Social Reform

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.

What would happen if the systems within our society focused on care and healing instead of growth and profit? In A Case for Compassion: What Happens When We Prioritize People and the Planet, Sara Schairer—a leader in the compassion field—examines five of our most influential systems: education, health care, corrections, law enforcement, and the workplace. Using personal narratives, research, thought-leader interviews, and examples of compassionate institutions, Schairer shows us that compassion can solve many of our society’s most pressing problems. You’ll read inspiring stories ...

Following in the rich traditions in African American cooperative economic and educational thought, teacher-organizer Jay Gillen describes the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP) as a youth-run cooperative enterprise in which young people direct their peers' and their own learning for a wage. BAP and similar enterprises are creating an educational network of empowered, employed students. Gillen argues that this is a proactive political, economic, and educational structure that builds relationships among and between students and their communities.

A lively, clear explanation of the American healthcare reform movement from a noted expert - giving women the tools they need to demand fair and affordable coverage for all people. Founder and CEO of Day Health Strategies Rosemarie Day wants women to recognize their trouble with accessing affordable care as part of a national emergency. Day encourages women throughout the country to share their stories and get involved, and she illustrates how a groundswell of activism, led by everyday women, could create the incentives our political leaders need to change course.

When Wisconsin became the first state in the nation in 1959 to let public employees bargain with their employers, the legislation catalyzed changes to labor laws across the country. In March 2011, when newly elected governor Scott Walker repealed most of that labor law and subsequent ones - and then became the first governor in the nation to survive a recall election fifteen months later - it sent a different message. Both times, Wisconsin took the lead, first empowering public unions and then weakening them.

Chezare A. Warren chronicles the transition of a cohort of young Black males from Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men to their early experiences in higher education. A rich and closely observed account of a mission-driven school and its students, Urban Preparation makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how young males of color can best be served in schools throughout the United States today.

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.

Stoicism, one of the oldest Western philosophical schools, has enchanted scholars and the general public alike for over 2,000 years. Where some accounts of human nature and the particularly human good fall short by the reduction of human being to physical or psychical phenomena, Stoicism's power lies in engaging with the whole range of human experience, addressing rationality, emotion, piety, will, and both inner and outer impressions, each on their own terms, in language that treats each as significant in its own right.

In What's the Point of College?, historian Johann N. Neem offers a new way to think about the major questions facing higher education today, from online education to disruptive innovation to how students really learn. As commentators, reformers, and policymakers call for dramatic change and new educational models, this collection of lucid essays asks us to pause and take stock. What is a college education supposed to be? What kinds of institutions and practices will best help us get there? And which virtues must colleges and universities cultivate to sustain their desired ends?

This is a knock-your-socks-off groundbreaking treatise that is of interest to every thinking adult, and certainly every thinking educator. The author has spent the last 50 years working to establish the most innovative school in the world. His background includes a PhD and work as a professor of history of science.

As the shockwaves of COVID-19 continue to spread, and as the smoke clears from a year of anger and unrest, many people feel forlorn about the future. In End State, James Plunkett argues that this can be a moment not of despair, but of historic opportunity - a chance to rethink, renew and reform some of the most fundamental ways we organise society. In much the same way as societies emerged stronger from crises in the past - building the state as we know it today - we, too, can build a happier future.

Early care and education for many children in the U.S. is in crisis. The period between birth and kindergarten is a critical time for child development, and socioeconomic disparities that begin early in children's lives contribute to starkly different long-term outcomes for adults. Yet, compared to other advanced economies, high-quality child care and preschool in the U.S. are scarce and prohibitively expensive for many middle class and most disadvantaged families.

In Future Driven, David Geurin describes how to conquer the status quo, create authentic learning, and help your students thrive in an unpredictable world. He shares how to simultaneously be more committed to your mission while being more flexible with your methods.

Critical race theory has hijacked the US education system on every level. Parents, students, educators, and policymakers must know and support the truth about American history and reject this divisive and anti-American theory’s obsession with skin color and prejudice.

Despite being the wealthiest nation on earth, the United States spends much of its health-care money and resources pursuing the wrong goal: curing people after they get sick. In this provocative book, Nicholas J. Webb charts a bold new path that puts the focus not on reactionary treatment, but on anticipation and prevention.

America's system of colleges and universities was once the best in the world. It contributed immeasurably to America's status as the most powerful, productive, and prosperous nation on the globe. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. Today from kindergarten through twelfth grade in the government school system, teaching reading, writing, and math have been supplanted by Marxist indoctrination. Our colleges and universities have become the final training grounds and launching pads for the next waves of Marxist activists.

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.

Police who engage in torture are condemned by human rights activists, the media, and people across the world who shudder at their brutality. Stark revelations about torture by American forces at places like Guantanamo Bay have stoked a fascination with torture and debates about human rights. Yet despite this interest, the public knows little about the officers who actually commit such violence. Just Violence reveals the moral perspective of perpetrators and how they respond to human rights efforts.

America has been steadily sliding in global education rankings for decades. In particular, our students are increasingly unable to compete globally in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), in 2010 only 26 percent of high school seniors in the U.S. scored at or above proficient level in math. Another 36 percent were failing.

Losing Control is a vivid history of the past half century of immigration politics and policy. It is also a dramatic ground-level account of how the story took shape. Kammer describes the economic and cultural forces that both pushed millions of migrants from home communities in Latin America and pulled them northward to the US. He shows how the backlash gradually emerged from the frustrations of American workers and communities who felt overwhelmed by the influx and betrayed by their government.