2012's Must-Reads About Education In America

Nancy Schniedewind and Mara Sapon-Shevin, veteran educational activists and teachers, collect essays written by educators, parents, and students who are most affected by Washington’s policies such as President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top.

The editors don’t attempt to sugarcoat the issues facing the U.S. public education system in Educational Courage: Resisting the Ambush of Public Education. Publisher’s Weekly notes, “Standout contributors include a master’s degree candidate who had been denied her high school diploma because of a lone failing test score, and a public school teacher who, in a moment of hopelessness, accidentally became the leader of a grassroots campaign for reform. Though there’s much to bemoan about the current state of public education, we also learn there’s much that can be done.”

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Rejuvenated urban areas often offer a lot of perks such as farmers markets, museums, subway access and libraries. Many times, however, a good school is lacking, which means parents often move away. Education analyst Michael J. Petrilli writes in The Diverse Schools Dilemma: A Parent’s Guide to Socioeconomically Mixed Public Schools, “Middle-class or upper-middle-class Gen-X and Gen-Y parents like us embrace the idea of our children living, learning and playing side by side with kids from other cultures and economic backgrounds. But we worry about the potential costs.”

Petrilli offers advice for parents who want to stay in a renewed urban environment, but who struggle with how to find a city school that is academically progressive and right for their child.

Earlier this year, Petrilli gave TakePart five actions urban parents should take to find the right school in their neighborhood.

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Once upon a time, students attended college to learn more about themselves and explore their passions. But Andrew Delbanco argues the idealism of college could become extinct as the focus becomes more on “preprofessional credentials.” As he explores the history of higher education in America, Delbanco gives a defense that a student doesn’t attend college just to get a job, but rather it’s much deeper than that.

As Richard Wolin wrote in The Nation,“In the face of today’s hyper-accelerated, ultra-competitive global society, the preservation of opportunities for self-development and autonomous reflection is a value we underestimate at our peril.”

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