain these desires.  International trade creates an interrelationship among nations where sociities may derive benefits from mutual exchanges of products and services that provide for more choices for humans to attain their wants and needs.

The authors present excellent examples of case studies and policy issues throughout the course of the book.  The 21 chapters are written in a clear, straightforward manner with numerous graphical analyses to lend support to trade concepts and principles.  The authors do not lose the interest of the reader with intricate quantitative formulas and calculations that many economics books often utilize.  They focus on real world issues and challenges that countries often face when dealing with trade policies.  The problems and questions at the end of each chapter are also quite practical and involve real world situations.

The Yarboroughs have done an excellent job in presenting an academic text for the study of international trade.  This text is suitable for both business and non-business students, even those who may just have a cursory knowledge of economics.  It would provide an excellent foundation for those wishing to understand how the global economy functions given that international trade is an often discussed subject and one of considerable significance in the world of marketing and commerce.
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John Buell follows up his controversial book (written with Etta Kralovec) The End of Homework with a detailed reexamination of the role of homework in preparing American students for success in the global economy in his new book, Closing the Book on Homework: Enhancing Public Education and Freeing Family Time.  This time around, he does not argue for the abolishment of homework, but rather decides to examine the structural function of homework in educating students, the real-life implications of homework, and possible reforms in the methodology of assigning, grading, and reviewing homework in the classroom.

  For Buell, the function of contemporary homework models differs in theory and practice.  The ideal role of homework in traditional pedagogy is to reinforce classroom concepts in students' minds outside of school hours through practice and repetition.  However, he notes, this assumes a substantial grasp of the concepts by the students before they leave the classroom combined with a high level of parental engagement in helping the student complete their homework.  In practice, the amount of homework given at a school becomes a symbolic mark of academic excellence in the eyes of middle-class parents, who intimately recognize the importance of academic achievement in socioeconomic advancement.  Because the quality of a student's high school is a determinant in the quality of the university to which that student can gain admittance, high school administrations increase their students' homework loads to astronomical levels.  Buell's argument is that this backfires upon the students looking for an academic edge - this extraordinary focus on homework squeezes leisure time and extracurricular pursuits out of a child's life, while placing increasing demands on the parents' time and making both the child and the parents feel like failures if they cannot keep up with the rushing tide.

  From comparative studies of educational policies and pedagogies of other nations, as well as studies of homework's affect on academic achievement on standardized tests, Buell concludes that the benefits of homework are small, and when they do occur, they are found at the low end of the spectrum; when small amounts of homework are assigned each night, and only at the higher ages and grades.  To Buell, the contrast between the distribution of functional benefits of homework and the actual amount of homework assigned to students suggests that homework actually fills an unstated role in American public education.  Functionally, it works to socialize children to work long, hard hours on arbitrary tasks, preparing them for low-prestige occupations in their adult life.  Symbolically, it reinforces the social hierarchy present in the school, the factory, and the office.  The student and the worker are subjugated to the demands of the teacher and the manager, both of whom are again subjugated to the demands of their relative administrations, disengaging everyone from the ultimate purpose of their work.  It is worth noting, however, that Buell does not become overly bogged down in neo-Marxist rhetoric, preferring to rely on historical analysis and reform suggestions to make his points.

  Ultimately, Buell writes that the ideal goal of homework should be the development of the character of the student.  The form of this "character" he leaves up to the choice of the parents and the schools, but clearly it is not being communicated by homework in its current form.  If students are to learn at all from work that they do outside of school, then they must first understand and engage the concepts, they must have adequate time in which to do it, and they must have support from the home.  Finally, Buell says, the work must serve a purpose, simply occupying time through labor, while a clear contemporary pedagogical model, is not only inadequate, but downright harmful.
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Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment is a good read book, riveting in its style and its statisitcs. James Garbarino explains that the studies indicate that the 1990s were not the 1950s anymore, not on poverty, families, violence, or "inner city neighborhoods".

The book is delightful in that chapter after chapter it explains what can be done, and "handles" every big family problem from divorce to guns, abandonment, television and diets, schools and futures, participation and leadership, financial security, to knowing about alcoholism. The last chapter even ends with kiss and makeup, men must change, and live lightly on the earth for the environmentalists.

