"No Size Fits All" is a book that will break the public policy deadlock
over federal education standards in the United States. American debates
about education policy are focused at the moment on two big policy
disputes.
The first big dispute concerns the Common Core testing standards, which
force American students into a dreary routine that makes millions of
children hate school for no good reason. The second big dispute concerns
the proposal of Education Secretary Betsy De Vos to siphon federal
public school funding into "vouchers" that parents could use to send
their children to private schools. Critics complain that this proposal
is inherently a threat to the hard-won right to a tuition-free public
education at the elementary and secondary levels.
The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an
all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics
condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform that its
critics condemn as subversive. "No Size Fits All" interrupts this
all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative--one that
could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education
policy.