Book Description
In a clear, cohesive format, Delivering Health Care in America provides a comprehensive overview the basic structures and operations of the US health system—from its historical origins and resources, to its individual services, cost, and quality. Using a unique "systems" approach, it brings together an extraordinary breadth of information into a highly accessible, easy-to-read text that clarifies the complexities of health care organization and finance, while presenting a solid overview of how the various components fit together.
Now in its third edition, Delivering Health Care in America has been updated with the latest available data and research findings to provide the most current information on the foundations, structural features, past and current trends, and major issues pertaining to the U.S. health care delivery system.
Customer Reviews:
Book order.......2007-09-23
Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach with Resource Guide (Purchased on 08/22/2007) was purchased. It was recieved in excellent condition and was a brand new book as stated in the original description. I am very satisfied with the service, especially after saving over $30 by ordering through this buyer versus my campus bookstore. The order was received timely.
A Systems Approach is not very systematic.......2007-02-18
This is one of the worst text books I have ever used for a course. The content is dense and difficult.
Chapters are not well outlined and don't follow sequence provided in text.
Too many inconsistencies in the data and materials. Chapter 12, page 524 says that the HEDIS quality review has 56 measures, the glossary says 71. This is only one of many I identified. I spotted far too many grammatical errors, incomplete sentences and more for a 3rd Edition book.
It is more than obvious that some updates have occured in certain sections but have not been rolled throughout the entire text. This textbook is in dire need of an overhaul and condensing. Major points are diluted with it's over-complicated verbiage, poor flow and lack of comprehensive outline.
Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach.......2005-09-24
I was very satisfied. Quick service and quality product.
The Best.......2004-07-30
I've seen a lot of health care texts and this one is by far the best book of its kind. Very current and thorough coverage of all aspects of health care delivery. This book really shows you how all of the components of the health care system fit together. The author has done a remarkable job and all students in health care and health administration need to read this book. KUDOS!!!!
Fluffy.......2004-03-08
This book is near 600 pages, but it could be condensed to 300 easily: by cutting back on some simplistic flow charts and over-explanation. Maybe the goal was to make the book readable for the high school level, but I didn't find its style or level appropriate for a graduate (MBA) textbook. One further annoyance was the authors' shameless and open promotion of socialized health care. A more balanced take would give the authors greater credibility.
Book Description
Think you know how to run a city government? Find out how it's really done with PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN AMERICA. This edition shows you how the day-to-day operations work, plus asks tough questions about ethics and power. Take your leadership to a new level and ace the class with PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONIN AMERICA.
Customer Reviews:
A good basic text........2007-09-24
Up to date and relevent. It gets to the point: a nice change if pace in a textbook.
Excellent resource.......2007-09-21
This is a great book, required for use at my university, however it is very well written and I love the size of the book.
Great survey book; ideal for intro undergraduate courses.......2000-07-11
I have used several editions of this book in my introduction to public administration courses; I have been very pleased by the breadth of coverage as well as the clarity of the exposition. In particular, the book adopts a strongly political view of administration in the public sector that is easily translatable to the classroom.
In particular, the authors adopt Yates' framework of administrative efficiency vs. pluralistic democracy early in the work and this framework serves to inform the discussion of policy, personnel, budgeting, decision making, et cetera. This provides the book with a strong thematic component that I have found lacking in other books of this type.
A couple of criticisms: The sections on ensuring democratic processes in public administration is a bit confusing and lacks a unifying theme. However, the elements of the discussion are there and can be easily clarified in a classroom discussion.
Secondly, and this is a quibble is that the treatment of alternative decision making models is a bit sketchy, but then again this is an introductory tome.
All in all a good, useful and CLEAR book for undergrad courses.
Average customer rating:
- The committee approach
- Everyone should read this book
|
To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System
Committee on Quality of Health Care in America , and
Institute of Medicine
Manufacturer: National Academies Press
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Wall of Silence: The Untold Story of the Medical Mistakes that Kill and Injure Millions of Americans
ASIN: 0309068371 |
Customer Reviews:
The committee approach.......2000-05-17
This is a book which, despite being written by a committee and showing it, has a definite point of view. It is somewhat superficial, but contains a fairly good review of the literature on medical error and some definite ideas about what to do. This is the book for policy wonks who are interested both in health care and in government intervention. Those looking for more in-depth treatment of the subject would do well to consider Human Error in Medicine, edited by Marilyn Sue Bogner.
