num_pages: 256
description: This book merits every Americans serious consideration (Vice President Joe Biden): from the Secretary of Education under President Obama an expos of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids education and threatens our nations future.Education runs on lies. Thats probably not what youd expect from a former Secretary of Education but its the truth. So opens Arne Duncans How Schools Work  although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some Not for Others and Only Now and Then for Kids.Drawing on nearly three decades in educationfrom his mothers after-school program on Chicagos South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington DC How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every gangbangers in Chicago housing projects parents who call him racist teachers who insist they cant help poor kids unions that refuse to modernize Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests and even the NRA which once labeled Arne the most extreme anti-gun member of President Obamas Cabinet. Going to a childs funeral every couple of weeks as he did when he worked in Chicago will do that to a person.How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers from early childhood all the way to college graduation rates. But it also identifies what really does make a school work.As insightful as it is inspiring ( Washington Book Review ) How Schools Work will embolden parents teachers voters and even students to demand more of our public schools. If America is going to be great then we can accept nothing less.
language: English
title: How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation's Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education
publisher: Simon & Schuster