Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence
Straightforward and hard-hitting, Rochester (Between Two Epochs:  What's Ahead for America, the World, and Global Politics in the  21st Century), a political scientist who has spent 30 years  teaching and writing about international relationships, takes on  America's K-to-12 public education. He highlights an inadequate  emphasis on academics in the schools and a systemic collapse of standards. Through a firsthand account, he seeks to encourage  readers to get involved as parents and to become informed  critics of a system in which nonacademic diversions crowd out  academic study and subordinate a commitment to excellence to an  obsession with "equity." In that regard, his discussion of the  move from merit-based ability grouping toward heterogeneous  grouping and lowest-common-denominator education is a model of  clarity and critical thinking. Those who enjoyed Diane Ravitch's  Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms or Sam Wineburg's  Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts will be engaged by  Rochester's well-documented argument. Highly recommended for  education collections in academic and public libraries.Leroy  Hommerding, Fort Myers Beach P.L. Dist., FLCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.