Offering a fresh take on the endless battles over school reform, in Beyond the Education Wars journalist, bestselling author, and business professor Andrea Gabor argues that despite being championed by the likes of Bill Gates and Eli Broad, the market-based changes and carrot-and-stick incentives informing today's school reforms are out of sync with the nurturing culture that good schools foster - and at odds with the best practices of thriving twenty-first-century companies as well. A welcome exception to the doom-and-gloom canon of education reform, Beyond the Education Wars makes clear that what's needed is not more grand ideas, but practical ways to grow the great ones schools already have.

“The education wars have been demoralizing for teachers. . . . After the Education Wars helps us to see a better way forward.” —Cathy N. Davidson, The New York Times Book Review “After the Education Wars is an important book that points the way to genuine reform.” —Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error and The Death and Life of the Great American School System A bestselling business journalist critiques the top-down approach of popular education reforms and profiles the unexpected success of schools embracing a nimbler, more democratic entrepreneurialism In an entirely fresh take on school reform, business journalist and bestselling author Andrea Gabor argues that Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and other leaders of the prevailing education-reform movement have borrowed all the wrong lessons from the business world. After the Education Wars explains how the market-based measures and carrot-and-stick incentives informing today's reforms are out of sync with the nurturing culture that good schools foster and—contrary to popular belief—at odds with the best practices of thriving twenty-first-century companies as well. These rich, detailed stories of real reform in action illustrate how enduring change must be deeply collaborative and relentlessly focused on improvement from the grass roots up—lessons also learned from both the open-source software and quality movements. The good news is that solutions born of this philosophy are all around us: from Brockton, Massachusetts, where the state's once-failing largest high school now sends most graduates to college, to Leander, Texas, a large district where school improvement, spurred by the ideas of quality guru W. Edwards Deming, has become a way of life. A welcome exception to the doom-and-gloom canon of education reform, After the Education Wars makes clear that what's needed is not more grand ideas, but practical and informed ways to grow the best ones that are already transforming schools.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

Written tests to evaluate students were a radical and controversial innovation when American educators began adopting them in the 1800s. Testing quickly became a key factor in the political battles during this period that gave birth to America's modern public school system. William J. Reese offers a richly detailed history of an educational revolution that has so far been only partially told. Single-classroom schools were the norm throughout the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century. Pupils demonstrated their knowledge by rote recitation of lessons and were often assessed according to criteria of behavior and discipline having little to do with academics. Convinced of the inadequacy of this system, the reformer Horace Mann and allies on the Boston School Committee crafted America's first major written exam and administered it as a surprise in local schools in 1845. The embarrassingly poor results became front-page news and led to the first serious consideration of tests as a useful pedagogic tool and objective measure of student achievement. A generation after Mann's experiment, testing had become widespread. Despite critics' ongoing claims that exams narrowed the curriculum, ruined children's health, and turned teachers into automatons, once tests took root in American schools their legitimacy was never seriously challenged. Testing Wars in the Public Schools puts contemporary battles over scholastic standards and benchmarks into perspective by showcasing the historic successes and limitations of the pencil-and-paper exam.

What does the term 'school choice' mean to you? Opponents of parental choice have muddied its definition, misleading parents and educators and drawing public debate away from the core issues. In a book geared for anyone who wants to better understand this hotly contested topic, Merrifield clarifies the proposals in existence today, defining the key concepts related to choice. Arguing for a competitive education industry, he discusses policy and political strategy mistakes while suggesting corrections. This informative book covers government regulation issues, typical fallacies, diversity issues, private voucher initiatives, and experiments and empirical evidence about competition.

Discusses how school choice, misapplied standards of accountability, the No Child Left Behind mandate, and the use of a corporate model have all led to a decline in public education and presents arguments for a return to strong neighborhood schools and quality teaching.

"Teaching About the Wars breaks the curricular silence on the U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Even though the United States has been at war continuously since just after 9/11, sometimes it seems that our schools have forgotten. This collection of insightful articles and hands-on lessons shows that teachers have found ways to prompt their students to think critically about big issues. Here is the best writing from Rethinking Schools magazine on war and peace in the 21st century."--Publisher's website.

A Washington Post Bestseller An entirely fresh approach to ending the high school dropout crisis is revealed in this groundbreaking chronicle of unprecedented transformation in a city notorious for its "failing schools" In eighth grade, Eric thought he was going places. But by his second semester of freshman year at Hancock High, his D's in Environmental Science and French, plus an F in Mr. Castillo's Honors Algebra class, might have suggested otherwise. Research shows that students with more than one semester F during their freshman year are very unlikely to graduate. If Eric had attended Hancock—or any number of Chicago's public high schools—just a decade earlier, chances are good he would have dropped out. Instead, Hancock's new way of responding to failing grades, missed homework, and other red flags made it possible for Eric to get back on track. The Make-or-Break Year is the largely untold story of how a simple idea—that reorganizing schools to get students through the treacherous transitions of freshman year greatly increases the odds of those students graduating—changed the course of two Chicago high schools, an entire school system, and thousands of lives. Marshaling groundbreaking research on the teenage brain, peer relationships, and academic performance, journalist turned communications expert Emily Krone Phillips details the emergence of Freshman OnTrack, a program-cum-movement that is translating knowledge into action—and revolutionizing how teachers grade, mete out discipline, and provide social, emotional, and academic support to their students. This vivid description of real change in a faulty system will captivate anyone who cares about improving our nation's schools; it will inspire educators and families to reimagine their relationships with students like Eric, and others whose stories affirm the pivotal nature of ninth grade for all young people. In a moment of relentless focus on what doesn't work in education and the public sphere, Phillips's dramatic account examines what does.

An incisive overview of the current debate over the teaching of history in American schools examines the setting of controversial standards for history education, the integration of multiculturalism and minorities into the curriculum, and ways to make history more relevant to students. Reprint.

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.