Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools [Hardcover]

Steven Brill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 2011

IN a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children—and points the way to reversing that failure.

Brill’s vivid narrative—filled with unexpected twists and turns—takes us from the Oval Office, where President Obama signs off on an unprecedented plan that will infuriate the teachers’ unions because it offers billions to states that win an education reform “contest”; to boisterous assemblies, where parents join the fight over their children’s schools; to a Fifth Avenue apartment, where billionaires plan a secret fund to promote school reform; to a Colorado high school, where students who seemed destined to fail are instead propelled to college; to state capitols across the country, where school reformers hoping to win Obama’s “contest” push bills that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

It’s the story of an unlikely army—fed-up public school parents, Ivy League idealists, hedge-funders, civil rights activists, conservative Republicans, insurgent Democrats—squaring off against unions that the reformers claim are protecting a system that works for the adults but victimizes the children.

Class Warfare is filled with extraordinary people taking extraordinary paths: a young woman who goes into teaching almost by accident, then becomes so talented and driven that fighting burnout becomes her biggest challenge; an antitrust lawyer who almost brought down Bill Gates’s Microsoft and now forms a partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates to overhaul New York’s schools; a naïve Princeton student who launches an army of school reformers with her senior thesis; a California teachers’ union lobbyist who becomes the mayor of Los Angeles and then the union’s prime antagonist; a stubborn young teacher who, as a child growing up on Park Avenue, had been assumed to be learning disabled but ends up co-founding the nation’s most successful charter schools; and an anguished national union leader who walks a tightrope between compromising enough to save her union and giving in so much that her members will throw her out.

Brill not only takes us inside their roller-coaster battles, he also concludes with a surprising prescription for what it will take from both sides to put the American dream back in America’s schools.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Steve Brill has combined extraordinary reporting with smart passion to create one of the most important historical narratives of our era. This inside story of the school reform crusade is an inspiring saga filled with genuine heroes. This is investigative journalism and powerful writing at its best.”

--Walter Isaacson, CEO, Aspen Institute; Board Chair, Teach For America; author of Einstein and Benjamin Franklin

“Education in America is THE national imperative of the 21st century and Steven Brill has done a brilliant job of taking us through the complexities, trials and triumphs, failures and food fights that define the struggle to get it right. We all have a stake in the outcome and owe it to succeeding generations to get involved. Class Warfare is the road map to what that means.”

--Tom Brokaw, journalist and author of The Greatest Generation

“Steven Brill’s Class Warfare is hard-hitting, illuminating, and inspiring. It’s also as fast-paced and gripping as a thriller. His vivid accounts of great teachers at work—and his play-by-play of the battle to remove the obstacles put in front of them by their own union—opened my eyes and changed my outlook about the possibilities for American education. A must-read call to action for all thinking Americans, especially parents.”

--Amy Chua, Yale Law Professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall

“Class Warfare inspires! This is a unique and critically important story about true heroes in America who against great odds are making a real difference. More than this, Brill’s work sheds important light on the savage educational disparities faced by low-income communities across the country and through his work he trumpets what should be a call to action by all of us. Brill is brilliant in his writing and his work will inspire and fortify all those struggling with the challenges of education in America.”

--Cory A. Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ

“An extraordinarily well researched and compelling account of the tectonic shifts in school politics over the past several years. This is a masterpiece, both as history and as a catalyst for continued change. Far from the usual one-sided account the subject typically engenders, Brill's work is balanced, sophisticated—and, amazingly, a real page-turner.”

--Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey

About the Author

Steven Brill is the founder of Journalism Online, a company designed to create a new, viable business model for journalism to flourish online.  He is a feature writer for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and TIME.  Brill founded the Yale Journalism Initiative, which recruits and trains journalists.  He founded and ran Court TV, The American Lawyer Magazine, and Brill's Content Magazine.  He is the author of After: How America Confronted the September 12th Era and The Teamsters.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451611994
• ISBN-13: 978-1451611991
• Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 6.5 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Government     > Public Policy

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Book for Policy Wonks., August 29, 2011

By 

Richard S. Dixon Jr. "Chatham Books" (Chatham, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools (Hardcover)