Everyone should read this book.......2000-05-16
This eye opening book exposes the dangers of the medical health care system in the United States. Tens of thousands of people die and are injured every year due to doctors' errors, administrative foul ups, misdiagnoses, and incorrect prescriptions. The book gives general solutions for the system as a whole and advice to the individual to help you protect yourself when you are being treated by a doctor or hospital.
My spouse is a Medical Malpractice attorney and you would not believe the frequency of tragic and catastophic errors made by health care providers that change and end people's lives unnecessarily. It can happen to anyone without warning. Protect yourself and purchase this book today for a no nonsense look at the system you may one day depend on to save your life.
Book Description
Emerging out of the era of the robber barons and Theodore Roosevelt’s desire to “civilize capitalism,” the Food and Drug Administration was created to stop the trade in adulterated meats and quack drugs. In the almost one hundred years since, it has evolved from a squad of eleven inspectors dogging dishonest tradesmen into America’s most important regulatory agency, keeping tabs on the products of about 95,000 businesses and more than $1 trillion worth of goods annually.
This book shows how the agency combats self-serving political and industrial interests and protects Americans from hazardous medicines, medical devices, and foodstuffs while enforcing rigorous scientific standards. Hilts takes us back to the FDA’s beginnings, when it confronted businesses that acknowledged no limitations on what could be brought to market or on the claims they could make for a product. With the coming of the FDA, our government, for the first time, was able to force the removal of toxic elixirs from the shelves and to insist on accurate labeling.
We see the subsequent fights the FDA waged, and won, for mandatory testing, and against such conservatives as—in our own time—Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, who tried to curtail regulation. We see how the FDA protected the American consumer from thalidomide and other lethal pharmaceuticals, how it took on the tobacco industry, and how it stumbled in confronting the deadly mysteries of AIDS. And we are given, as well, a litany of extraordinary corporate excesses that the FDA has exposed and successfully battled.
Protecting America’s Health shows society adapting to both the burgeoning of science and technology and the ascendancy of the capitalist market. It makes startlingly clear the essential role the FDA has played in maintaining and protecting the quality of life—and health—to which the American public has long been accustomed.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent introduction to an important agency.......2006-09-03
This book is one of the few ones available on the FDA that is not a polemical attack on the agency. This agency, which is short on man-power and funds, is tasked with an incredibly daunting mission, i.e. to ensure the health of most foods, drugs, and cosmetics. Hilts provides a good history of the agency, often focusing on various individuals involved at all levels, which I liked. He talks about parties affected in various ways by FDA actions, such as consumers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, politicians, etc.. The only thing I felt misssing was a little more criticism of the FDA. No institution can be perfect or be completely staffed with ideal employees, and Hilts seems to limit his critiques of the FDA to outsiders, particularly politicians and corporations, while not focusing on any legitimate internal problems. But nevertheless I highly recommend to anyone wanting an overview of this critical area of regulation and of the players involved.
The friendly side of the FDA.......2005-01-11
As with many institutions, the FDA servers a perceived needed purpose. This book is a history of why the agency was needed and its design. It is filled with horror stories and how the FDA came to the rescue. Some of these stories even scared me as I recognized the products and or brands. The chapter "Capitalism in Crisis" reads more like a political statement against capitalism than a "FDA is out to help" statement.
What they do not say is that the FDA is the Government to the point that they can carry guns and badges. Now with the fast pace of drugs and device invention the FDA is needed more than ever. The other side of the coin is that thy have become an unwatched agency that can and does set its own rules to how a business can do their job down to describing the data field that are to be stored in their computer. Their regulations read like a phone book of conflicting statements (with no recourse). And you can be shut down on a whim if you do not follow the regulations as interpreted by their agent as they are the law.
The book contains an excellent set of notes. They are divided in to chapters. And there is a fair index. For people that like pictures there are eight pages of monochrome photographs.
The author has written several articles on medicine for various periodicals.
A Much Better Book.......2004-11-15
Hilts is a journalist so perhaps he can be forgiven for writing such a biased book, although to give him credit, he does not seem to even try to hide his bias, which makes the book a kind of comedy.
A much better (and thinner) book on the FDA is written by a former FDA regulator and a M.D., To America's Health, by Henery Miller.
