Like many who are sickened by low graduation rates and sub-basement test scores, I have been outraged at the way the teachers’ unions–both LA’s and the statewide union (and those in a lot of other states)—have been unforgivably obstructive when it comes to school reform.
Thus I was excited when I saw that Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools by Steven Brill, was featured on the cover of the NY York Times Book Review, knowing that it would bring a lot of buyers to what promised to be an important book on the utterly essential topic of what is standing in the way of fixing the nation’s schools.
But it was with a sinking heart that I finished the review by smart cookie writer Sara Mosle, who was also clearly excited by Brill’s book—until she read it.
Mosle’s disappointment is obvious as she points out Brill’s unwillingness to include pesky facts and inconvenient complexities that don’t support his one-villain thesis.
Here’s how the review opens:
Steven Brill is a graduate of Yale Law School and the founder of Court TV, and in his new book, “Class Warfare,” he brings a sharp legal mind to the world of education reform. Like a dogged prosecutor, he mounts a zealous case against America’s teachers’ unions. From more than 200 interviews, he collects the testimony of idealistic educators, charter school founders, policy gurus, crusading school superintendents and billionaire philanthropists. Through their vivid vignettes, which he pieces together in short chapters with titles like “ ‘Colorado Says Half of You Won’t Graduate’ ” and “A Shriek on Park Avenue,” Brill conveys the epiphanies, setbacks and triumphs of a national reform movement.
Some of his subjects, like Wendy Kopp of Teach for America, are by now household names; others, like Jon Schnur, an adviser to the Clinton and Obama administrations, are more obscure. But in Brill’s telling, they have all come, over some two decades, to distrust or denounce the unions and to promote the same small set of reforms: increasing the number of charter schools and evaluating and improving teacher quality through merit pay and other measures that rely heavily on student test scores.
Throughout, Brill reminds us he’s just an objective reporter. Disinterested, however, is not how he comes across. He recounts an educator’s motto to “teach like your hair’s on fire.” For most of the book, Brill writes like his hair is on fire. His sympathies clearly lie with the unions’ most adamant critics, like Michelle Rhee, the controversial former superintendent of the District of Columbia public schools, and Joel Klein, the combative ex-chancellor of the New York City system.
I say this as someone whom Brill might pick for a jury pool. I taught for three years in New York as a charter member of Teach for America and had my own run-ins with the union. (An article I wrote, which praised Kopp’s then-fledgling organization and made some of the same criticisms Brill does, angered my union representative.) This fall, my daughter will be attending public school, and I’ll be teaching at a private, reform-minded urban academy in New Jersey…..
For those who are interested in school reform there is no question that Class Warfare is a must read. However, judging by what Mosle has written—which seems to ring sadly true—reading it may make many of us wish that Brill’s book was a better, less choir-preaching read.