Richard Rothstein

Lauded by Ta-Nehisi Coates for his "brilliant" and "fine understanding of the machinery of government policy" (The Atlantic), Richard Rothstein has painstakingly documented how American cities, from San Francisco to Boston, became so racially divided. Rothstein describes how federal, state, and local governments systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning, public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities, subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs, tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation, and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. He demonstrates that such policies still influence tragedies in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. Scholars have separately described many of these policies, but until now, no author has brought them together to explode the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces. Like The New Jim Crow, Rothstein's groundbreaking history forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

National Book Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2017)
California Book Award for Nonfiction (Gold) (2017)
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for History (2017)
Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Nonfiction (2017)

A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

The Color of Law

Leah Rothstein

Creating a Movement That Can End Segregation Enacted under the Color of Law

Just Action

Yes, we should hold public schools accountable for effectively spending the vast funds with which they have been entrusted. But accountability policies like No Child Left Behind, based exclusively on math and reading test scores, have narrowed the curriculum, misidentified both failing and successful schools, and established irresponsible expectations for what schools can accomplish. Instead of just grading progress in one or two narrow subjects, we should hold schools accountable for the broad outcomes we expect from public education —basic knowledge and skills, critical thinking, an appreciation of the arts, physical and emotional health, and preparation for skilled employment —and then develop the means to measure and ensure schools’ success in achieving them. Grading Education describes a new kind of accountability plan for public education, one that relies on higher-quality testing, focuses on professional evaluation, and builds on capacities we already possess. This important resource: Describes the design of an alternative accountability system that would not corrupt education as does NCLB and its state testing systems Explains the original design of NAEP in the 1960s, and shows why it should be revived. Defines the broad goals of education, beyond math and reading test scores, and reports on surveys to confirm public and governmental support for such goals. Relates these broad goals of education to the desire for accountability in education.

Getting Accountability Right

Grading Education

Boris Gueft

Robert J. Cimis

Herman Zaiman

Diagnostic Tests for the Practitioner

Photographic Case Studies in Gastroenterology

Contemporary public policy assumes that the achievement gap between black and white students could be closed if only schools would do a better job. According to Richard Rothstein, "Closing the gaps between lower-class and middle-class children requires social and economic reform as well as school improvement. Unfortunately, the trend is to shift most of the burden to schools, as if they alone can eradicate poverty and inequality." In this book, Rothstein points the way toward social and economic reforms that would give all children a more equal chance to succeed in school. This book features: a summary of numerous studies linking school achievement to health care quality, nutrition, childrearing styles, housing stability, parental economic security, and more ; aA look at erroneous and misleading data that underlie commonplace claims that some schools "beat the demographic odds and therefore any school can close the achievement gap if only it adopted proper practices." ; and an analysis of how the over-emphasis of standardized tests in federal law obscures the true achievement gap and makes narrowing it more difficult.

Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-white Achievement Gap

Class and Schools

Martin Carnoy

Luis Benveniste

Private schools always provide a better education than public schools. Or do they? Inner-city private schools, most of which are Catholic, suffer from the same problems neighboring public schools have including large class sizes, unqualified teachers, outdated curricula, lack of parental involvement and stressful family and community circumstances. Straightforward and authoritative, All Else Equal challenges us to reconsider vital policy decisions and rethink the issues facing our current educational system.

Are Public and Private Schools Different?

All Else Equal

Richard Rothstein

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