Great intro to public health regulation.......2004-10-16
Sorry the other reviewer didn't like this, but as an FDA employee when Reagan would not allow the regulation of unpasturized cheese, where the listeria bacteria consumed in it caused the deaths of dozens of babies and pregnant women, I have to agree with the author. That cheese example is just the beginning; it doesn't include the dozens children who died after it was clear that aspirin use in children with fever caused the deadly Reye syndrome and the administration refused to allow FDA to put warning instructions on the label. It does not include the dozens of children who were poisoned by pills in easy-opening containers (iron pills look like candy and overdoses not treated promptly are irreversibly fatal). This book does name courageous industry people as well as public servants. It can open your eyes to the critical role the government played in assuring the availability of penicillin during WWII and vaccines today. It is the history of germs and cures in the US in a plain-spoken format.
History or Propaganda?.......2004-09-28
I came across this book when it was assigned to me in one of my MBA classes, and I thought it would be very interesting to finally read about how the FDA was created. I have a strong interest in the pharmaceutical industry and the agencies that regulate it, and the idea of a definitive 'history of the FDA' really appealed to me. From the very start, it was obvious that this book had an extrememly liberal slant, to the point that any good practices seen in the industry, or good companies within it, were completely obscured. However, I kept an open mind, and figured that the basic facts were still in order. However, I just got to the chapters regarding the Reagan years, which are perhaps the furthest back my memory goes. I was appalled by the vitriol the author spewed against all conservatives, and the conservative ideology, calling all conservatives a group of "white men" who were bound by "their anger against minorities, government, and established elites". Leaders such as Ronald Reagan were desribed as having an ideology that was "a bundle of fears and dislikes", and an "anger that holds together the radical conservatives". Now, I don't mean to say that the author isn't entitled to his opinion, but the degree to which he carries these extreme beliefs into a book that is described as a history is disturbing. I now doubt everything I've read so far, and will be looking for an unbiased account in order to get the TRUE story.
Average customer rating:
- OVER THE EDGE
- market s in healthcare?
- So she's no Tolstoy, but the ideas are great.
- There is no "market" in American medical care, period.
- Admirable goals,solutions ignore some regulatory constraints
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Market-Driven Healthcare: Who Wins, Who Loses in the Tansformation of America's Largest Service Industry
Regina Herzlinger
Manufacturer: PERSEUS PUBLISHING
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ASIN: 0738201367 |
Customer Reviews:
OVER THE EDGE.......2007-04-14
THE IDEA THAT " THE MARKET " CAN FIX ANYTHING HAS BEEN AROUND A LONG TIME.
AND IT CAN IF YOU ARE ON THE RECEIVING END OF THE PAYMENT SYSTEM. IT'S GREAT! HOWEVER IF YOU ARE THE " PAYER " I.E. WORKING FOR LITTLE OR NOTHING, PAYING TAXES, BUYING THREE DOLLAR GAS, GETTING YOUR RATTLE TRAP CAR FIXED SO YOU CAN GO TO YOUR EIGHT DOLLAR AN HOUR JOB...YOU REALLY CAN'T FIX ANYTHING.
VOTING DOES NO GOOD WHAT-SO-EVER AS EVERY POLITICIAN WHO HAS EVER LIVED IS ON BOARD FOR ALL THE MONEY THEY CAN GET. THE ONLY THING THAT WILL WORK, REALLY WORK IS IF THE PEOPLE OF THE USA TAKE THEIR GOVERNMENT BACK AND MAKE IT WORK IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF ALL. THIS IS NOT LIKELY TO HAPPEN SOON BECAUSE 99%
OF PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY ARE BRAIN-WASHED DAILY INTO BELIEVING THEY HAVE NO POWER.
GET READY FOR MORE "MARKET" DRIVEN "SOLUTIONS" FOR YOUR EVER MOUNTING PROBLEMS. AND IF YOU HAVE YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU GET IN THE END...
market s in healthcare? .......2005-07-30
Herzlinger is a card-carrying member of the club that believes that markets can cure all social ills, and like all members of this club, she plays fast and loose with reality. For instance, she tries to present the vision market as an exemplar of how market forces can work in healthcare. Vision is one of the few areas of medicine where patients can appraise the value of the service, the quality of the provider, and make decisions about how much they are willing to pay. That is simply not the case when a patient is really sick with heart failure, and needs multiple medications, multiple doctors, and is probably going to be hospitalized repeatedly.
