American Public Schools

A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning constitutional law scholar at the University of Chicago (who clerked for Judge Merrick B. Garland, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) gives us an engaging and...

This "provocative and personally searching"memoir follows one mother's story of enrolling her daughter in a local public school (San Francisco Chronicle), and the surprising, necessary lessons she learned with her neighbors. From the time Courtney E. Martin strapped her daughter, Maya, to her...

This book argues that the structure of public education is a key factor in the failure of America's public education system to fulfill the intellectual, civic, and moral aims for which it was created. The book challenges the philosophical basis for the traditional common school model and defends the educational pluralism that most liberal democracies enjoy. Berner provides a unique theoretical pathway that is neither libertarian nor state-focused and a pragmatic pathway that avoids the winner-takes-all approach of many contemporary debates about education.

In 2009, Jim Ostrowski published a book called Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids: What You Need to Know. He urged Americans to pull their kids out immediately. But Americans weren’t ready to listen. Now, 12 years later, after the left-wing takeover of the schools, a record number of school shootings last year and after the two cruel years of the Lockdown, Americans are finally ready to declare that America’s 170-year-old experiment with government schools has failed. In this new sequel, Ostrowski finds that government schools are worse in every way and proposes a bold political ...

An investigative study of the far-right’s attack on education and an on-the-ground look at the parent activist battle, on either side of the debate, to control the future of public schools For well over a century, public schools have been a non-partisan gathering place and vital center of...

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.

Everyone wants: High schoolers to graduate well-prepared for jobs. Improved STEM literacy. Greater achievement for inner-city children. Happiness for all children. So why are liberals spending billions of dollars working against those goals? In Race to the Bottom, Luke Rosiak uncovers the...

One of the greatest American achievements in the 20th century was the creation of public schools and universal education, an ideal now deeply at risk. Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks provides a critical account of the making and unmaking of public education in Cutting School, the first book to foreground how vast racial and economic divides are part and parcel of the push to privatize our education system.

Three Essays on American Public Education: a Critique, a Pedagogy, a Manifesto. Critique: "In America teachers are floor supervisors. They are hired and utilized to get the work done. The work to be done is the creation of students as sausages. We want them to be identically shaped and identically stuffed with the established ingredients in the correct proportions, so that, prepackaged, they may be delivered to the digestion of the economy." Pedagogy: "Based on a lifetime of learning and a career of mainly teaching the “discouraged” learners who are “placed” in one of our “...

This uplifting story of a boys' football team shines light on the under-appreciated virtues that can bloom in impoverished neighborhoods, even as nearby communities exclude them from economic progress. Never Ran, Never Will tells the story of the working-class, mostly black neighborhood of...

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that little Linda Brown couldn't be excluded from a public school because of her race. In that landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the court famously declared that public education must be available to all on equal terms. But 66 years later, many of the best public schools remain closed to all but the most privileged families. Empowered by little-known state laws, school districts draw attendance zones around their best schools, indicating who is, and who isn't, allowed to enroll.

In America’s public schools today, teachers are overwhelmed by the number of students in their classrooms, the challenges of meeting their students’ emotional and academic needs, and the daunting administrative tasks thrust at them. What can be done to inspire teachers to stay the course? How can future generations of teachers be convinced to embark on a career that has meant so much to the advancement of an educated citizenry? Robert Pacilio taught high school English for 32 years and was a teacher of the year in San Diego County. He has written a memoir dedicated to the principle that...

A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education The struggle to desegregate America's schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with...

An insider’s account of the infamous Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal which scapegoated black employees for problems caused by an education reform movement that is increasingly a proxy for corporate greed. In March of 2013, thirty-five black educators in Atlanta Public Schools were...

From an award-winning journalist, a searing exposé of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families -- including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up. In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small...

In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker's experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America.

Many people have said that the top prize in education is graduating students who are knowledgeable of the basics; however, too many of America's public-school children have not reached that level of stability. One of the reasons is too many students are concentrating more on the school environment than on math and science.

As a student named Rick Starr experiences elementary school, middle school, and high school, he learns more about gender roles, psychological isolation, bullying, and apathy than about reading, writing, and arithmetic. After suffering through bad teachers, navigating the social ladder, confronting bullies, and completing countless standardized tests, he has a revelation about public school in America: It's comprised of sex, lies, and scantrons.

A twisty read following an affair between a young female teacher and male boarding school student that fans of Katerina Diamond and Louise Jensen will devour. She’s a teacher. She knows the rules. When recent college graduate Imogene Abney takes a job as a teacher at pricey and exclusive The...

Small town science teacher Keith Bradley climbs into a red Tesla with English teacher Talia Ramin for the field trip of a lifetime. At stake is a missing copy of the Scriptures on gold tablets. At risk is the trust of an ancient order sworn to keep the tablets safe. Talia's archaeologist aunt and uncle may have lost their last clue to artifact thieves. A government ultimatum might undo every lesson they have taught their students about keeping the Word safe. from Chapter Eighteen – “Are You So Selfish?” “What?” Keith jumped up. “What are you saying? We’re supposed to take the ...