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Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High-Caliber, Low-Cost Education
"James Tooley has taken his argument about the transformative power of low-cost private education to a new and revelatory level in Really Good Schools. This is a bold and inspiring manifesto for a global revolution in education."
—Niall C. Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Almost overnight a virus has brought into question America's nearly 200-year-old government-run K-12 school-system—and prompted an urgent search for alternatives. But where should we turn to find them?
Enter James Tooley's Really Good Schools.
A distinguished scholar of education and the world's foremost expert on private, low-cost innovative education, Tooley takes readers to some of the world's most impoverished communities located in some of the world's most dangerous places—including such war-torn countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Sudan.
And there, in places where education "experts" fear to tread, Tooley finds thriving private schools that government, multinational NGOs, and even international charity officials deny exist.
Why?
Because the very existence of low-cost, high-quality private schools shatters the prevailing myth in the U.S., U.K., and western Europe that, absent government, affordable, high-quality schools for the poor could not exist.
But they do. And they are ubiquitous and in high demand. Founded by unheralded, local educational entrepreneurs, these schools are proving that self-organized education is not just possible but flourishing—often enrolling far more students than "free" government schools do at prices within reach of even the most impoverished families.
In the course of his analysis Tooley asks the key
¦ What proportion of poor children is served?
¦ How good are the private schools?
¦ What are the business models for these schools?
¦ And can they be replicated and improved?
The evidence is in. In poor urban and rural areas around the world, children in low-cost private schools outperform those in government schools. And the schools do so for a fraction of the per-pupil cost.
Thanks to the pandemic, parents in America and Europe are discovering that the education of their children is indeed possible—and likely far better—without government meddling with rigid seat-time mandates, outdated school calendars, absurd age-driven grade levels, and worse testing regimes. And having experienced the first fruits of educational freedom, parents will be increasingly open to the possibilities of ever greater educational entrepreneurship and innovation.
Thankfully, they have Really Good Schools to show the way.
—Niall C. Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Almost overnight a virus has brought into question America's nearly 200-year-old government-run K-12 school-system—and prompted an urgent search for alternatives. But where should we turn to find them?
Enter James Tooley's Really Good Schools.
A distinguished scholar of education and the world's foremost expert on private, low-cost innovative education, Tooley takes readers to some of the world's most impoverished communities located in some of the world's most dangerous places—including such war-torn countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Sudan.
And there, in places where education "experts" fear to tread, Tooley finds thriving private schools that government, multinational NGOs, and even international charity officials deny exist.
Why?
Because the very existence of low-cost, high-quality private schools shatters the prevailing myth in the U.S., U.K., and western Europe that, absent government, affordable, high-quality schools for the poor could not exist.
But they do. And they are ubiquitous and in high demand. Founded by unheralded, local educational entrepreneurs, these schools are proving that self-organized education is not just possible but flourishing—often enrolling far more students than "free" government schools do at prices within reach of even the most impoverished families.
In the course of his analysis Tooley asks the key
¦ What proportion of poor children is served?
¦ How good are the private schools?
¦ What are the business models for these schools?
¦ And can they be replicated and improved?
The evidence is in. In poor urban and rural areas around the world, children in low-cost private schools outperform those in government schools. And the schools do so for a fraction of the per-pupil cost.
Thanks to the pandemic, parents in America and Europe are discovering that the education of their children is indeed possible—and likely far better—without government meddling with rigid seat-time mandates, outdated school calendars, absurd age-driven grade levels, and worse testing regimes. And having experienced the first fruits of educational freedom, parents will be increasingly open to the possibilities of ever greater educational entrepreneurship and innovation.
Thankfully, they have Really Good Schools to show the way.
- GenresEducation
425 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 12, 2021
8 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 1, 2021
James Tooley's Really Good Schools corrects our understanding of our educational past in order to inspire our future. Tooley's understanding of education was profoundly altered as a graduate student upon reading E. G. West's Education and the State. Whereas Tooley had hitherto assumed that the only way to achieve a generally universal basic education was via mandatory, free public schools, West provided detailed evidence demonstrating that in England, Wales and New York State, inexpensive, near-universal basic education had been achieved by the private sector prior to the imposition of government educational mandates and "free" schools.
