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New Book by Harvard Graduate Asserts Faith-Based Schools are a Major Key for Resurrection of American Education

Press Release : Jul 1, 2014
Staff – RNS

The Witherspoon Institute Senior Fellow offers actions that can be taken to turn American education around.

school choice(Santa Barbara, CA)—A new book by a professor and researcher uses quantitative analysis to assert that the American education system can raise school quality and help students in the inner city far better than it currently does.

In his book entitled, School Choice a Balanced Approach, William Jeynes, a Harvard graduate and Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, asserts the a higher percentage of K-12 schools are controlled by the federal government in the U.S. than even in Russia and China and the public school monopoly is stifling the potential of American students.

Jeynes, who has spoken and written for the White House and worked as a consultant with U.S. presidential administrations and in South Korea during the 1997-1998 Asian economic crisis, claims that such a monopoly is exacerbating the achievement gap, lowering achievement, and is having a dragging effect on the U.S. economy.

Dr. Jeynes presents the following evidence as a basis for future educational policy that can turn around American K-12 education.

1) Presents a meta-analysis indicating students at public charter schools do no better academically than their counterparts in traditional public schools. On this basis, Jeynes asserts that public school choice is not enough to save the nation from its educational woes. School choice needs to be expanded to also include faith-based schools and poor children in particular. Religious schools are very adept at reaching the underprivileged and the achievement gap is typically 25% narrower at these schools.

2) Calls for increased family and community links to reduce to reduce the achievement gap. Quantitative analysis indicates that non-school factors decrease the achievement gap 4 times more than school factors.


3) Calls for greater competition at the K-12 grade levels, in the same spirit that has made America's university system the best in the world.

4) Calls for the "de-Balkinization" of education so that all children in school are valued, not merely those in a particular sector. Those who serve in public schools should care just as much about the success of children in private schools as they do for children in their own sector. Those working in private schools need to demonstrate the same compassion.


Dr. Jeynes asserts that if these actions are taken, American education can turn around.