Public Education

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.

A group of children go on a field trip for a guided tour of a public library, where they learn how to find and check out books and other materials.

Everyone has a story to tell. Sharing that story can change you, your community, or even the world. But how do you start? This inspirational guide invites listeners to unlock their truth and share it, whether in a TED talk, a blog post, or a conversation with their loved ones. Storytelling coaches Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen reveal how to embrace the power of personal storytelling in a series of easy steps. Their practical and motivating advice fills this charming audiobook. It's a meaningful gift and a powerful reminder that stories matter.

In Educational Pluralism and American Democracy, education policy expert Ashley Rogers Berner envisions a K-12 education system that serves both the individual and the common good. Calling for education reform that will enable US public schools to fulfill the longstanding promise of American education, Berner proposes a radical reimagining of both the structure and content of US public school systems. She urges policymakers to embrace educational pluralism, an internationally common model in which the government funds diverse types of schools that deliver more universal content.

Americans' current trust in journalists is at a dismayingly low ebb, particularly on the subject of national and international politics. It might be tempting to look back to the mid-twentieth century, when the nation's press corps was a seemingly venerable and monolithic institution that conveyed the official line from Washington with nary a glint of anti-patriotic cynicism. As Kathryn McGarr's City of Newsmen shows, however, the real story of what Cold War-era journalists did and how they did it wasn't exactly the one you'd find in the morning papers.

Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private.

On rare occasions in American history, Congress enacts a measure so astute, so far-reaching, so revolutionary, it enters the language as a metaphor. The Marshall Plan comes to mind, as does the Civil Rights Act. But perhaps none resonates in the American imagination like the G.I. Bill.

Can we fix the Public Education system in America? Written by an educator with broad experience spanning nearly three decades, this new book suggests that it's already too late. Education’s ongoing failures are feeding on themselves, perpetuating the failed system.

Now an insider at The People vs. O. J. Simpson reveals the untold story of the most widely followed trial in American history and the indelible impact it has had on the judiciary, the media, and the public. As the Los Angeles Superior Court's media liaison, Jerrianne Hayslett had unprecedented access to the trial - and met with Judge Lance Ito daily - as she attempted, sometimes unsuccessfully, to mediate between the court and members of the media and to balance their interests.

In 2002, New York City's newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg made a historic announcement: His administration had won control of the city's school system in a first step toward reversing its precipitous decline. In a controversial move, he appointed Joel Klein, an accomplished lawyer from outside the education establishment, to lead this ambitious campaign. Lessons of Hope is Klein's inside account of his eight-year mission of improvement.

Now more than ever, the scientific and medical community is under the microscope and in front of the media. Science matters, and in a post-truth world it’s more important than ever for scientists and physicians to be heard. But there’s a challenge. To get people to listen, you can’t communicate in writing alone anymore. You need to speak up and be seen—onstage, online, and on camera. To do this well you need to master the art of influential speaking, which is something you weren’t taught at university or medical school.

Author Monica Sharma describes how we can source our inner capacities and wisdom to manifest change that embodies universal values such as dignity, compassion, fairness, and courage. Drawing on more than 20 years of work for the United Nations and elsewhere, she presents a radical new approach to transformational leadership, one that creates systems of change where everyone can engage - not just analysts and policy-makers.

Power Shift charts the rise of Latino political power and its impact, from the breakthrough election of the first Mexican American to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949 to today’s leadership of California and its heavyweight role in polarized America. This inspiring story recounts the origins and development of 10 LA-based Latina and Latino leaders who transformed politics and government, forging a progressive political tradition in the process.

Large-scale protests, marches, and demonstrations in cities all over the globe have followed high-profile fatal encounters involving law enforcement and people of color. Citizens have taken to the streets and demanded answers to the chronic problems of police violence and lack of accountability, particularly at the intersection of law enforcement and race in the United States. Many have demanded reform, defunding, and even the outright abolishment of police departments. How did we get here? And what does the future of public safety look like?

Roger Mudd joined CBS in 1961 and rose to fame as the congressional correspondent, covering the historic Senate filibuster debate over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Mudd was there to see Dan Rather going toe-to-toe with the Nixon White House, Marvin Kalb deciphering the State Department, Daniel Schorr bird-dogging Watergate, Lesley Stahl and Connie Chung staking out all the president's men, George Herman presiding over Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer covering the Pentagon like a police reporter.

In Timeless Learning, an award-winning team of leaders, Chief Technology Officer Ira Socol, Superintendent Pam Moran, and Lab Schools Principal Chad Ratliff demonstrate how you can implement innovative practices that have shown remarkable success. The authors use progressive design principles to inform pathways to disrupt traditions of education today and show you how to make real innovations that will have a timeless and meaningful impact on students, keeping alive the natural curiosity and passion for learning with which children enter school.

A FUNNY and useful book for language lovers! There are many grammar and usage books that give advice on correct English. This isn't one of them. The Elements of Expression targets expressiveness as a goal apart from getting it technically right. Imagine the yawns a sportscaster would induce by announcing, "His bat struck the ball and the ball went into the stands," instead of "He took that ball downtown!"

Philanthropy has long been a distinctive feature of American culture, but its crucial role in the economic well-being of the nation - and the world - has remained largely unexplored. Why Philanthropy Matters takes an in-depth look at philanthropy as an underappreciated force in capitalism, measures its critical influence on the free-market system, and demonstrates how American philanthropy could serve as a model for the productive reinvestment of wealth in other countries.

With falling wages and rising inequality, persistent unemployment, failing schools, and broken cities, have America's best days come and gone? In America Needs Talent, Jamie Merisotis, a globally recognized leader in philanthropy, higher education, and public policy, explains why talent is needed to usher in a new era of innovation and success and why deliberate choices must be made by government, the private sector, education, and individuals to grow talent in America.

America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation’s chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what we need to do now to rediscover America and rise to this moment.