Nearly the whole of America’s partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions—because they are competitively driven—are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact outperform private ones. For decades research showing that students at private schools perform better than students at public ones has been used to promote the benefits of the private sector in education, including vouchers and charter schools—but much of these data are now nearly half a century old. Drawing on two recent, large-scale, and nationally representative databases, the Lubienskis show that any benefit seen in private school performance now is more than explained by demographics. Private schools have higher scores not because they are better institutions but because their students largely come from more privileged backgrounds that offer greater educational support. After correcting for demographics, the Lubienskis go on to show that gains in student achievement at public schools are at least as great and often greater than those at private ones. Even more surprising, they show that the very mechanism that market-based reformers champion—autonomy—may be the crucial factor that prevents private schools from performing better. Alternatively, those practices that these reformers castigate, such as teacher certification and professional reforms of curriculum and instruction, turn out to have a significant effect on school improvement. Despite our politics, we all agree on the fundamental fact: education deserves our utmost care. The Public School Advantage offers exactly that. By examining schools within the diversity of populations in which they actually operate, it provides not ideologies but facts. And the facts say it clearly: education is better off when provided for the public by the public.

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.

Boarding School Syndrome is an analysis of the trauma of the 'privileged' child sent to boarding school at a young age. Innovative and challenging, Joy Schaverien offers a psychological analysis of the long-established British and colonial preparatory and public boarding school tradition. Richly illustrated with pictures and the narratives of adult ex-boarders in psychotherapy, the book demonstrates how some forms of enduring distress in adult life may be traced back to the early losses of home and family. Developed from clinical research and informed by attachment and child development theories ‘Boarding School Syndrome’ is a new term that offers a theoretical framework on which the psychotherapeutic treatment of ex-boarders may build. Divided into four parts, History: In the Name of Privilege; Exile and Healing; Broken Attachments: A Hidden Trauma, and The Boarding School Body, the book includes vivid case studies of ex-boarders in psychotherapy. Their accounts reveal details of the suffering endured: loss, bereavement and captivity are sometimes compounded by physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Here, Joy Schaverien shows how many boarders adopt unconscious coping strategies including dissociative amnesia resulting in a psychological split between the 'home self' and the 'boarding school self'. This pattern may continue into adult life, causing difficulties in intimate relationships, generalized depression and separation anxiety amongst other forms of psychological distress. Boarding School Syndrome demonstrates how boarding school may damage those it is meant to be a reward and discusses the wider implications of this tradition. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, psychotherapists, art psychotherapists, counsellors and others interested in the psychological, cultural and international legacy of this tradition including ex-boarders and their partners.

