Class warfare : inside the fight to fix America's schools

Brill, Steven 1950- (Author).

Summary: This work looks at why many of America's schools are failing and relates how parents, activists, and education reformers are joining together to fix a system that works for adults but consistently fails the children it is meant to educate. In it the author takes a look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children, and points the way to reversing that failure. It is filled with unexpected twists and turns, takes us from the Oval Office, where President Obama signs off on an unprecedented plan that will infuriate the teachers' unions because it offers billions to States that win an education reform "contest" ; to boisterous assemblies, where parents join the fight over their children's schools; to a Fifth Avenue apartment, where billionaires plan a secret fund to promote school reform; to a Colorado high school, where students who seemed destined to fail are instead propelled to college; to state capitols across the country, where school reformers hoping to win Obama's "contest" push bills that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. It is the story of an unlikely army, fed-up public school parents, Ivy League idealists, hedge-funders, civil rights activists, conservative Republicans, insurgent Democrats, squaring off against unions that the reformers claim are protecting a system that works for the adults but victimizes the children. The book is filled with extraordinary people taking extraordinary paths: a young woman who goes into teaching almost by accident, then becomes so talented and driven that fighting burnout becomes her biggest challenge; an antitrust lawyer who almost brought down Bill Gates's Microsoft and now forms a partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates to overhaul New York's schools; a naive Princeton student who launches an army of school reformers with her senior thesis; a California teachers' union lobbyist who becomes the mayor of Los Angeles and then the union's prime antagonist; a stubborn young teacher who, as a child growing up on Park Avenue, had been assumed to be learning disabled but ends up co-founding the nation's most successful charter schools; and an anguished national union leader who walks a tightrope between compromising enough to save her union and giving in so much that her members will throw her out. The author not only takes us inside their roller coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America's schools.

Record details

ISBN: 9781451611991
ISBN: 1451611994
Physical Description: xii, 478 pages ; 25 cm
print
Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Content descriptions

General Note:

Includes index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The race -- Juicy words -- The epiphanies -- Be obedient. Be good. Keep your mouth shut. -- If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted -- A hopelessly naive thesis -- A governor and a president take center stage -- Payroll to payroll -- Lighting up the capitol switchboard -- The backlash -- Schoolyard classroom -- The discovery : good teaching matters -- The network -- No child left behind -- Don't worry, it's just a parent -- The union won't allow it -- The idea wasn't just to keep them from killing somebody -- How could the Democrats be against this? -- Seeing George Soros's apartment -- New York realities -- Our party has got to wake up on this -- The co-location trap -- Creating a new school system the hard way -- Colorado says half of you won't graduate -- The pol and the moneymen -- Foxes in the henhouse -- Mounting evidence -- This just seemed so obvious -- More money, no hassles -- Building Harlem success -- This is not a self-esteem movement -- You really don't want to hire me -- Pulling the rug out -- Money meets data -- Hillary for teachers, teachers for Hillary -- Forward, backward in New York -- 45,000 dollars well spent -- Faceless bureaucracy -- Back in the classroom -- Quarantine the data -- Climbing the ladder -- Rhee's choice : your union or 130,000 dollars -- Turning around the USS Gates -- The new Democrats -- Two returns to the classroom -- Wake up, Obama just talked about you -- Inside baseball -- What do you guys think you could do with a hundred billion? -- The chosen four -- They'll do backflips -- Things I can't change from this building -- Widgets -- Agreement in Pittsburgh -- The opposite of venture capital -- Outcomes, not achievement -- Obfuscating the issue, fooling the reviewers -- A shriek on Park Avenue -- The Feinberg gambit -- School reform : the movie -- Firing everyone -- My baby is reading -- Going over to the other side -- A baffling round one -- Varnish on a sinking ship -- Two winners -- Back on the horse in Colorado -- Billionaires trapped in an elevator -- Rhee's breakthrough -- He met with everyone -- A New York breakthrough or mirage? -- Rocky Mountain high -- Honored, humbled, hopeful, and horrified -- She's deKlerk in South Africa. We have to help her. -- The quiet revolution -- Teach like your hair's on fire -- Klein's and Mulgrew's wonderful negotiation -- From inside baseball to public accountability -- Arne, here's the column you've been missing -- Soaring dreams, street-level politics -- Rhee rejected -- I'll email your dad and tell him -- The Mujahideen and the moderates -- Punch, counterpunch -- A marathon, not a sprint.