In trying to argue that all aspects of medicine can follow market rules the way vision services do, Herzlinger conveniently ignores one critical fact: there is no true market in the healthcare industry, and there can't be. Kenneth J. Arrow, Nobel Prize winning economist pointed this out 30 years ago, and his observations are still true today. Providers (doctors and hospitals, and increasingly the drug and device industries) drive demand for their services. They are the ones who decide what patients need. The notion that patients can have suffient information to be able to determine what they need is probably only true for the 80 percent of people who consume 20 percent of healthcare costs. The 20 percent who eat up 80 percent of costs are sick with multiple conditions. Imagine your grandmother is in the hospital, sick with diabetes, and pneumonia, scared, having a hard time breathing, and she's supposed to sort through whether or not she should pay the $600 to call in the pulmonologist? The patients with chronic, multiple, debilitating disorders actually need the exerpertise of medical professionals.
Her focused factories have come to pass: they are called specialty, or even super-specialty, hospitals, which focus on one procedure, or one category of specialty. There are cardiac hospitals, for instance, that only perform by-pass surgery, cardiac catheterization,angioplasty, and stenting. Are they good at what they do? Sure, because they focus on a narrow range of procedures, they only take insured patients, and they don't take anybody with comorbidities. Of course, the really expensive patients tend to have comorbidies. The effect of the specialty hospitals on local healthcare markets? They do not bring down costs, they simply drain profit from full-spectrum community hospitals, which still have to care for all those patients with pneumonia and who don't have health insurance.
The imbalance of information between physician and patient is simply insurmoutable, and without that kind of balance, markets don't work very well.
So she's no Tolstoy, but the ideas are great........2004-03-15
No one will accuse Ms. Herzlinger of being a great writer, but her conversational style is easy to read and she does have some good ideas for how the healthcare industry should be. Ideas that still haven't been implemented even now, 8 years after it was written. She does make a fairly convincing argument for how focused factories could reduce costs. In addition, suggestions that everybody should have health insurance, that healthcare providers should not be insulated from market forces, that consumers are the ones with the real power to stop the soaring healthcare costs, and that they'll only curtail spending when given incentive to do so are good points that can't be made often enough. Points that seem even more relevant today given the continued increase in healthcare costs, the inability of the HMO system to manage them, and the spiraling problem the growing uninsured population is creating (the more uninsured people there are, the more insurance costs, which increases the number of uninsured, etc.). She has good ideas, I think it's time people listened. It's of vital importance that the healthcare system incorporate what's great about America, what has made America a leader in every other industry: innovation and sensibly regulated free markets. Ms. Herzlinger gives us a good way to get it done.
I also have to ask if some of the other reviewers actually read the book. The author gives a pretty good analysis of how focused factories would reduce costs, using that 20% of the people produce 80% of the costs as a cornerstone of her argument. Also, she cites physicians' inability to deal with market forces as a cause of the problem and gives suggestions for how to deal with it.
There is no "market" in American medical care, period........2003-12-13
Market forces cannot solve the medical crisis. No market exists. Knowledge of what is sold is inequivalent: if patients knew the difference between colonoscopy and colposcopy, they would not know the fair market value of either procedure. Unlike buying a car, where the dealer knows you can walk off, patients cannot negotiate, and can't determine the quantity of medical services needed. Eyeglasses constitute a misleading example. Physicians are the principal drivers of all expenditure on medical care. Without a medical license, nothing can be ordered or prescribed. This fact must be faced squarely: the supplier of services regulates the level of demand for medical services. Annual outlays have now reached $1.6 trillion with no end in sight to the physician-driven escalation in expenditures. This is not COST inflation, but relentless EXPENDITURE INCREASE driven chiefly by an oversupply of medical doctors. If this system is ever to be fixed, these stubborn realities must be faced. This author evidently has no clue that there is not a "market" operating in the world of medical care delivery, thus her analysis is unhelpful.
Admirable goals,solutions ignore some regulatory constraints.......1999-03-01
The author accurately identifies a subpopulation of patients who are middle class,time constrained, and annoyed with the difficulty of obtaining quick evaluation and therapy for a variety of health problems of varying complexity. After examining a number of systems for health care delivery, she gives the nod to highly specialized and focused units such as the Shouldice Clinic for hernia surgery in Canada. There are several problems with the soultions she proposes: 1) Goverment regulatory agencies and third party payers currently refuse to pay multiple consultants for seeing a patient on the same day. 2)Patients with complex multisystem problems may be ill served in such a focused system- eg. the patient who has congestive heart failure and a hernia. 3)There would monumental problems with education of medical students and residents in such a system. While this is a secondary consideration in a market driven system in which there is a physician surplus, if we fail to adequately educate physicians for future generations the law of supply and demand will ultimately come back to haunt us.