Tooley's earlier book, The Beautiful Tree provided ample evidence of inexpensive private schools serving the needs of the ultra-poor in the 21st century while this book explains that the same inexpensive educational solutions appeared spontaneously in the USA and Britain as far back as the 19th century. Not only are the private schools less expensive to operate than the public schools, they are also necessarily more innovative due to the market forces which allow their patrons to painlessly move their children to competing schools.
Ultimately, Tooley concludes that the elimination both of public schools and the mandate for students to attend school more generally combine to provide the only viable long-term educational solution. Public schools and the teacher certification process ossify educational practice by removing the schools and teachers from directly answering to the parents of their pupils. Vouchers cannot solve this problem, as the entrenched teacher's unions are too powerful to ever allow them to become sufficiently universal and unencumbered by curriculum requirements for recipient schools.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable insights was the recognition that the competing private schools funded mostly by tuition and serving the vast majority of children in the early 19th century comprised a spontaneous, free-market solution to the educational needs of the time. In other words, the original schools were not the inventions of the state or imported from the Prussians, but rather appeared spontaneously around the world to serve the needs of the community in much the same way that low-cost private schools serve the educational needs of the poor around the world today.
Tooley goes on to illustrate that every major meaningful educational innovation from Montessori to Waldorf to Summerhill has come from the private sector in education. Indeed, the public sector has repeatedly botched education with initiatives such as "whole word" language replacing phonics and, more recently, with the Common Core's New Math. Whereas the private educational initiatives start small and have to demonstrate efficacy before becoming more widely adopted, the top-down approach of state-run education allows for governments to centrally change curricula and teacher certification requirements to universally propagate unproven and ineffectual new fads without the consent of the parents.
Once again, Tooley has provided a key missing piece of the historical puzzle, demonstrating that a completely private educational system is not only more nimble and innovative in theory, but also in historical practice. Really Good Schools resoundingly makes the case for eliminating public schools and school attendance mandates in order to improve education. It is improbable that the current educational juggernaut will disappear quietly into the night without a fight, but at least history has shown us a path forward.
Tooley's earlier book, The Beautiful Tree provided ample evidence of inexpensive private schools serving the needs of the ultra-poor in the 21st century while this book explains that the same inexpensive educational solutions appeared spontaneously in the USA and Britain as far back as the 19th century. Not only are the private schools less expensive to operate than the public schools, they are also necessarily more innovative due to the market forces which allow their patrons to painlessly move their children to competing schools.
Ultimately, Tooley concludes that the elimination both of public schools and the mandate for students to attend school more generally combine to provide the only viable long-term educational solution. Public schools and the teacher certification process ossify educational practice by removing the schools and teachers from directly answering to the parents of their pupils. Vouchers cannot solve this problem, as the entrenched teacher's unions are too powerful to ever allow them to become sufficiently universal and unencumbered by curriculum requirements for recipient schools.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable insights was the recognition that the competing private schools funded mostly by tuition and serving the vast majority of children in the early 19th century comprised a spontaneous, free-market solution to the educational needs of the time. In other words, the original schools were not the inventions of the state or imported from the Prussians, but rather appeared spontaneously around the world to serve the needs of the community in much the same way that low-cost private schools serve the educational needs of the poor around the world today.
Tooley goes on to illustrate that every major meaningful educational innovation from Montessori to Waldorf to Summerhill has come from the private sector in education. Indeed, the public sector has repeatedly botched education with initiatives such as "whole word" language replacing phonics and, more recently, with the Common Core's New Math. Whereas the private educational initiatives start small and have to demonstrate efficacy before becoming more widely adopted, the top-down approach of state-run education allows for governments to centrally change curricula and teacher certification requirements to universally propagate unproven and ineffectual new fads without the consent of the parents.
Once again, Tooley has provided a key missing piece of the historical puzzle, demonstrating that a completely private educational system is not only more nimble and innovative in theory, but also in historical practice. Really Good Schools resoundingly makes the case for eliminating public schools and school attendance mandates in order to improve education. It is improbable that the current educational juggernaut will disappear quietly into the night without a fight, but at least history has shown us a path forward.
May 25, 2022
Rating it a 4/5 since it rehashes a lot of the old information from the author's previous book `A Beautiful Tree` and thus loses some of its focus on suggesting solutions for improving the current system of education in the modern world.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews