“No Size Fits All” is a book that will break the public policy deadlock over federal education standards in the United States. American debates about education policy are focused at the moment on two big policy disputes.

The first big dispute concerns the Common Core testing standards, which force American students into a dreary routine that makes millions of children hate school for no good reason. The second big dispute concerns the proposal of Education Secretary Betsy De Vos to siphon federal public school funding into “vouchers” that parents could use to send their children to private schools. Critics complain that this proposal is inherently a threat to the hard-won right to a tuition-free public education at the elementary and secondary levels.

The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform that its critics condemn as subversive. “No Size Fits All” interrupts this all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative––one that could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education policy.

Richard Striner, a history professor at Washington College for over thirty years, is an intellectual historian and policy activist whose interdisciplinary work has encompassed political and presidential history, economics, literature, film, architecture and historic preservation. No Size Fits All expands his published work into the field of educational theory and practice.

L. Michelle Johnson, a former classroom teacher, is a preservice teacher educator whose work includes content-rich engagement, strength-based pedagogy and instructional design for alternative teacher preparation programs and nontraditional school settings. No Size Fits All is her first published collaboration.

Preface; 1. A Battle of Principles; 2. The Genesis and Implementation of Common Core; 3. The Modern Legacy of Progressive Education; 4. Case Study: The Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School; 5. National Advocacy; 6. So Many Different Kinds of Public Schools; 7. Betsy De Vos and the Wrong Kind of School Choice; 8. The Best Kind of School Choice; Epilogue; Index.