Book Description
The theory of public administration has long been based on the notions of hierarchy and authority. However, the way managers actually manage has increasingly become at odds with the theory. The growing gap between theory and practice poses enormous challenges for managers in determining how best to work -- and for American government in determining how best to hold public administrators accountable for effectively doing their jobs.
In the quest to improve the practice of public administration, Kettl explains, political scientists and other scholars have tried a number of approaches, including formal modeling, implementation studies, a public management perspective, and even institutional choice. This book offers a new framework for reconciling effective administration with the requirements of democratic government. Instead of thinking in terms of organizational structure and management, Kettl suggests, administrators and theorists need to focus on "governance,"or links between government and its broader environment -- political, social, and administrative. Government is the collection of institutions that act with authority and create formal obligations;governance is the set of processes and institutions, formal and informal, through which social action occurs. Linking government and governance, Kettl concludes, is the foundation for understanding the theory and practice of government in twenty-first century America -- for making public programs work better and for securing the values on which the American republic has been built.
Customer Reviews:
Go Team Bush.......2005-06-25
This is the guy who brought us the fawning page-turner, Team Bush. No research in here, no grounding in reality, mostly recycling of past work. He's written this book, what?, ten or twelve times over the past two decades. Enough already.
Amazon.com
Tax credits, childcare benefits, school vouchers, flextime for parents, parental leaves--all have spawned what journalist Elinor Burkett calls a "culture of parental privilege." The Baby Boon charts the backlash against this movement and asks for a reevaluation of social policy. Burkett's cause isn't served by her sarcasm, which leads so easily to exaggeration and strained humor. She proposes, for example, that there exists an unwritten but widely understood "Ten Commandments of workplace etiquette in family-friendly America," which includes items such as "Thou shalt volunteer to work late so that mothers can leave at 2:00 p.m. to watch their sons play soccer" and "Thou shalt never ask for a long leave to write a book, travel, or fulfill thy heart's desire because no desire other than children could possibly be worth thy company's inconvenience." Burkett is more convincing when citing real-life examples, such as a legal secretary who applied for flextime and was told that benefit was available only to parents, or the case of Sarah, a childless travel agent in Seattle who invented a fake daughter, put her picture on her desk at work, and proceeded to take long lunches ("trips to the pediatrician") and leave work early for "family emergencies." Ironically, as Burkett describes, it was the search for equity that inspired the various pro-parent benefits of the "family-friendly workplace." A new attention to childless workers does seem to be in order--permitting them to substitute some benefits for others, for instance, or to receive bonuses instead, and to work in environments that support their choices not to have children. --Regina Marler
Book Description
Who stays late at the office when Mom leaves for a soccer match? Whose dollars pay for the tax credits, childcare benefits, and school vouchers that only parents can utilize? Who is forced to take those undesirable weekend business trips that Dad refuses? The answer: Adults without children -- most of them women -- have shouldered more than their share of the cost of family-friendly America. Until now.
"Equal Pay for Equal Work" is one of the foundations of modern American work life. But workers without children do not reap the same rewards as do their colleagues who are parents. Instead, as veteran journalist Elinor Burkett reveals, the past decade has seen the most massive redistribution of wealth since the War on Poverty -- this time not from rich to poor but from nonparents, no matter how modest their means, to parents, no matter how affluent. Parents today want their child and their Lexus, too -- which accounts for the new culture of parental privilege that Burkett aptly calls "the baby boon."
Burkett reports from the front lines of the workplace: from the hallowed newsroom of The New York Times to the floor of a textile factory in North Carolina to a hospital in Boston. She exposes a simmering backlash against perks for parents, from workers who are losing their tempers and fighting for their rights. She spells out how tax breaks for families with six-figure incomes are not available to childless people earning half as much. And she tells the dramatic story of how pro-family conservatives and feminists became strange bedfellows on the issue of pro-family rights, leading to an increase in workplace and government entitlements for parents -- at the same time as the childless poor lost their public benefits.