As a teacher for thirty-five years, I find Brill's book a great discussion of education policy in America. It is not really a book about, or concerning teachers, it's really about the development and administration of education policy. Still, this is a good book for teachers to read; it is a great book for administers to read. At any rate, I recommend it. I find Brill's style very readable and I admire the way he has threaded his way through the maze of issues involved in the world of education. To be sure, teachers' unions come off as huge obstructionists in the development of a workable and modern educational system. They are more concerned with their members than with students. But, that is the job of every union and, remember, without the unions there would not be things called weekends or sick leave or anything else resembling humane treatment of working people. I do not belong to a union, never have (except for a two-year stint working for the US gov't - AFGE). I have had thirty-five one-year contracts (or shorter!). I have been treated fairly and well. Others have not been so lucky. Brill does a good job in portraying the unions as not only obstructionist, but also necessary in this battle. Some charter school folks don't come off so well here, either.

One thing gripes me a bit about many of these characters portrayed here: not one seems to have taught for more than a couple of years, and yet they always know everything about teaching and need to tell everyone how right they are. Even Michelle Rhee, with whom I agree on many things, taught for a couple of years before she called it quits. Setting policy and supervising teachers IS much easier than teaching itself. That, for me, seems to be a quiet subtext of Brill's work.

If you are looking for a book on teaching, this is not the one. Look at the works of Alfie Kohn or Jonathan Kozol. Those are the real experts. But this book is a great history of the mess we find ourselves in wherever there are public schools, teachers' unions and administrators who think they know more than they really do.

45 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Race to the Top, August 23, 2011

By 

templedelasol "leigh32" (Southern California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools (Hardcover)

I loved Stephen Brill's article titled "Super Teachers are Not Enough" (Wall Street Journal), as well as his 'Rubber Room' article in the New Yorker. I did not love this book. It really is just about all the circumstances and people surrounding the Race to the Top bill and implementation. Most of the people he was profiling were millionaires who wanted to 'do good' by supporting ed reform/charter schools. I am a fourth grade public school teacher working in a Southern California barrio/ Title 1 school. It was hard to relate to the hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, and 'Yalies' he profiled. I couldn't help but feel it was all just a game for them and he was the designated cheerleader. I understand he has a pro-reform point of view but when he twice described a simple comment from Randi Weingarten as 'bragging' I felt his ship was dangerously listing to one side. He profiles one educator, Jessica Reid, a charter school teacher and all around teaching goddess. She stuns him by quitting because her lifestyle is not 'sustainable'. He makes a great point at the end that effective teaching is a marathon, not a sprint. I wanted to know more about this and hear from teachers who successfully balanced their lives while remaining effective. I was disappointed in the book overall. It was about as interesting as reading a play by play of a football game and he did not expand enough on his most interesting point (Super Teachers are Not Enough). I preferred The Bee Eater, a bio of Michelle Rhee. It is a much more compelling description of the ed reform movement. I am somewhere in the middle politically: a former NEA union rep who believes strongly in working hard to help my students achieve. I resent lazy teachers when I am working so hard (and we are getting paid the same), but I am also very grateful for my tenure (especially in this economy). I want to understand these issues more fully so that I can anticipate what is coming down the track which may effect my career. To some extent this book met that need, but it may be more interesting to those fascinated by ed policy rather than those in the trenches actually teaching.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Depth Reporting, November 4, 2011

By 

Terr - See all my reviews

This review is from: Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools (Hardcover)

I found this book to be very informative of School Unions and the Charter School systems. The Charter Schools are sometimes described in dreamy utopian terms while the Unions get a bad rap as looking out solely for the teachers interests. But as the book progresses the extreme differences eventually occupy the same head-space, but rarely meet in the middle. It seems the more the urbanized the school is the further from the middle each remain. Unions aren't painted as all negative though, rare cases (such as in Florida) are also mentioned where the union was on board with implementing changes that could be beneficial to the students.

Largely the book details how bureaucracy kills functionality of any organization or plan (Race to the Top). The education reform movement won't change every school in the country, but hopefully it will serve as the catalyst to help the unions and politicians work together with reform ideas in mind to change schools for the better.

As a personal note: This books is about the school system and the powers that run it or try to influence it not about parents. I personally would love a book detailing the lost variable of parent participation in a child's school work. The teachers and school system can only do so much before they exhaust themselves or their resources. Parental involvement is the biggest factor yet never gets recognized as the biggest factor. If the government ever ties government assistance to a child's grades it would only help. Kids would be disciplined for not completing homework assignments or blowing off tests at home rather than only in school.