Making the Grade: The Economic Evolution of American School Districts

"At a time in which K-12 education has increasingly become a focus of state and federal governments, William Fischel offers a refreshingly different perspective. His is a story of how school districts emerged from the concerns of local communities and adapted as those communities evolved. For those who are becoming weary of No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, and other top-down measures to improve our public schools, this book is a reminder of what we may be losing."-Jon Sonstelie, University of California, Santa Barbara (Jon Sonstelie ) "Bill Fischel has done it again. He has taken a set of commonly accepted views about schools and turned them upside down-shattering our simplistic explanations for age-grading in schools, for the September to May school calendar, and for voter disapproval of voucher referenda. His clear and logical development of the interests of citizens and their impact on the geography and organization of schools is compelling. This fascinating book demonstrates the power of some simple economic ideas for organizing our interpretation of the world around us."-Eric Hanushek, Hoover Institution, Stanford University (Eric Hanushek ) "How Americans managed to achieve the feat of mass education and convince those without children to finance the education of other people's children is the subject of William Fischel's engaging and highly informative volume. . . . Making the Grade should be read by any historian or student of education who wants to learn about the evolution and functions of the school district. These mundane governmental units are a key to the initial success of the U.S. educational system. The book is also entertaining. Read it to learn why teaching became a female occupation, why summer vacations, standardized calendars, and age grading are ubiquitous, why property taxes pay for schools, why vouchers have gained adherents more in cities than in rural areas, and why teachers in many developing nations today, but not U.S. teachers in the nineteenth century, are frequently absent." (Claudia Goldin EH.net )

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