Education Reform

Getting into a top-ranked college has never seemed more impossible, with acceptance rates at some elite universities dipping into the single digits. In Who Gets in and Why, journalist and higher education expert Jeffrey Selingo dispels entrenched notions of how to compete and win at the admissions game and reveals that teenagers and parents have much to gain by broadening their notion of what qualifies as a "good college". Hint: It's not all about the sticker on the car window.

A radical new approach to education for learners of any age How much information is forgotten almost immediately after it is taught? How many students graduate from high school unprepared for careers where lifelong learning is essential to succeed? These problems stem from an educational system...

One hundred and ten years ago, Maria Montessori, the first female physician in Italy, devised a very different method of educating children, based on her observations of how they naturally learn. In Montessori, Angeline Stoll Lillard shows that science has finally caught up with Maria Montessori. Lillard presents the research behind nine insights that are foundations of Montessori education, describing how each of these insights is applied in the Montessori classroom.

E. D. Hirsch, author of The Knowledge Deficit, draws on recent findings in neuroscience and data from France to provide new evidence for the argument that a carefully planned, knowledge-based elementary curriculum is essential to providing the foundations for children's life success and ensuring equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds. In the absence of a clear, common curriculum, Hirsch contends that tests are reduced to measuring skills rather than content, and that students from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot develop the knowledge base to support high achievement.

Drawing on her life’s work, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.

Reform the schools, improve teaching: these battle cries of American education have been echoing for 20 years. So why does teaching change so little? Arguing that too many would-be reformers know nothing about the conflicting demands of teaching, Mary Kennedy takes us into the controlled commotion of the classroom, revealing how painstakingly teachers plan their lessons, and how many different ways things go awry. Teachers try simultaneously to keep track of materials, time, students, and ideas.

A brilliant research mathematician reveals math to be a creative art form on par with painting, poetry, and sculpture, and rejects the standard anxiety-producing teaching methods used in most schools today. Witty and accessible, Paul Lockhart's controversial approach will provoke spirited debate among educators and parents alike, altering the way we think about math forever.

Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics.

In Thinking Differently, David Flink, the leader of Eye to Eye - a national mentoring program for students with learning and attention issues - enlarges our understanding of the learning process and offers powerful, innovative strategies for parenting, teaching, and supporting the 20 percent of students with learning disabilities. An outstanding fighter who has helped thousands of children adapt to their specific learning issues, Flink understands the needs and experiences of these children firsthand.

In this visionary book, Leslie Valiant argues that understanding the nature of our own educability is crucial to safeguarding our future. After breaking down how we process information to learn and apply knowledge, and drawing comparisons with other animals and AI systems, he explains why education should be humankind's central preoccupation. Will the unique capability that has been so foundational to our achievements and civilization continue to drive our progress, or will we fall victim to our vulnerabilities?

An Abundance of Caution is a devastating account of the decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century—the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. David Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence.

Innovation expert Ted Dintersmith took an unprecedented trip across America, visiting all 50 states in a single school year. He originally set out to raise awareness about the urgent need to reimagine education to prepare students for a world marked by innovation, but America's teachers one-upped him. He met teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things. Capturing bold ideas from teachers and classrooms across America, What School Could Be provides a realistic, and profoundly optimistic, roadmap for creating cultures of innovation and real learning in all our schools.

The Math Myth expands Hacker's scrutiny of many widely held assumptions, like the notions that mathematics broadens our minds and that the entire Common Core syllabus should be required of every student. He worries that a frenzied emphasis on STEM is diverting attention from other pursuits and subverting the spirit of the country. In fact, Hacker honors mathematics as a calling (he has been a professor of mathematics) and extols its glories and its goals.

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 first two editions of Finnish Lessons described how a small Nordic nation built a school system that provided access to a world-class education for all of its young people. Now available in 30 languages, this Grawemeyer Award-winning book continues to influence education policies and school practices around the globe. In this third edition, Pasi Sahlberg updates the story of how Finland sustains its exemplary educational performance, including how it responds to turbulent changes at home and throughout the world.

The liberal arts educational system is under attack. Governors in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina have announced that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts. Majors like English and history - which were once very popular and highly respected - are in steep decline, and President Obama has recently advised students to keep in mind that technical training could be more valuable than a degree in art history when deciding on an educational path.

Children and adults with learning or attention challenges are not broken. They don’t need to be fixed, but they do have some roadblocks to learning as easily and enjoyably as they could. Roadblocks can be removed. A stone can be taken out of a shoe. Neuroscience research and decades of clinical evidence prove that struggles associated with dyslexia and learning disabilities can be eliminated.

What would it take to transform industrial-era schools into modern organizations capable of supporting deep learning for all? Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine's quest to answer this question took them inside some of America's most innovative schools and classrooms - places where educators are rethinking both what and how students should learn. The story they tell is alternately discouraging and hopeful. Drawing on hundreds of hours of observations and interviews at 30 different schools, Mehta and Fine reveal that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule.

The Education Myth questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the only, way for Americans to access economic opportunity. As Jon Shelton shows, linking education to economic well-being was not politically inevitable. In the 18th and 19th centuries, for instance, public education was championed as a way to help citizens learn how to participate in a democracy. By the 1930s, public education, along with union rights and social security, formed an important component of a broad-based fight for social democracy.

Chenoweth draws on her decade-long journey into neighborhood schools where low-income students and students of color are learning at unexpectedly high levels to reveal a key ingredient to their success: in one way or another, their leaders have confronted the traditional ways that schools are organized and have adopted new systems, all focused on improvement. In profiles of once-embattled schools, Chenoweth shows how school leaders doggedly reorganized internal systems in order to prioritize teaching and learning, resulting in improved outcomes that in many cases exceeded statewide averages.