Americans are on a demographic collision course between the growing numbers of mothers in the workforce and the swelling ranks of a new interest group: childless adults. Armed with hard data and grassroots reporting, Elinor Burkett points the way to a more equitable future. With an inside look at what some companies are already doing to redress the grievances of childless workers and a hard assessment of what the truly needy -- children and adults -- require in order to survive, Burkett fires the first shot in the battle to come.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant, But With An Achilles' Heel.......2007-09-26
Elinor Burkett is my favorite "issues" writer. She maps the connections between policy, ideology and activism like nobody else. She can be likable and funny and even respectful while debunking the pretensions and prejudices that stand in the way of social justice. And it almost goes without saying that she is pretty fearless: she's a grand, politically incorrect narrative-buster in an age when more and more of the media seems to be resorting to tired pieties of all stripes. All of which makes it doubly disappointing when her message seems to stray into the same emotional, impossible-to-defend territory that she punctures in others.
The dual premise of this book is that "middle-class" mothers are greedily taking resources that should be used for poor mothers and children, AND that the people they are receiving these resources from are childless middle-class women and men who would be willing to offer these resources to the poor, but not to other middle-class mothers.
The idea that poor women and children are somehow not only deprived of financial support but specifically deprived by middle-class mommies is just wrongheaded. Those reliant on social services -- welfare recipients -- are a burden on society primarily because they don't form two-parent households. Having worked in social services for twenty years, I can't think of many welfare recipients I've met who don't maintain relationships with their childrens' fathers but also don't formalize those relationships -- by choice -- so they can continue living off tax dollars instead. If you're going to write an entire book about the needs of poor families, it's willfully blind to ignore this reality, unpleasant as it may be. And if you blame somebody else in these parents' steads, that's just scapegoating.
As a childless person, I certainly do resent having to pay more than my share. I'm not denying that childless people get short shrift. But it's the social, and medical, and crime-related problems created by the underclass that actually impacts my community, my quality of life, and my assets. Furthermore, I don't know many so-called middle-class people today who have health insurance they can count on, or afford -- yet the families on welfare I see have excellent and more-accessible healthcare than I do. We've created a system that benefits only the wealthy and those who won't support themselves: anyone in-between is getting screwed. Why blame this on middle-class mothers? I gave the book high marks anyway because the discussion is compelling. But its foundational economic argument simply doesn't ring true.
It's Growing On Me!.......2007-05-16
I very much have a love/hate relationship with The Baby Boon as in I loved the second half and hated the first. Burkett explores an immense list of how the childless are "cheated" and if nothing else it's great food for thought. The politics in the book are definitely slanted and in more than 200 pages of how the government misaddresses these family issues she only mentions the Christian right three times (the same amount of time she happens to mention father's raping daughters). Overall, the book targets how family progressive taxes, fundings, and institutions target the middle class (who for the most part parent by choice) who really don't need the help compared to the poor. And that a good chunk of the support for the taxes, fundings, and institutions come from the childfree - a hugely growing part of the American population. I do confess that my relationship with this book really began to flounder 50-pages in when I saw the ever lovely Ann Coulter featured on the back for "advance praise."
I find the book problematic because much of the research is simply lousy. For example, in the first half of the book she visits a textile factory in North Carolina that had one one of the best child/daycares available for parents. To display how unwanted this is and what a burden some workers find this to be (as without the daycare everyone would roughly make a $1 more per hour, and Burkett insists that the poor and people of color don't ever use the day care) she goes to an unnamed grocery store and speaks with four unnamed women. In the world of research, I'm not really buying into this and couldn't get over why couldn't she have found four people willing to give their names or at least be able to back up the claim through attending some form of union or auxiliary meeting. At times like this the research really seemed to lack substance.
After the research, a point she belabors through the book is how parental tax breaks targets the middle class and doesn't help those who most need it (i.e. the poor). While a good point she never provides any examples or goes into it more than this. Instead, she discusses how childfree professor are cheated because those professors with children can enroll their children for free. The question: why can't childfree professors utilize this free enrollment as well for nieces and nephews, or even to give away as a scholarship? Certainly an interesting question but what percentage of childfree people does this effect and unless these scholarships would specifically go to the poor - what about them?