However, the statistics in the book, similar to those reported in Opposing views for teens a decade later, are horrifying. In high crime neighborhoods, researchers were reporting more than a third of children by age 15 had witnessed a homicide (p. 64). Surveys in public housing were indicating depression rates of 50% among the mothers (with maternal depression very important at child neglect and abuse, and before that at maternal attachment) (p. 81). "In 1960, nearly 80% of all children were living with their biological parents, and by 1990, only 50% were!" In 1960, about 5% births were to single mothers to 25% in 1990. In the US, in 1980, only 23% moved out of poverty the year after becoming poor.

Garbarino is fantastic because he knows that poverty is the enemy of family stability, and that "the economic penalty of single parenthood is an urgent problem in its own right" (p. 46). And good health diagnosis is even in with post-traumatic stress symptoms in children that cause sleep disturbances, extreme startle responses, and even chemical imbalances due to trauma. He offers the first physical, permanent disabiilties caused by the gun violence in society, too, direct to rehabilitation centers.

For environmentalists, he is again "right on", that low income children have greater exposure to chemical and radioactive waste and polluted air and water (p. 136); today, the movement from sick homes to green homes! Garbarino has studied children in war zones, and he gives credit to families there and in the US for their efforts to raise healthy children and be strong families (e.g., spending time together, good communication  patterns, commitment to family, even religious orientation, dealing with crises, p. 54-56).

The book is award winning, and James Garbarino of human ecology shows throughout how decades of research come together with findings that impact children, families, professionals and the public-at-large. He believes in human adaptability in diverse conditions, and does, however, exit on the Children Come First (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) with only later, the rights of families and children (The Year of the Family, UN) began to be viewed as central to the solutions! Garbarino's book is a perfect lead into Sheila Kamerman' From Child Welfare to Child Well-Being (2010), which brings us direct to child and family policies (and nation-state statistics) internationally.

Julie Ann Racino, June 2015
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The Financial Diaries is the rare kind of book that may possibly change how we think about, and respond to, poverty in America. Using a unique longitudinal dataset that tracked several hundred households' precise incomes and expenditures over one year, Morduch and Schneider reach an unexpected finding: a large percentage of households above federal poverty guidelines aren't perpetually poor but do experience periodic bouts of illiquidity. By this the authors mean that these households don't have sufficient funds to always pay what they owe, but they do have some assets and prospects.  This is in large part due to a shift in risk from governments and corporations to individual households.

Morduch and Schneider build their case by relying on anecdotal evidence, their own data, publicly available data, and the work of other researchers in the field. Since the book is addressed to the wider public, and not to other academics, whether the authors are correct in their effort to rethink how we perceive poverty in America will have to be argued by economists, sociologists and other social scientists in another forum.

If they are right, and they build a strong case, the findings would have broad policy implications. The last section of the book provides some suggestions but the authors, while imagining a broad reshaping of welfare, are more eager to persuade readers to view poverty from a different perspective than to urge particular policy guidelines.

This viewpoint is the source of a major shortcoming of the book. In emphasizing what can be done to help the periodically poor, the authors tend to portray this class of people in universally positive terms. The transiently poor are hard workers, good parents and only suffer cash shortages because of bad luck, bad policy or macroeconomic changes. While understandably trying to counter the welfare queen image, was there really no one who fell into poverty as a result of bad choices? Nobody in their research who wasn't a responsible parent? This sugar-coating, while perhaps noble, leads one to wonder how much sheer advocacy there is in their other conclusions.

