Reader recommendation: The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.
January 18, 2011
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch explains EXACTLY what I am seeing on the ground. As an educator working in the trenches – elementary schools where 99% of the children fall under the poverty line and English is not their first language – the book spoke to my frustration with "Education Leaders" who have never actually taught in the classroom or did so and bailed, and are making policy that doesn't make sense. I applaud Ravitch for having the humility to take back what she has said in the past.