Chapter 29 Further Reading

The literature on American education policy is enormous. This bibliography provides entry points across ideological perspectives, with attention to balancing left-leaning, right-leaning, and methodologically rigorous sources. Use the categories to find what you need.

Foundational Surveys

Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (Teachers College Press, 2010). A comprehensive case for substantially increased federal investment in K-12, particularly for low-income and minority students. Darling-Hammond is among the most prominent left-leaning education-policy scholars, and her work emphasizes the systemic underfunding of high-poverty schools. Her more recent work (with the Learning Policy Institute) extends the argument with international comparisons.

Eric Hanushek, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth (MIT Press, 2015). A more conservative framing emphasizing the link between educational outcomes (not inputs) and economic growth. Hanushek's empirical work has been influential in arguing that "money matters less than how money is spent." His work is methodologically rigorous and provides an important counterweight to spending-focused reform arguments. Both Darling-Hammond and Hanushek should be read together.

Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2010, with subsequent editions). Ravitch was an assistant secretary of education in the George H.W. Bush administration and an early supporter of testing-based accountability. She has since become one of the most prominent left-aligned critics of charter schools, voucher programs, and high-stakes testing. Her Slaying Goliath (2020) extends the argument. Read alongside conservative perspectives below.

Charter Schools and School Choice

Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), national charter studies (2009, 2013, 2023). Available at credo.stanford.edu. The most-cited rigorous evidence on charter outcomes. The 2023 update is the most current; the methodology has improved across iterations. Read the actual reports rather than secondary summaries.

Frederick Hess, ed., The Education Gadfly Weekly and various edited volumes (American Enterprise Institute). Hess is among the most thoughtful conservative education-policy commentators. His blog and edited volumes provide a regular pulse on right-of-center education policy thinking. The AEI education program (with Nat Malkus) is consistently methodologically careful even when conclusions are politically contested.

Joshua Angrist, Parag Pathak, and others, lottery-based studies of urban charter sectors. Many published in American Economic Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics. The strongest causal evidence on charter effects, particularly for the Boston, New York City, and New Orleans charter sectors. Lottery-based identification controls for selection bias; the urban results are consistently positive.

Patrick Wolf et al., School Vouchers and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from Washington, D.C. and related studies. Wolf has led much of the rigorous voucher evaluation literature. Results are mixed across programs and time periods.

School Finance

Bruce Baker, Educational Inequality and School Finance (Harvard Education Press, 2018). A comprehensive treatment of school-finance research and litigation. Left-leaning in framing but methodologically rigorous on the empirical questions.

C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico, "The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms" (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016). The most influential recent study finding that increased K-12 spending improves student outcomes, identified through court-ordered school-finance reforms. Read alongside Hanushek's responses.

Higher Education and Student Loans

Ronald Ehrenberg, Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much (Harvard University Press, 2002, with later updates). A foundational analysis of the drivers of rising tuition at private institutions. Ehrenberg, formerly Cornell's vice president for academic programs, brings inside knowledge of university budgeting.

Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson, Can College Level the Playing Field? (Princeton University Press, 2022). A measured analysis of the role of higher education in social mobility, with attention to both the equity arguments for expansion and the practical challenges of cost containment.

Jason Delisle, "The Great Federal Student Loan Cancellation Debate" series (American Enterprise Institute). Among the most detailed analyses of student-loan distributional effects. Delisle has been critical of broad cancellation on regressivity grounds; his analyses are quantitatively careful and worth engaging.

Marshall Steinbaum, various publications. Steinbaum has been among the most prominent left-aligned scholars arguing for broad cancellation, particularly emphasizing racial-wealth-gap effects and macroeconomic benefits. His work pairs well with Delisle's for a balanced reading.

Beth Akers, Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education (Currency, 2021). A practical, individual-decision-focused treatment of higher-education economics. Akers is at AEI; her book is accessible and quantitatively grounded.

Affirmative Action and Admissions

Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It (Basic Books, 2012). The most cited statement of the "mismatch" argument against race-conscious admissions. The empirical claims are contested; Sander's data and methodology have been challenged. Worth reading alongside critiques.

William Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton University Press, 1998). The foundational empirical defense of race-conscious admissions, drawing on College and Beyond data. Predates SFFA but provides the empirical baseline that the cases litigated against.

Sigal Alon, Race, Class, and Affirmative Action (Russell Sage Foundation, 2015). A comparative analysis (US, Israel) of class-based vs. race-based affirmative action, with attention to which approaches achieve which goals.

Curriculum and Culture-War Debates

Jeffrey Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants (Harvard University Press, 2010). Historical context for current curriculum debates, drawing on the early-20th-century experience with immigrant-children's education.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President (Oxford, 2018) — for context on how educational and cultural divides became politicized. Less directly about education policy but relevant background.

Cheryl Cashin, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream (Public Affairs, 2004). A thoughtful equity-focused analysis.

Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (University of Chicago, 2015, with 2019 second edition). Historical context for the curriculum and culture-war debates of the 2020s.

Reihan Salam, Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders (Sentinel, 2018) — and his ongoing essays on cultural and education topics. Salam is among the more thoughtful conservative-leaning commentators on questions of culture and assimilation.

Yuval Levin, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream (Basic Books, 2020). Levin's institutionalist conservatism applies directly to debates over higher education and K-12 governance.

Title IX

KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, The Campus Rape Frenzy (Encounter, 2017). A critical treatment of the Obama-era Title IX guidance from a due-process-emphasizing perspective. The framing is contested; the documented procedural failures are real.

Nancy Cantalupo, "And Even More of Us Are Brave: Intersectionality & Sexual Harassment of Women Students of Color" (Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, 2019). A more victim-centered perspective on Title IX adjudication.

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) policy reports at thefire.org. Tracks campus speech and Title IX issues from a libertarian/free-speech-emphasizing perspective.

Reports and Data Sources

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nces.ed.gov. The federal repository for K-12 and higher-education data. The Digest of Education Statistics and Condition of Education annual reports are the starting point for most empirical work.

Education Commission of the States (ECS), ecs.org. Tracks state-by-state education policy. Particularly useful for current legislation.

Brookings Institution Brown Center on Education Policy. Center-left but methodologically careful research on K-12 and higher education.

American Enterprise Institute Education Policy program. Center-right policy analysis.

Annenberg Institute for School Reform, EdResearch for Recovery briefs. Synthesis of education research evidence.

Pew Research Center education surveys. Public-opinion data on education questions, by demographic and partisan breakdowns.

Where to Start

If you have time for one book on K-12: Hanushek's The Knowledge Capital of Nations and Darling-Hammond's The Flat World and Education together. Read both; identify where they agree (more than you might expect) and where they disagree.

If you have time for one book on higher-education policy: Beth Akers's Making College Pay (for the individual-decision frame) and Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson's Can College Level the Playing Field? (for the systemic frame).

If you want to follow current policy: subscribe to Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and EdWeek. Across the political spectrum: AEI's Education Daily, the Brookings Brown Center bulletin, and the Education Commission of the States policy tracker.