INTERESTING READS

School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books.

A Review of
Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools
by Steven Brill
Simon and Schuster, 478 pp., $28.00

As Bad as They Say? Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx
by Janet Grossbach Mayer
Empire State Editions, 166 pp., $16.95 (paper)

“In these two books, we have two versions of school reform. One is devised by Wall Street financiers and politicians who believe in rigidly defined numerical goals and return on investment; they blame lazy teachers and self-interested unions when test scores are low. The other draws on the deep experience of a compassionate teacher who finds fault not with teachers, unions, or students, but with a society that refuses to take responsibility for the conditions in which its children live and learn—and who has demonstrated through her own efforts how one dedicated teacher has improved the education of poor young people.”