The book offers a comprehensive look at college preparatory boarding schools in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom through the eyes of recent graduates who are now attending prestigious colleges and universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge. The approach is distinctive, giving readers the opportunity to get the real "inside story" from their peers and learn more about what the schools are like than the youngsters and their parents could learn in a campus visit or standard guidebook. The book does a great job presenting a wealth of information in a diverse array of voices. Student readers will no doubt feel that the reviewers quoted in the book shared many of their questions and concerns as students, and parents are likely to appreciate the frankness of the reviewers' comments as well. Excerpts from the book: "My college counselor also had good relationships with college admissions officers and was able to update me on how they'd reacted to my applications. In the end, I applied to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, and Caltech (California Institute of Technology), and I got into all of them, so I was happy with my college counselor's efforts (and the efforts of the CCO as a whole) in promoting my application, as well as in helping me decide where I wanted to go." - MIT student "Students at Groton tend to be either very smart, very rich, or both (because some people just seem to have it all). Many kids have attended private schools their whole lives. The school favors well-rounded individuals. Athletic recruits also have to be intelligent. In my time at Groton, the kids who were not motivated enough to get through the school's rigors ended up leaving. The admissions process requires an interview, during which I recommend candidates dress conservatively while showing themselves to be original thinkers." - Harvard student "The British exam system is, for the most part, based on assessment objectives: tick the boxes and you're guaranteed a great result. At Eton, while you are taught to tick the boxes, this is merely a preliminary measure: the emphasis in on going beyond the exam and enjoying the subject in all its depth" - Oxford student "Gaining admission to St. Albans can prove quite difficult, because it is arguably the most selective school in the Washington, D.C., area. However, distinguishing oneself above other applicants is no mystery. Performing well on the SSATs and the ISEEs certainly helps the admissions officers look at an applicant more favorably. However, the dynamic applicant that St. Albans seeks extends far beyond standardized tests." - University of Pennsylvania student Boarding schools in the United States: Cate School Choate Rosemary Hall Cranbrook Schools Deerfield Academy Groton School Hotchkiss School Kent School Lawrenceville School Loomis Chaffee School Mercersburg Academy Middlesex School Milton School Nobles and Greenough School Northfield Mount Hermon School Peddie School Phillips Exeter Academy Phillips Academy Andover St. Albans School St. George's School St. Paul's School Tabor Academy Thacher School Webb Schools Boarding schools in the United Kingdom: Benenden School Cheltenham Ladies' College Downe House School Eton College Fettes College King's School, Canterbury Oundle School Radley College Rugby School Sevenoaks School Shrewsbury School St. Paul's School, London St. Swithun's School Tonbridge School Westminster School, London Winchester College Boarding schools in Canada: Bishop Strachan School St. Michaels University School St. George's School, Vancouver Get instant online access to hundreds of reviews and rankings by MIT Ivy League and Oxbridge educated insiders: http: //www.PrepReview.com and facebook.com/PrepReview to win a free book

Low-fee private schooling represents a point of heated debate in the international policy context of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals. While on the one hand there is an increased push for free and universal access with assumed State responsibility, reports on the mushrooming of private schools targeting socially and economically disadvantaged groups in a range of developing countries, particularly across Africa and Asia, have emerged over the last decade. Low-fee private schooling has, thus, become a provocative and illuminating area of research and policy interest on the impacts of privatisation and its different forms in developing countries. This edited volume aims to add to the growing literature on low-fee private schooling by presenting seven studies in five countries (Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan), and is bookended by chapters analysing some of the evidence and debates on the topic thus far. The book presents research findings from studies across three levels of analysis that have proven relevant in the study of low-fee private schooling: the household, school and state. Chapters address household schooling choice behaviours regarding low-fee private and competing sectors; the management, operation and relative quality of low-fee private schools; and changes to the regulatory frameworks governing low-fee private schools, and the impact of low-fee private schools on those frameworks. The book does not seek to provide definitive answers since, as an emerging and evolving area of study, this would be premature. Instead, it aims to call attention to the need for further systematic research on low-fee private schooling, and to open up the debate by presenting studies that use a range of methods and, owing to the context specificity of the issue, draw different conclusions. The hope is that these studies may serve as springboards to further research. Finally, the book does not aim to snuff out the political and vociferous debate surrounding low-fee private schooling and private provision more broadly, or to erase the complications that abound in conducting research in this area, but to engage with them. The hope is that as the 2015 target date for Education for All and Millennium Development Goals approaches, this book may help us get closer to answering the question: do low-fee private schools aggravate equity or mitigate disadvantage?

This book introduces Chinese educational reforms and developments rolled out in the year 2014, examining them from both macro and micro perspectives and pursuing a mixed-methods approach. This book depicts the current landscape of the Chinese education system and institutions on different educational levels and in a variety of educational types, covering the development and reform status, issues, causes and effects, strategy plans and trends in the specific areas of schooling, financing, educator development and student development. Based on policy analysis, case studies, surveys and big data analysis, it combines the perspectives of both officials and grass-root stakeholders. Presenting contributions by scholars from over 10 Chinese and international higher education institutions and research institutes, as well as administrators and educators from over 20 provinces and regions throughout the nation, the book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date and solidly fact-based scholarly representation of Chinese education reform and development on the market.