Because of the research and choice of examples it was difficult reading but half way in I increasingly found myself pleasantly surprised. Burkett started to provide more substance and cultivated her argument within the second half. She begins to explore the social stigma of being childfree, certain workplace activities that are clearly biased, as well as a list of companies that have remedied certain politics to be more considered of the childfree. One idea throughout the whole book was the concept of family and what exactly it means. A problem she discusses is that the nuclear family is still privileged in comparison to any non-traditional family. At times I was concerned the book was taking on an anti-family edge but it was salvaged by the end. Not a bad read, but a lot of technical and statistical information that I honestly don't trust to be 100% accurate simply based on some of her research.
Baby Boon book.......2007-04-11
Book in very good condition, priced nice and low. Used for a book club. I enjoyed viewpoint of author but not everyone in our book club did even though none of us have or plan to have children!
Missing Pages!.......2007-01-17
This is an excellently crafted book, but there are two places in which the printer left out pages, for instance I see page 54 after reading page 51. This amounts to four missing pages. When I complained to Amazon about the missing pages, they just sent me another copy -- with the same error. I'm keeping it to pass on to someone else, even though they will be charging me for it.
Well-crafted, well-researched and fair-minded........2006-05-11
Ms. Burkett's main issue is with handouts based solely on procreation, without regard to income. Even if you beleive in the socialist ideal of giving according to one's need, and therefore handing money and higher benefits packages to parents, Ms. Burkett makes you think twice about how our current structure gives those perks to the wealthy, at the expense of the childless of all income levels. Even socialism cannot justify that.
Book Description
During the 1980s, widespread dissatisfaction with America's schools gave rise to a powerful movement for educational change, and the nation's political institutions responded with aggressive reforms. Chubb and Moe argue that these reforms are destined to fail because they do not get to the root of the problem. The fundamental causes of poor academic performance, they claim, are not to be found in the schools, but rather in the institutions of direct democratic control by which the schools have traditionally been governed. Reformers fail to solve the problem-when the institutions ARE the problem.
The authors recommend a new system of public education, built around parent-student choice and school competition, that would promote school autonomy-thus providing a firm foundation for genuine school improvement and superior student achievement.
Customer Reviews:
Question the foundation.......2002-01-06
Some studeis refer to questionable studies.
Book Description
From Connecticut to California, Native American tribes have entered the gambling business, some making money and nearly all igniting controversy. The image of the "casino Indian" is everywhere. Some observers suspect corruption or criminal ties, or have doubts about tribal authenticity. Many tribes disagree, contending that Indian gaming has strengthened tribal governments and vastly improved the quality of reservation life for American Indians.
This book provides the clearest and most complete account to date of the laws and politics of Indian gaming. Steven Light and Kathryn Rand explain how it has become one of today's most politically charged phenomena: at stake are a host of competing legal rights and political interests for tribal, state, and federal governments. As Indian gaming grows, policymakers struggle with balancing its economic and social costs and benefits.
Light and Rand emphasize that tribal sovereignty is the very rationale that allows Indian gaming to exist, even though U.S. law subjects that sovereignty to strict congressional authority and compromised it even further through the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. Their book describes Indian gaming and explores today's hottest political issues, from the Pequots to the Plains Indians, with examples that reflect a wide range of tribal experience: from hugely successful casinos to gambling halls with small markets and low grosses to tribes that chose not to pursue gaming. Throughout, they contend that tribal sovereignty is the key to understanding Indian gaming law and politics and guiding policy reform-and that Indian gaming even represents a unique opportunity for the emergence of tribal self-determination.
As political pressure on tribes to concede to state interests grows, this book offers a practical approach to policy reform with specific recommendations for tribal, federal, state, and local policymakers. Meticulously argued, Indian Gaming and Tribal Sovereignty provides an authoritative look at one of today's most vexing issues, showing that it's possible to establish a level playing field for all concerned while recognizing the measure of sovereignty--and fairness--to which American Indians are entitled.
Customer Reviews:
For those who had to work for every A.......2003-04-17
There is an old joke about Phi Beta Kappa. That those who still take the society seriously past 25 are likely to have had to work hard for every A. You actually don't have to be very smart or insightful to make it to the top 10 percent of your undergrad class or get into Phi Beta Kappa. However, these talents come to their own when one is faced with complex issues like vouchers.
Mr Bracey, it seems, worked very hard for his grades. It shows in this book. If you read this, you should also read the very different conclusions on these issues eminating from public policy think tanks like Stanford's Hoover Institute, the Brookings Institute and the Rand Corporation among others. They all have publications and very good web sites dealing with these issues. There is a pretty strong consensus out there as to what is wrong with the Public School system and how it got that way. But then again perhaps that is just among those Kappans (and nonKappans) who had a somewhat easier time getting good grades.
