"The education wars have been demoralizing for teachers. . . . After
the Education Wars helps us to see a better way forward."
--Cathy N. Davidson, The New York Times Book Review
"After the Education Wars is an important book that points the way to
genuine reform."
--Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error and The Death and Life of
the Great American School System
A bestselling business journalist critiques the top-down approach of
popular education reforms and profiles the unexpected success of schools
embracing a nimbler, more democratic entrepreneurialism
In an entirely fresh take on school reform, business journalist and
bestselling author Andrea Gabor argues that Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and
other leaders of the prevailing education-reform movement have borrowed
all the wrong lessons from the business world. After the Education
Wars explains how the market-based measures and carrot-and-stick
incentives informing today's reforms are out of sync with the nurturing
culture that good schools foster and--contrary to popular belief--at
odds with the best practices of thriving twenty-first-century companies
as well.
These rich, detailed stories of real reform in action illustrate how
enduring change must be deeply collaborative and relentlessly focused on
improvement from the grass roots up--lessons also learned from both the
open-source software and quality movements. The good news is that
solutions born of this philosophy are all around us: from Brockton,
Massachusetts, where the state's once-failing largest high school now
sends most graduates to college, to Leander, Texas, a large district
where school improvement, spurred by the ideas of quality guru W.
Edwards Deming, has become a way of life.
A welcome exception to the doom-and-gloom canon of education reform,
After the Education Wars makes clear that what's needed is not more
grand ideas, but practical and informed ways to grow the best ones that
are already transforming schools.
