Education Reform

Jamie Merisotis, author of the award-winning 2016 book America Needs Talent, argues that people will coexist with smart machines by learning, earning, and serving others over their lifetimes. But Merisotis asserts large-scale change is necessary to develop and hone the knowledge, skills, and abilities that render us uniquely human. These qualities include compassion, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and interpersonal communication.

Despite a perfect storm of hostile forces that are robbing children of a healthy childhood, courageous parents and teachers who know what’s best for children are turning the tide. Johann Christoph Arnold, whose books on education, parenting, and relationships have helped more than a million people through life’s challenges, draws on the stories and voices of parents and educators on the ground, and a wealth of personal experience.

In From Reopen to Reinvent, distinguished education strategist Michael B. Horn delivers a provocative and eye-opening call to action for the overthrow of an education system that is not working well for any of its students. Grounded in what educators should build in its place to address the challenges that stem from widespread unmet learning needs, the book walks listeners through the design of a better path forward. It offers a prescriptive and holistic approach to the purpose of schooling, the importance of focusing on mastery for each student, and the ideal use of technology.

Tony Little is the headmaster of Eton. One of the most progressive and imaginative people in British education today, he has hitherto kept a low profile. This title, published to coincide with his retirement, sets out his educational fundamentals. There is a crisis in the British education system. Year on year, GCSE and A Level pupils post better exam results, with more students achieving top grades. Yet business leaders and employers complain bitterly that our schools are not producing people fit for purpose.

In Failure to Disrupt, Justin Reich delivers a sobering report card on the latest supposedly transformative educational technologies. Reich takes listeners on a tour of MOOCs, autograders, computerized "intelligent tutors", and other educational technologies whose problems and paradoxes have bedeviled educators. Learning technologies often provide the greatest benefit to affluent students and do little to combat growing inequality in education. And institutions and investors often favor programs that scale up quickly, but at the expense of true innovation.

A must-hear firsthand exploration of why Asian students are outpacing their American counterparts and how to help our children excel in today’s competitive world.

Children and adults with learning or attention challenges are not broken. They don’t need to be fixed, but they do have some roadblocks to learning as easily and enjoyably as they could. Roadblocks can be removed. A stone can be taken out of a shoe. Neuroscience research and decades of clinical evidence prove that struggles associated with dyslexia and learning disabilities can be eliminated.

Anyone who has ever crammed for a test, capitulated to a grade-grubbing student, or fretted over a child's report card knows that the way we assess student learning in American schools is freighted with unintended consequences. As experts agree, our primary assessment technologies—grading, rating, and ranking—don't actually provide an accurate picture of how students are doing in school. In Off the Mark, Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt explain how we got into this predicament, why we remain beholden to outmoded forms of assessment, and what we can do to change course.

Not so long ago, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. believed universities were worth fighting for. Today, conservatives seem more inclined to burn them down. In Let's Be Reasonable, conservative political theorist and professor Jonathan Marks finds in liberal education an antidote to this despair, arguing that the true purpose of college is to encourage people to be reasonable. Drawing on the ideas of John Locke and other thinkers, Marks presents the case for why, now more than ever, conservatives must not give up on higher education.

Refugee High is a riveting chronicle of the 2017-18 school year at Sullivan High, a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric was at its height in the White House. Even as we follow teachers and administrators grappling with the everyday challenges facing many urban schools, we witness the complicated circumstances and unique education needs of refugee and immigrant children: Alejandro may be deported just days before he is scheduled to graduate; Shahina narrowly escapes an arranged marriage; and Esengo is shot at the beginning of the school year.

The Big Lie About Race in America's Schools delivers a collective response to the challenge of racially charged misinformation, disinformation, and censorship that increasingly permeates and weakens not only US education but also our democracy. Royel Johnson and Shaun Harper bring together leading education scholars and educators to confront the weaponized distortions that are undermining both public education and racial justice. The experts gathered in this work offer strategies to counter these dangerous trends.

Colleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit of wealth and prestige stack the deck in favor of the children of privilege.

In Organizational Betrayal, educational researcher Charol Shakeshaft advocates a system-wide approach for safeguarding K–12 students against educator sexual misconduct. Based on decades of inquiry into cases of student abuse in educational systems, the work reveals that sexual abuse of children in US K–12 schools is more prevalent than we'd like to believe. Examining the root causes and contexts, Shakeshaft concludes that school cultures and institutional structures are often complicit in cases of sexual misconduct.

Making a case for the "fierce urgency of now", this new edition deepens the discussion of race and social justice in education with new and updated material. Aligned with our nation's ever more diverse student population, it speaks to what good teachers know, what they do, and how they embrace culturally responsive teaching. This essential text is widely used in teacher preparation courses and for in-service professional development.

Journalist Jo Napolitano delves into the landmark case in which the School District of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was sued for refusing to admit older, non-English speaking refugees and sending them to a high-discipline alternative school. In a legal battle that mirrors that of the Little Rock Nine and Brown v. Board of Education, 6 brave refugee students fought alongside the ACLU and Education Law Center to demand equal access.

Schools have long meant more than an education in America. Flawed, inequitable, underfunded, and segregated, they remain the most important engine of social mobility and the crucible of our democracy. The cost of closing them for so long during COVID, made with good intentions, has not been fully reckoned with. In The Stolen Year, Anya Kamenetz follows families across the country through the pandemic. She dives deep into the history that brought us to this point, making the case that 2020 wasn't a lost year—it was taken from our children by years of neglect and bad faith.

In Radical Brown, renowned developmental scholar Margaret Beale Spencer and critical legal analyst Nancy E. Dowd offer a fresh perspective on the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Noting that decades of flawed implementation have subverted Brown's great promise of educational equality for K–12 public school students, Spencer and Dowd propose a bold framework for a new interpretation of the Supreme Court decision, one that is inclusive, identity affirming, and culturally sensitive.

A leading scholar-practitioner and ardent proponent of culturally responsive forms of education, Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade aims to settle the debates over whether we should work toward a public education system built on the goal of equality, in which identical resources are provided for all students, or equity, in which different resources are offered in response to differences in student interests and needs.

In his book, Peter Hitchens describes the misjudgements made by politicians over the years that have led to the increase of class distinction and privilege in our education system. This is of course the opposite of what was intended, especially by former Minister of Education Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher, her successor in that role, who closed down many more Grammar Schools than Williams.

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children and points the way to reversing that failure. Brill 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.