Exposes decades of rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in America's largest public school districts, analyzes how the widespread corruption has crippled schools and impeded learning, and offers a bold blueprint for reform.
Introducing a brand new perspective on why our public schools are failing and what to do about it, Lydia Segal reveals how systemic waste and corruption cripple education and offers a feasible prescription for how to tackle their root causes and reclaim our schools.
This eye-opening book exposes how embedded waste and fraud deplete classroom resources, block initiative, and distort educational priorities and explains how to remedy the problem. Drawing on extensive interviews and investigative research in America's three largest districts, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, Segal argues that the problem is not usually bad people, but a bad system that focuses on process at the expense of results. She shows how regulations that were established to curb waste and fraud provide perverse incentives. Districts following rules designed to save every penny spend thousands of dollars to hunt down checks for amounts as small as $25. To fix leaky toilets, caring principals may have to pay workers under the table because submitting a work order through the central office, with its many fraud checks, could take years. Meanwhile, those who pilfer from classrooms may get away because the pyramidal structure of large districts makes schools inherently difficult to oversee.
Drawing on initiatives in successful districts, Segal offers pragmatic solutions and a detailed blueprint for reform. She calls for radically restructuring districts, empowering principals, and establishing new, less stifling forms of accountability that put a premium on performance.
As reformers grapple with the dismal state of education in America, this timely work offers a bold, far-reaching plan for improving public schools.
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Lydia G. Segal, Associate Professor of Criminal Law and Public Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, served as special counsel to the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District. She collaborated with William G. Ouchi on his recent book, Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education They Need, and has published extensively in academic journals. She lives in New York City. James B. Jacobs is Warren E. Burger Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Research in Crime and Justice at the New York University School of Law.
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