Education Philosophy

Paper Belt on Fire is the unlikely account of how two outsiders with no experience in finance—a charter school principal and defrocked philosopher—start a venture capital fund to short the higher education bubble. Against the contempt of the education establishment, they discover, mentor, and back the leading lights in the next generation of dropout innovators and in the end make their investors millions. Can such a madcap strategy help renew American creativity? This story is the behind-the-scenes romp of one team that threw educational authorities into a panic.

Baltimore City Public Schools is one of America’s largest and most funded school systems. Yet, historically, it is among the lowest performing. In 2024, despite a $1.7 billion budget, just 10% of students tested proficient in math. Investigative journalist Chris Papst follows the money to uncover why students continue to fail within a school system that’s failing Baltimore. Failure Factory shines a critical light on America’s public education system by exposing what’s really happening inside classrooms and behind administrative doors.

There are three things that every teacher must do: mark work, plan lessons and teach students well. Mark. Plan. Teach. 2.0 shows how each stage of the teaching process informs the next, building a cyclical framework that underpins everything that teachers do. Every idea in Mark. Plan. Teach. 2.0 can be implemented by all primary and secondary teachers at any stage of their career and will genuinely improve practice.

We’re used to assuming that politics stop at the classroom door. Those days are over. Are your kids being indoctrinated in school? Unfortunately, it’s increasingly likely. From “social justice” to critical race theory, and from advocacy and activism campaigns to planned “action weeks", teachers and schools nationwide are abandoning neutrality in the classroom, embracing political agendas and partisan aims, and expecting students to get on board.

We’re asking the wrong question. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is no longer serving our students. This question perpetuates the myth that all students need to pick one job title—for life. The world has changed. The information age has created thousands of career possibilities. Artificial intelligence is causing major disruptions in almost every industry, and will bring about seismic shifts in the way we work. To prepare students for this new reality, we need a different approach.

In business and in life, handing over the reins to others is inevitable. Everyone will eventually leave their team, retire from being the CEO, or see their kids leave home and lead their own lives. Leading from the Jumpseat enables us to embrace this inevitability. Leading from the Jumpseat is a metaphor for how we can choose to lead.

Best-selling author Richard E. Rubenstein brings the past to life in this engrossing story of social, religious, and scientific revolution during one of the darkest periods in European history. When a group of Dark Ages scholars rediscovered the works of Aristotle, the great thinker's ideas ignited a firestorm of enlightened thought. This is the endlessly fascinating account of the pivotal period in history when the modern era took root.

More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years - during the so-called Wall Street era of for - profit colleges.

When Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age appeared in 1967, it rocked the education world. Based on the Rhodes Scholar’s first year of teaching in Boston’s Black community, the book described the abuse and neglect of children for no reason but the color of their skin. Since that National Book Award-winning volume, Kozol has spent more than fifty years visiting with children and working with their teachers in other deeply troubled and unequal public schools.

With its practical advice and compassionate tone, The Myth of Laziness shows parents how to nurture their child's strengths and improve their classroom productivity. Most important, it shows how correcting these problems in childhood will help children live a fulfilling and productive adult life.

The themes of the history of Cuba are as vast as they are inspiring. Cuba has stared death in the face throughout its rocky history, and most of the time it has gazed into the eyes of death and smiled. Over and over, oppressors have attempted to seize this island and its riches for their own selfish purposes. And over and over, revolutions have risen up to conquer in an attempt to return Cuba to its people. The story of Cuba is a tale of courage and sacrifice, of horrific oppression and inspiring vision.

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved.

This book displays the striking creativity and profound insight that characterized Freire's work to the very end of his life—an uplifting and provocative exploration not only for educators, but also for all that learn and live.

Everybody was rooting for Jonathan Conyers after seeing his profile on Humans of New York went viral and sparked millions in donations to the Brooklyn Debate League. The kid who went from struggling to read to being a breakout star on his high school debate team, thanks to a life-changing friendship with his transgender debate coach, captured the heart of America. Jonathan’s story highlights the important role teachers play in opening up worlds of opportunity for the most vulnerable students.

From one of the foremost authorities on education and the history of education in the United States, Slaying Goliath is an impassioned, inspiring look at the ways in which parents, teachers, and activists are successfully fighting back to defeat the forces that are trying to privatize America’s public schools.

Higher education has seen better days. Harsh budget cuts, the precarious nature of employment in college teaching, and political hostility to the entire enterprise of education have made for an increasingly fraught landscape. Radical Hope is an ambitious response to this state of affairs, at once political and practical - the work of an activist, teacher, and public intellectual grappling with some of the most pressing topics at the intersection of higher education and social justice.

The 5th Anniversary Edition of Generation iY is one book every parent, educator, coach, and youth worker should read. Over 100,000 adults have benefitted from Tim Elmore's insights in the first edition of this landmark book, which has now been updated and expanded to include new research, stories, practical solutions, and two bonus chapters to help adults connect with today's teens and young adults. It is no longer accurate to refer to Generation Y as one collective demographic.

The promise of public education is excellence for all. But that promise has seldom been kept for low-income children of color in America. In How the Other Half Learns, teacher and education journalist Robert Pondiscio focuses on Success Academy, the network of controversial charter schools in New York City founded by Eva Moskowitz, who has created something unprecedented in American education: a way for large numbers of engaged and ambitious low-income families of color to get an education for their children that equals and even exceeds what wealthy families take for granted.

From best-selling author Paul Tough, an indelible and explosive book on the glaring injustices of higher education, including unfair admissions tests, entrenched racial barriers, and crushing student debt. Now updated and expanded for the pandemic era. Combining vivid and powerful personal stories with deep, authoritative reporting, Paul Tough explains how we got into this mess and explores the innovative reforms that might get us out.

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education warned, “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” Forty years later, are things better or worse? This book shares forty examples of how poorly today’s government schools are doing to show that the “rising tide of mediocrity” has created a tsunami of low expectations and poor performance, suggesting the need for alternative solutions.