Download or read book Children as Pawns written by Timothy A. HACSI and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Head Start. Bilingual education. Small class size. Social promotion. School funding. Virtually every school system in America has had to face these issues over the past thirty years. Advocates and dissenters have declared confidently that the research is on their side. But is it? In the first book to bring together the recent history of educational policy and politics with the research evidence, Timothy Hacsi presents the illuminating, often-forgotten stories of these five controversial topics. He sifts through the complicated evaluation research literature and compares the policies that have been adopted to the best evidence about what actually works. He lucidly explains what the major studies show, what they don't, and how they have been misunderstood and misrepresented. Hacsi shows how rarely educational policies are based on solid research evidence, and how programs that sound plausible simply do not satisfy the complex needs of real children.