Education Reform

Not so long ago, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. believed universities were worth fighting for. Today, conservatives seem more inclined to burn them down. In Let's Be Reasonable, conservative political theorist and professor Jonathan Marks finds in liberal education an antidote to this despair, arguing that the true purpose of college is to encourage people to be reasonable. Drawing on the ideas of John Locke and other thinkers, Marks presents the case for why, now more than ever, conservatives must not give up on higher education.

Synthesizing cutting-edge research and first-hand reporting, Peg Tyre offers parents far smarter and more sophisticated ways to assess a classroom and decide if the school and the teacher have the right stuff. Passionate and persuasive, The Good School empowers parents to make sense of headlines; constructively engage teachers, administrators, and school boards; and figure out the best options for their children.

In The Courageous Classroom, community psychiatrist Dr. Janet Taylor and nationally acclaimed educator Jed Dearybury deliver a concise and insightful take on the culture of fear in schools around the country. You'll learn about the various ways fear is present in students and educators, practical tools and strategies for educators to cope with fear and anxiety in the classroom, the reality of racism, homophobia, and microaggressions and their impact on learning, and how to create a landscape of calm in your classroom.

Do you need parenting advice on how to inspire your child to love learning? Whether you homeschool, or send your kids to public or private school, this is essential listening for your situation. Why? Because schooling has become a disaster. Your child's interests and uniqueness are disregarded, and structured curriculum and standards like Common Core place them on a conveyor belt that treats all children the same. This system crushes a child's curiosity. Your child deserves better!

The Unteachables examines the overrepresentation of Black students in special education over the course of the twentieth century. As African American children integrated predominantly white schools, many were disproportionately labeled educable mentally retarded (EMR), learning disabled (LD), and emotionally behavioral disordered (EBD). Keith A. Mayes charts the evolution of disability categories and how these labels kept Black learners segregated in American classrooms.

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.

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.

As a teacher in an inner-city school, Lucy Crehan was exasperated with ever-changing government policy claiming to be based on lessons from top-performing education systems. She resolved to find out what was really going on in the classrooms of countries whose teenagers ranked top in the world in reading, maths, and science. Cleverlands documents Crehan's journey around the world, weaving together her experiences with research on policy, history, psychology, and culture to offer extensive new insights into what we can learn from these countries.

Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school.

Different minds learn differently. We must pay attention to individual learning patterns, to individual minds so that we can maximize children's performance in school and in life. In A Mind at a Time, Dr. Levine shows us how.

Witnessing Whiteness invites listeners to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations. The author illustrates how racial discomfort leads white people toward poor relationships with people of color.

Our current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925, when the nation's new universities created grades and departments, majors and minors, in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T. As Cathy Davidson argues in The New Education, this approach to education is wholly unsuited to the era of the gig economy.

From the director of Race to Nowhere, the popular 2010 documentary on our education system that has become a long-running grassroots phenomenon, and a new film, Beyond Measure, comes a groundbreaking audiobook for parents, students, and educators on how to revolutionize learning, prioritize children's health, and reenvision success for a lifetime.

If initiative overload and fragmentation are keeping your best plans from becoming reality, it’s time to lead with coherence. Using the right drivers as your foundation, you’ll bring people and ideas together—and implement the kind of lasting change that maximizes results. The key to success is the Coherence Framework, a dynamic, customizable road map.

Exploding college prices and a flagging global economy, combined with the derring-do of a few intrepid innovators, have created a dynamic climate for a total rethinking of an industry that has remained virtually unchanged for a hundred years. In The End of College, Kevin Carey, an education researcher and writer, draws on years of in-depth reporting and cutting-edge research to paint a vivid and surprising portrait of the future of education.

Award-winning journalist Mike Hixenbaugh delivers the immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children—small classes, dedicated teachers, financial resources, a track record of academic success, and school spirit in abundance.

Using campus social justice movements as an entry point, Leigh Patel shows how the struggles in higher education often directly challenged the tension between narratives of education as a pathway to improvement and the structural reality of settler colonialism that creates and protects wealth for a select few.

Naming names, along with grades and test scores, Golden lays bare a corrupt system in which middle-class and working-class whites and Asian Ameri­cans are routinely passed over in favor of wealthy white students with lesser credentials - children of alumni, big donors, and celebrities. The Price of Admission is a must-listen - for parents and students with a personal stake in college admissions but also for those disturbed by the growing divide between ordinary and privileged Americans.

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.

Named after Mahatma Gandhi's phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree recounts Tooley's journey from the largest shanty town in Africa to the hinterlands of Gansu, China. It introduces listeners to the families and teachers who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves.