School Choice Across America

The principal objective of the Capital Research Center American Schools Tour was to understand the political and cultural dynamics of school choice by observing firsthand the variety of America’s primary and secondary schools. Over the course of the 2008-2009 school-year CRC EducationWatch director Phil Brand toured America by car, visiting nearly 100 elementary and secondary schools.

Dear Visitor,

I have completed the American Schools Tour project, and am writing a book on what I’ve learned about American schooling.

The book is being assembled chronologically, like a travelogue; it begins in the fall of 2008 in my hometown of Antrim, New Hampshire, and ends one school-year later, back, like all good journeys, where it began. Between the bookends I recount the seven months I spent living out of the back of a station wagon, driving 30,000 miles, to 49 states, visiting close to one hundred schools. It’s the story of what I saw when taking in a panoramic snapshot of education across America.

The contents of most books, including this one, wind up clustering around a few central ideas. In this case there are two fundamental ones, bumping into one another, sometimes working in harmony and other times at cross-purposes. They are the ideas of local control and parental choice. The question at the heart of the issue is who has the power to decide: where kids go to school, what is taught there, how it is funded.

The book will be available January, 2010. Please check back for more details as the book nears publication.

Phil Brand
americanschoolstour@gmail.com