Education Reform

From the director of Race to Nowhere, the popular 2010 documentary on our education system that has become a long-running grassroots phenomenon, and a new film, Beyond Measure, comes a groundbreaking audiobook for parents, students, and educators on how to revolutionize learning, prioritize children's health, and reenvision success for a lifetime.

Unsere Kinder, die heute eingeschult werden, gehen im Jahr 2070 in Rente. Doch wir überfrachten sie mit Wissensstoff, den sie für ihr Leben kaum brauchen...

Educators all over the country are waking to a collective realization: The hope and compassion they have for their students is not enough to counteract the inequitable policies and practices of the school system. Students and communities who have been historically disenfranchised along lines of race and disability continue to face predictable barriers to opportunity and independence. In Build Equity, Join Justice, the authors present a new path forward that leads away from deficit-focused policies and toward strengths-based practices.

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.

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.

In 1971, Cynthia Solomon and Seymour Papert published Twenty Things to Do with a Computer, a revolutionary document that would set the course of education for the next fifty years and beyond. This book, Twenty Things to Do with a Computer Forward 50, is a celebration of the vision set forth by Papert and Solomon a half-century ago. Four dozen experts from around the world invite us to consider the original provocations, reflect on their implementation, and chart a course for the future through personal recollections, learning stories, and imaginative scenarios. Twenty Things to Do with a ...

Saving Schools traces the story of the rise, decline, and potential resurrection of American public schools through the lives and ideas of six mission-driven reformers: Horace Mann, John Dewey, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Shanker, William Bennett, and James Coleman. Yet schools did not become the efficient, egalitarian, and high-quality educational institutions these reformers envisioned. Indeed, the unintended consequences of their legacies shaped today's flawed educational system.

Even with a high school diploma or bachelor’s degree, you may still be uneducated in the most important aspects of your life...Do you have this burning and unquenchable feeling that, even with all your years of being taught how to live and what to think and do, you still don’t actually know much about the things you need to know about? The truth is, the education system of our westernised economic and political sphere doesn’t prepare us for the real challenges of life - it simply guides us into becoming a “successful” employee.

Drawing on nearly three decades in education - from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in DC - How Schools Work follows Arne as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama's Cabinet.”

For more than a generation, American education has been structured as though it was built of and for concepts, not people. This has transformed education into a vast assessment, scoring, and ranking enterprise; a sales platform for high-tech entrepreneurs; and a fiercely competitive arena of advantage and status that grinds the poor and propels the middle class into debt. In When the Light Goes On, educator Mike Rose features the stories of people of all ages and backgrounds to illuminate how education has added meaning to their lives.

In this down-to-earth guide, Dr. Gillian Parekh unpacks the realities of how ability and disability play out within schooling, including insights from students, teachers, and administrators about the barriers faced by students on the basis of ability. From the challenges with ability testing to gifted programs to the disability rights movement, Parekh shows how ableism is inextricably linked to other forms of bias. Her book is a powerful tool for educators committed to justice-seeking practices in schools.

Educational equity is more than an image. It is more than being able to watch a baseball game while standing on boxes. To frame it as such oversimplifies the complexities associated with this term.

In Thinking Differently, David Flink, the leader of Eye to Eye - a national mentoring program for students with learning and attention issues - enlarges our understanding of the learning process and offers powerful, innovative strategies for parenting, teaching, and supporting the 20 percent of students with learning disabilities. An outstanding fighter who has helped thousands of children adapt to their specific learning issues, Flink understands the needs and experiences of these children firsthand.

In The Courageous Classroom, community psychiatrist Dr. Janet Taylor and nationally acclaimed educator Jed Dearybury deliver a concise and insightful take on the culture of fear in schools around the country. You'll learn about the various ways fear is present in students and educators, practical tools and strategies for educators to cope with fear and anxiety in the classroom, the reality of racism, homophobia, and microaggressions and their impact on learning, and how to create a landscape of calm in your classroom.

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.

We’re used to assuming that politics stop at the classroom door. Those days are over. Are your kids being indoctrinated in school? Unfortunately, it’s increasingly likely. From “social justice” to critical race theory, and from advocacy and activism campaigns to planned “action weeks", teachers and schools nationwide are abandoning neutrality in the classroom, embracing political agendas and partisan aims, and expecting students to get on board.

Blended learning has the power to reinvent education, but the transition requires a new approach to learning and a new skillset for educators. Loaded with research and examples, Blended Learning in Action demonstrates the advantages a blended model has over traditional instruction when technology is used to engage students both inside the classroom and online.

Siguiendo los pasos de Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault y Paul K. Feyerabend, Espíritus del presente crea un amplio panorama de las ideas de la posguerra en Occidente. Wolfram Eilenberger ofrece un relato cautivador de los albores de una nueva ilustración que conduce directamente a las fallas de nuestro tiempo.

After decades of off-shoring, downsizing, shuttered factories, and stranded blue collar workers, the United States is on the edge of an industrial renaissance. This is news that would have seemed beyond improbable even a decade ago, but companies like Motorola Mobility, Apple, BMW, Bosch, and Volkswagen are opening plants and committing millions of dollars to build new products here.

In When Grit Isn't Enough, Nathan investigates five assumptions that inform our ideas about education today, revealing how these beliefs mask systemic inequity. Seeing a rift between these false promises and the lived experiences of her students, she argues that it is time for educators to face these uncomfortable issues head-on and explores how educators can better serve all students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don't disadvantage students on the basis of race or income.