Even so, it's rare that scientific researchers are sufficiently creative to potentially affect how Americans view an oft discussed topic like welfare. I give the book five stars not because I am sure the authors are correct, but because the authors make a call for economists, policy makers and the public at large to make a paradigm shift in how we view the poor while providing real evidence that this change in perspective is correct. A must read for those directly involved in aid to the less fortunate and, more generally, for all concerned about the plight of the poor.
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This book is a compilation and analysis of various conclusions of education finance research with the aim of explaining how varied funding streams can compromise schools efforts to meet their standards and goals, all from a school vantage-point. Roza begins by pointing out the apparent discrepancy between the considerable increase in public investment in schools and the near-negligible increases in NEAP test scores over the same period. She goes on to pose four questions to answer throughout the book: who decides how to use money, why is money used as it is and not some other way, what strategy drives spending differences and how does it relate to what the US tries to do for students, and how do costs compare across priorities, strategies and objectives? It concludes by proposing a framework for aligned, coherent finance system with clear roles and built-in mechanisms to promote improvements in spending productivity.
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With the rapid changes in our culture and technology today, parents (and grandparents) feel hopelessly alienated from their children.  At times it appears that mass media and social media have the exclusive power of shaping the value of our children.

This study, with carefully documented case studies in several families over the span of 40 years, seems to disagree with that thinking.  It is incredibly helpful to parents and religious leaders to know that the family bond is still a powerful force in shaping the value of the future generation.  The only question is whether this is still true in the very young today, when the social media is literally taking over every minute of their young lives.  This study ended around 2006?

This book is well written and easy to read even for lay people.  Hope to see more sociologists who would take on this type of study.
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This is a collection of well-researched articles on topics related to contemporary education in response to the social and political changes that are causing uncertainty among educators, parents and the general public. Among the topics dealt with are aims of education, progressive ideas on education, reforming teacher training, the overproduction of college graduates, Christian education, equality of educational opportunity, family education, schools and school reform. The examples are generally from Germany and Austria, but the principles applied are widely applicable and can easily be related to problems in contemporary American education or education in other countries. Many ideas that were self-evident only a few years ago are sometimes the topic of heated discussion today. Indeed, some parents are choosing to home school their children rather than expose them to public schools. Thus, the author supports the view that there should be a basic set of value attitudes shared by all citizens and taught in the schools. This is an answer, among other things, to the problems or issues of diversity, multi-culturalism, civics education and the treatment of national history in schools. As well, parents need support by a community of belief that can strengthen and orient them in the education of their children in matters of sexual ethics, community spirit, patriotism, social relations, work ethics. Matters of gender identity are not explicitly dealt with, but there is relevance and applicability of the principles of citizenship and morals in society. The claim that progressive emancipatory education is a valuable and useful basic concept is scrutinized and found wanting. The author also disposes of the idea that all children should be prepared for university training, whereas there are not enough jobs for university trained graduates, and a dual-system such as used in Germany or Switzerland would prepare many students realistically for the jobs available for their level of talent. Also, the idea that all students are capable of learning anything is exposed as misguided and contrary to the different interests of students. Teacher training is also an issue that the author discusses in a practical and realistic manner. Future teachers should not be trained as researchers or intellectuals, but rather prepared to actually provide the help that students in schools can benefit from. The question of religious instruction in schools and how schools can do justice to the different attitudes toward faith of different parents is also dealt with sensibly and insightfully. The book is written in a clear and logical style which is easy to follow and easy to absorb. The translation from the original German is true to the text but nevertheless idiomatic and uncomplicated. Thus I think that many readers would benefit from reading the text. Some may be interested in learning about European education, others may want educational guidance from a conservative perspective on the family, schools and the community. The author is a well-known scholar in Europe and has also published several valuable texts in English.
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As the director of Greenbrier Learning Center, a community-based organization providing afterschool and summer programs to children from low-income, immigrant, and refugee households, I truly value the many contributions of this work to our practice. The range of articles in this compendium capture many issues relevant to OST practitioners, educators, policy-makers, and more. From program design and implementation to measuring impact to fostering social-emotional development to effective school-community partnerships, "Expanding Minds and Opportunities" includes many examples of successful strategies for high-quality OST program delivery.  Perhaps more critical in these challenging economic times, it makes a clear case for sustaining and expanding opportunities during "non-learning" hours as key to students' overall academic achievement and social development.  Our program is partially funded by 21st Century Community Learning Centers, and I appreciated the arguments in favor of this critical funding stream.
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This publication had many good ideas.however I am a middle school teacher and found the ideas mostly for primary and elementary age students. The concept of student choice and points awarded I thought would be very motivating to students.
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This is a fun project to use with middle school gifted kids. I used it during a research class and the students were very interested and engaged.
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http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnadt978.pdf

