Va. Professor Works With Bill Cosby To Publish Electronic Book on Education. - Review - audiobook review

Black Issues in Higher Education, Nov 9, 2000

NORFOLK, VA.

An educational reform professor at Old Dominion University has a prominent co-author on a new electronic book: Dr. Bill Cosby.

The book, American Schools: The $100 Billion Challenge, suggests using the federal surplus to spend $100 billion more a year on education, offering some teachers $50,000 bonuses and providing a laptop for every student.

Dwight W. Allen was the education dean at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the 1970s, when Cosby received his doctorate from the school.

Allen says the idea for the book was born during a lunch he and Cosby had shortly after the 1997 murder of Cosby's son, Ennis, a would-be teacher to whom the book is dedicated.

The e-book is not available on paper. People can go to Web sites such as Amazon.com <http://www.amazon.com> and pay $4.95 for a code that will enable them to read the book on their computers.