American Industry Wisdom Taking On Schools and American Classrooms

I’ll bet most (all?) of the big-time school reform outfits today are headed by people who have not read more than one or two of the 100 books I recommended at the end of "In Schools We Trust." They have no idea that their latest gimmicks have been tried before. In 1971, the Center for Urban Education published a book called "Education and Jobs" by Ivar Berg. It’s controversial, outrageous, and worth reading if that subject interests you. In 1974, David Tyack wrote "The One Best System." Worth a read if one's current pursuit is “systemic” replication. I spent the summer before opening CPESS curled up with "The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform" by Seymour Sarason. Right or wrong, these are works that anyone tackling the same issues today and claiming to seek a new paradigm for solving them ought to be aware of. Then there are the works of Meier and Ravitch, of course.

Read whole history.

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