Link to the publicly available document above.  US government funding paid for this research.  It's FREE!
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This is an academic review of data collected about homeschooling, its participants, and its outcomes. The statistics can be a bit dry, but I found the interpretation of that data to be interesting.
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Mr. Tomasello sets out with remarkable clarity that humans are by nature cooperative beings, that motivatios for such behavior are intrinsic and not externally motivated, and that humans are wired for empathy. "There is very little evidence . . . that the altruism children display is a result of acculturation, parental intervention, or any other form of socialization."
  One particular facet of cooperation is that of humans providing needed information, education, to create a common conceptual ground from which cooperative behavior can take place.
 A revealing book with some pressing implications for contemporary social policy.
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This story, set in Tanzania in the 1960's, is about a boy who wants a bicycle to help his mother carry loads of produce to the market. The boy saves up his money to buy the bicycle, occasionally getting the money out of his secret box, putting it into neat piles, and counting it up.

There are a couple of places in the book where the boy is laughed at as he tries to accomplish his goal.  The reader feels for the boy as he goes to the market to buy the bike and is laughed at because he doesn't have enough money.  The author helps the reader to understand that there may be obstacles that you have to overcome in order to be successful.

A good picture book to use with 3rd and 4th graders to discuss character traits, cause and effect, sequential details, plot.  Drawing conclusions- at the very end of the book it shows the boy counting up his money again- students can conclude that he will buy his mother a cart for her load.  Themes in the book:  patience, perseverance, helping others, determination.
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There have been other documentaries about the failing public education system. Bob Bowdon is a New Jersey resident, journalist, and investigative reporter in the state. This documentary chronicles and tries to explain a far balance of charter schools, public schools, the money, the politics, and why the education system appears to be failing our kids. Well, he went to the Board of Education in Jersey City (the state's second largest city) and found a lot of nice, brand new cars in the parking lot of the offices. Ironically, Jersey City has some of the best public transportation including the PATH and Light-Rail and a Bus system in the state.

The superintendents are making a fortune off the students who really don't see the money. There is too many districts (over 600 alone in the state) with superintendents earning under $200,000 a year. Of course, they complain that they don't make enough money. People who work in the lowest positions such as secretarial and custodial positions might have steady jobs with benefits but they are lowly paid and expected to work 12 months a year.

Bob's documentary is a worthy effort although it reminds me of a NJN documentary about the state. He talks to the head of the NJEA, Bob Ingle (author of the Soprano State), and countless others including parents, teachers, board members, students, and others.

I think what I remember most is the Camden story. The violence in the 2 Camden High Schools is unbelievable to influence kids to risk their lives to obtain an education. We don't see that story very much on the local stations in central Jersey. Anyway, a group of volunteers worked together to help the Camden students graduate high school in the basement of a church. In fact, Camden is so bad that the freshman high school students account the majority of students because of the high dropout rate.

Now not all Charter Schools are stellar as you are led to believe. Charter Schools are usually not unionized. Because there is no third party, charter schools can fire and hire anybody.

Charter Schools have their own issues to work out particularly those to help students. If you have an environment where teachers come and go, your students will never adjust to a routine and disciplined to learn. Charter Schools have to be unionize as well as the public schools. Teachers and staff at the Charter Schools need support.

Most of the charter school teachers and staff don't aspire to remain in the charter school system. They aspire to the public school system. Almost all of the teachers who left the school I was at went into the public school and never looked back. In fact, the public school system offers a stable environment for students and staff alike.

Remember Charter Schools aren't built, they are leased. They don't always last. In fact, they could shut down tomorrow if the state decides to revoke it's charter. What happens to those students and staff? Where do they go?
The Charter School system has a psychological issue regarding it's survival among faculty and students and their parents.

That's another thing about the education system. At least this documentary doesn't blame the teachers as much for failure as the system itself. That's why the documentary is fair and more balanced than others out there.