Richard Rothstein

Richard Rothstein is a Prospect contributing editor, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, and senior fellow at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at U.C. Berkeley School of Law.

Recent Articles

Controversy: Charters and Choice

Richard RothsteinNov 19, 2001

Joe Nathan

Conceding Success

Several recent studies show that two major undertakings of progressive government -- environmental regulation and public education -- have been far more successful than widely believed.

Richard RothsteinNov 16, 2001

Works Discussed in this Essay:

David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud and the Attack on America's Public Schools (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995).

Gerald W. Bracey, "The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education," published each October since 1991 in Phi Delta Kappan.

Gerald W. Bracey, Final Exam: A Study of the Perpetual Scrutiny of American Public Schools (TECHNOS Press, 1995).

Behind the Numbers: When States Spend More

Surprisingly, even without federal mandates, the states have both increased and equalized school outlays. There is a political lesson here -- about coalition building and grassroots activism.

Richard RothsteinNov 16, 2001

Liberals and progressives have generally believed that shifting federal
authority for social programs to the states will typically lead to a "race to
the bottom" as states try to attract business and keep taxes down by cutting
expenditures and regulations [see Mary Graham, "Why States Can Do More"]. But a
common trend of the last quarter century has also been a race to the top in
which state policies can become more generous over time and even rival those of
the federal government.

Charter Conundrum

In exchange for autonomy from school districts, charter schools promise to achieve measurable progress in children's performance. But the movement is based on a dubious premise.

Richard RothsteinNov 14, 2001

Charter schools probably will not settle the education wars, but they may provide an armistice. Conservative privatizers see charter schools as a next-best alternative to voucher plans, which have now lost political momentum; progressive educators, on the other hand, see charters as places where they can implement long-sought reforms, free from constraints imposed by rule-bound school bureaucracies. Each side hopes to exploit charter schools' disarmingly simple tradethat almost any group can get public funds to run almost any kind of school, provided they are "explicitly accountable" to the public for "improving student performance," in the U.S. Department of Education's words.

Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education

Richard RothsteinNov 09, 2001

Fifteen hundred charter schools have been established nationwide since 1991, enrolling 300,000 schoolchildren. The original idea was for parents and teachers, with educational visions, to establish independent publicly funded schools, free from regulations that impede innovation. Superior results would stimulate imitation by regular schools. Charters have been endorsed by both liberal reformers and conservative critics of public education.

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