A history of 175 years of teaching in America demonstrates that teachers have always borne the brunt of shifting, often impossible expectations. In other nations, public schools are one thread in a quilt that includes free universal childcare, health care, and job training. Here, schools are the whole cloth. Today we look around the world at countries like Finland and South Korea, whose students consistently outscore Americans on standardized tests,...

The controversial author of "The Bell Curve" returns with a groundbreaking manifesto to transform American education. He presents the four simple truths that parents and educators should confront to precipitate change--that ability varies, that half of the children are below average, that too many people are going to college, and that America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. Real Education describes the technological and...

This work looks at why many of America's schools are failing and relates how parents, activists, and education reformers are joining together to fix a system that works for adults but consistently fails the children it is meant to educate. In it the author takes a look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children, and points the way to reversing that failure.

Why School? is a little book driven by big questions. What does it mean to be educated? What is intelligence? How should we think about intelligence, education, and opportunity in an open society? Drawing on forty years of teaching and research, award-winning author Mike Rose reflects on these and other questions related to public schooling in America. He answers them in beautifully written chapters that are both rich in detail and informed by an...

Captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania, in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to their high school biology students about an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design. This idea states that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent...