The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?

Dale Russakoff · 246 pages

"Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Christie, and Cory Booker were ready to reform our failing schools. They got an education. When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools -- and to solve the education crisis in every city in America -- it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their pla

Among Schoolchildren

Tracy Kidder · 340 pages

Year-long case study of a fifth-grade Holyoke, Massachusetts, teacher and her class.

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

Jonathan Kozol · 262 pages

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Paul Tough · 256 pages

Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in this book the author argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-con

The Death Class: A True Story About Life

Erika Hayasaki · 275 pages

A journalist details how Norma Bowe, the professor of a popular class on the stages of dying, death, and bereavement at Kean University in New Jersey, shows her students how to truly heal and live their lives through contemplating the end.

High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student

Jeremy Iversen · 455 pages

"As unreal as everything else had been, the locker was positively ethereal. It glinted in the sun, vivid neon Mirador green, number 6340. I approached it cautiously, hardly daring to think. By the laws of fate and time, I wasn't supposed to have a locker at a Southern California high school. I was supposed to hang my wet tan overcoat by the umbrella stand in a gray stone tower on Wall Street. I kn

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools

Steven Brill · 496 pages

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America's failure to educate its children and points the way to reversing that failure. Brill's vivid narrative -- filled with unexpected twists and turns -- takes us from the Oval Office, where President Obama signs off on an unprecedented plan that will infuriate t

The Gatekeepers : Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College

Jacques Steinberg · 323 pages

A riveting, behind-the-scenes look at how a top college picks the best of the lotIn the fall of 1999, New York Times education reporter Jacques Steinberg was given an unprecedented opportunity to observe the admissions process at prestigious Wesleyan University. Over the course of nearly a year, Steinberg accompanied admissions officer Ralph Figueroa on a tour to assess and recruit the most promis

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education

Christopher Emdin · 220 pages

"Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, a prominent scholar offers a new approach to teaching and learning for every stakeholder in urban education. Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in science classrooms as a young man of color, Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on and approach to teaching in urban schools. Putting forth his theory of Reality

We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

Myles Horton, Paulo Freire · 276 pages

Train Go Sorry

Leah Hager Cohen · 296 pages

"Train go sorry" is the American Sign Language expression for "missing the boat." Indeed, missed connections characterize many interactions between the deaf and hearing worlds, including the failure to recognize that deaf people are members of a unique culture. In this intimate chronicle of Lexington School for the Deaf, Leah Hager Cohen brings this extraordinary culture to life and captures a piv

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education

John Taylor Gatto · 104 pages

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

Richard Arum, Josipa Roksa · 265 pages

A statistical analysis of survey responses, transcript data, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment to determine how well students learn during their first few years of college. The analysis shows almost half the students surveyed show no significant improvement in skills such as critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. The analysis goes on to consider possible causes for this educatio

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

Ron Suskind · 390 pages

At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it

A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn't in Providing an Excellent Education for All

Wendy Kopp · 229 pages

America's failure to educate millions of children is a crisis that strikes at our fundamental ideals and health as a nation. Since 1990, Teach For America has been building a movement to end educational inequity in America. Now its founder, Wendy Kopp, shares the lessons learned from the experiences of more than 25,000 teachers and alumni who have taught and led schools in low-income communities .

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

Leonard Sax · 309 pages

Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul

Edward Humes · 380 pages

What should we teach our children about where we come from?Is evolution good science? Is it a lie? Is it incompatible with faith?Did Charles Darwin really say man came from monkeys? Have scientists really detected "intelligent design"—evidence of a creator—in nature?What happens when a town school board decides to confront such questions head-on, thrusting its students, then an entire community, o

Some factors related to the self concept of black sixth graders in the Boston public schools

Charles Mayoh Yeager, Harvard University. Graduate School of Education · 206 pages

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

Malcolm Gladwell · 410 pages

"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children

Lisa Delpit · 234 pages

The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men

Christina Hoff Sommers · 262 pages

"Christina Hoff Sommers analyzes the work of the leading academic experts, Carol Gilligan and William Pollack, and finds it lacking in scientific rigor. There is no girl crisis, says Sommers. Girls are outperforming boys academically, and girls' self-esteem is no different from boys'. Boys lag behind girls in reading and writing ability, and they are less likely to go to college.". "The "girl cri

Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

Kelly Gallagher · 160 pages

The Closing of the American Mind

Allan Bloom · 400 pages

A discourse on late 20th century American students' mind and soul, and the damage done by the elite universities' turn from the eternal verities as outlined by Socrates-Plato-Aristotle, Shakespeare and Rousseau.