Education Reform

Do you need parenting advice on how to inspire your child to love learning? Whether you homeschool, or send your kids to public or private school, this is essential listening for your situation. Why? Because schooling has become a disaster. Your child's interests and uniqueness are disregarded, and structured curriculum and standards like Common Core place them on a conveyor belt that treats all children the same. This system crushes a child's curiosity. Your child deserves better!

Why our current system of higher education is financially and morally unsustainable and how to address the crisis with the creative implementation of digital technologies. For too long, our system of higher education has been defined by scarcity: scarcity in enrollment, scarcity in instruction, and scarcity in credentials. In addition to failing students professionally, this system has exacerbated social injustice and socioeconomic stratification across the globe.

Bringing Up Bébé meets Last Child in the Woods in this lively, insightful memoir about a mother who sets out to discover if the nature-centric parenting philosophy of her native Scandinavia holds the key to healthier, happier lives for her American children.

How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embed­ded in these countries for one year.

The American Dream—the promise of opportunity, upward mobility, and a better life—is slipping through our fingers, and higher education is at the heart of its unraveling. For generations, colleges and universities were the great equalizers, the engines of opportunity that turned aspirations into achievements. But today, that promise feels broken. Skyrocketing tuition, crushing student debt, and academic programs out of step with the workforce have turned what should be a bridge to a better future into a daunting and uncertain gamble. This book dives deep into the urgent question: What ...

In this best-selling expose of national policy gone wrong, America's foremost historian of education, Diane Ravitch, renounces her support for reform policies implemented over the past decade that she says are wrecking America's cherished tradition of public education.

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.

In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers", challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small.

As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than "implementing fast and learning slow," they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to "learn fast to implement well.

It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal - that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding - reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream.

In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award-winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better "cultural transmitters" in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and "other people's children" struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system.

Why Higher Education is Failing—and How We Can Save It Higher education and corporate America have more in common than you might think. In corporate boardrooms, success is measured in dollars and cents; in universities, the currency is student success. Both systems rise and fall on the strength of their leadership. And in both, when leadership falters, chaos follows. Right now, higher education in the United States is at a breaking point. Institutions entrusted with shaping the future are often sabotaged from within—by self-serving leaders more focused on climbing ladders and building ...

Education has always been the cornerstone of human progress, a beacon guiding societies toward enlightenment and growth. But what happens when this beacon loses its way? In "This is NOT Education: Rethinking the Educational System," acclaimed author and philosopher Waleed Mahmud offers a bold and transformative critique of our current educational paradigms. Drawing on historical insights from Plato, Confucius, and John Dewey, Waleed ventures into the deep disconnect between modern education’s utilitarian focus and its deeper mission of fostering ethical, creative, and critically thinking ...

Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance.

In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began 30 years ago with his classic best seller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on “child-centered learning”. History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula.

As the revenues generated by big-time college sports continue to skyrocket, virtually all of the debate involves whether (and how much) student-athletes should be paid for play. Kenneth L. Shropshire and Collin D. Williams Jr., argue that "student" has to come first: the focus should be on prioritizing a meaningful education. They draw on new research to reveal that it has become increasingly difficult for college athletes to balance school and sports, much less a social life, leading to serious economic, professional, and emotional consequences for young people.

Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school.

Discover the enduring legacy of one of America's most influential thinkers in Understanding John Dewey: A Complete Guide to Progressive Education, Pragmatism, and the Power of Democratic Learning. This comprehensive and accessible guide dives deep into the life, ideas, and impact of John Dewey—philosopher, educator, reformer, and champion of democracy. Perfect for educators, students, lifelong learners, and anyone interested in philosophy or educational theory, this book explores Dewey’s groundbreaking work in pragmatism, experiential learning, critical thinking, ethics, aesthetics, and...

In 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown decision ended segregated schooling in the United States, but regrettably, as documented in congressional testimony and transcripts, it also ended the careers of a generation of highly qualified and credentialed Black teachers and principals. In the Deep South and northern border states over the decades following Brown, Black schools were illegally closed and Black educators were displaced en masse. By engaging with the complicated legacy of the Brown decision, Leslie T. Fenwick illuminates a crucial chapter in education history.

Boldly honest, wryly funny, and utterly open-hearted, Uneducated is one diploma-less journalist’s map of our growing educational divide and, ultimately, a challenge: in our credential-obsessed world, what is the true value of a college degree? For Christopher Zara, this is the professional minefield he has had to navigate since the day he was kicked out of his New Jersey high school for behavioral problems and never allowed back.