PS Remember as you read this that it is written by a man whose chief achievement in life revolves around his getting one of the more pedestrian academic honors in college. This is not the stuff Presidential scholars are made of.
Unlike Dr. Knox ....................2002-07-17
At the outset, let me state that my comments are based ONLY on reviewing the section of the book on Charter Schools. I've also read the book by Berliner and Biddle (1995) and found both to be engaging. I do plan to purchase the Bracey book and read it thoroughly.
I hold a PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and work in the field of assessment and psychometrics. I have published research and conduct evaluation studies as part of my job, therefore I believe that I can comment with an objective stance.
My title for this review stems from reading a review by Dr. Knox from Albuquerque and being surprised at his negativity. In my opinion, Dr. Bracey's reputation as a researcher for Phi Delta Kappan and his publication record stand for themselves, but his plain writing is another benefit for educating the public.
The salient point for me in Bracey's book is his analysis of the charter school movement in Ohio. In particular I was struck by his observations on David Brennan, an individual heavily and proudly involved in educational management organizations (White Hat Management refers both to his company and to his trademark stetson). Dave was involved in the Cleveland school voucher program, but Bracey points out that he swiftly migrated to the charter schools. Bracey's interpretation is that Dave did so because the financial gain was much more lucrative in charter schools.
If one looks at the "evidence" for charter schools collected by the Legislative Office for Educational Oversight (LOEO) and summarized in three yearly reports, an objective reader would not find much to hang his Stetson on (pun intended).
I would also refer readers of this review to a recent story by Jacques Steinberg and Diana B. Henriques in the New York Times education section. Their title is "Complex Calculations on Academics" and the publication date is July 16, 2002. It looks like some complex statistical calculations are being used by Edison Schools to argue for their success.
Although I find myself agreeing with Dr. Knox that there are problems with public schools, siphoning off public funds to try to improve the lot of urban school children smacks of desperation and the tendency of legislators to think within political cycles (not reform cycles). Because of term limits in Ohio, the cycle is compressed and I fear that adequate evaluations will not be done.
All in all, an interested reader will gain much from Dr. Bracey's book, and from reading his many other publications (i.e., Primer on Assessment Literacy).
A Must-Read for People Who Care About Public Education.......2002-02-28
Three cheers for Gerald Bracey. The eminent researcher for Phi Delta Kappan has done it again. Bracey has strong opinions about public education, and he documents every one of them with facts and figures. At the same time, he exposes the ulterior motives and agendas of public education's strongest critics. Best of all, Bracey writes in English, providing an enjoyable read on an important topic. If you care about our schools, read this book.
Bracey is right on target.......2002-02-26
Gerald Bracey is brilliant in his incisive documentation of the war on America's schools. Bracey makes it clear that the motives underlying the debasing of the education system are crassly political and shamefully commercial.
Every educator in this country should read this book with an open mind. A golden apple to Gerald Bracey!
The War Against America's Public Schools.......2001-11-28
A less biased title would be The War Against American Educational Reformers and Critics. Bracey starts with an ad hominem attack against conservative persons and organizations, particularly those engaged in business for profit. The attack expands to include other educational systems compared to the relatively bureaucratically organized indentured apprenticeship training system called public schools.
As an apologists for our public schools, Bracey does admit that problems exists. He rejects the possibility that competition, which works very well in higher education, could work in public schools, much less that non-educational union members (that is, those not public school educators, faculty of schools of education, or their controlling bodies like state departments of education) could bring about positive change.
The tone and text, when deconstructed, determine the point of view of the author in terms of his political perspective: apparent socialist advocate for an expanding system of relative and increasing problems. Even more disturbing than attacking those who offer alternatives to our troubled educational system is the nearly pervasive penetration of this attitude and its presentation to preservice education students as fact, not opinion. Bracey may well be part of the problem; he does not appear to be part of a meaningful solution.
Books:
- Designing and Managing Programs: An Effectiveness-Based Approach (SAGE Sourcebooks for the Human Services)
- Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
- Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Culture and Society After Socialism)
- Evaluating Practice: Guidelines for the Accountable Professional (5th Edition)
- Evolution of the Social Contract
- Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating & Empire Building
- Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret
- God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
- Governance (Key Concepts)
- Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Books Index
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