Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

A White House commission issued an alarming report documenting the state of our public schools in 1983. Titled 'A Nation at Risk,' it found that average SAT scores dropped over 50 points in the verbal section and nearly 40 points in the math section during the period 1963-80, only one-third could solve a math problem requiring several steps, and on international tests American students never placed first or second - instead they were last seven times. Since then teaching has become the largest single profession in the U.S. (3.2 million public school teachers, about one for every 100 Americans) and inflation-adjusted per-pupil funding has more than doubled, while outcomes have improved very little, we still have a 25% dropout rate, and American pupils ranked 22nd in science, 17th in reading, and 31st in math in the most recent international comparisons. 'Class Warfare' tells of significant recent efforts to improve America's education, including President Obama ('Race to the Top'), Florida's new pupil-testing/teacher-evaluation program, Bill and Melinda Gates (Gates Foundation), Joel Klein (New York City Schools Chancellor), Wendy Kopp ('Teach for America'), David Levin (KIPP), and Michelle Rhee (Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor).

Author Brill's realization of the need for substantial change came in 2009 when he toured a New York City 'rubber room' where 15 teachers spent their days doing nothing while earning full pay and benefits. About 600 others were similarly occupied in other city locations - all accused of misconduct or incompetence and awaiting resolution of charges, a process that usually took 3 - 5 years and rarely resulted in dismissal.

Traditionally, policymakers have attempted to raise the quality of teaching by adding hurdles for those seeking to enter the profession. Once hired, districts typically do very little additional screening - tenure is awarded as a matter of course to almost all after 2-3 years of teaching, very few are discharged, and no financial incentives are provided to improve. (Most districts increase teacher pay for additional course hours, mostly in education - however, little/no relationship has been found between these courses and pupil achievement.)

New York City public school teachers' contract is 167 pages long - mostly about job protection and what teachers can and cannot be asked to do during their 7 hour/day, 179-day year. Only one formal observation/term is allowed for their annual evaluation and union representatives insist the teacher receive advance notice. The city's schools spent an average $19,358/pupil in 2009-10, even more if teacher pensions were fully funded. Cost/teacher rose from $63,022 in 2002 to $110,551 in 2009 - helped considerably by Mayor Bloomberg's desire to avoid confrontation prior to his 3rd run for office. When Klein left, little/no progress had been made on the 'rubber room' issue - processing was speeded up but very few were fired, some resigned for a payoff, and most went back to the classroom or reassigned to 'paid reserve.' The 'good news' is that, after adjusting for state-level test changes and the composition of NYC SAT test-takers, pupil achievement improved significantly.

Michelle Rhee closed 23 schools, fired 36 principals, and cut about 121 office jobs her first year. She then got the right to fire anyone for non-performance, as well as pay-for-performance - in exchange for 20% pay raises and bonuses of $20-$30,000 for 'strong student achievement." She fired 226 teachers (about 5%) and warned 737 others. Meanwhile, Mayor Fenty (her protector) was voted out of office - not surprising in an area where 38% of adults work for government and not likely sympathetic to those challenging government workers.

What are the lessons from these reform efforts? 1)Neither more money nor more technology are the answer. (The latter conclusion per Bill and Melinda Gates.) 2)Teacher certification has very little impact (no statistically significant difference) on pupil performance. Good teachers, however, can make a much greater difference - the difference in pupil achievement between the 75th percentile and 25th percentile teacher is about ten percentile points in a single year (10X the difference between certified and non-certified teachers), per analysis of Los Angeles pupils in grades three-five. (The black-white achievement gap nationally is about 34 percentile points.) 3)Being an effective teacher is very demanding and can burn out the individuals involved. 4)Public school reforms are likely to be stopped through politics - eg. California (Gov. Brown replaced 7 of 11 members of the State Board of Education - all reformers, one with a former union lobbyist; the reformer Education Superintendent was defeated the same year by a union-supported candidate), San Diego, Washington, D.C. 6)Obama's 'Race to the Top' reform program, aimed at encouraging rewarding teachers according to pupil gains, has been drowned out by traditional education support during his administration. 7)Colleges of education are mostly palaces of academic sophistry. How else can one explain their almost non-existent impact on pupil performance?

Bottom-Line: Brill provides a dash of reality for those in the 'more money is better' group. However, it isn't difficult to also realize that efforts to reform public education are accomplishing little overall. The 'bad news' about "Class Warfare" is that Brill omits the disappointing overall data about charter schools - considerable evidence indicates they're not much better, if at all, than the regular public schools. Then there's the evidence of wide-spread cheating (especially in Washington, D.C.; also New York City, Philadelphia) that created early hopes for the success of reforms. Real answers are to be found in Asia, where pupils are much more motivated, work longer, and probably have higher IQs to begin with - per other researchers.

I work in the education industry, and regularly read reports and articles about education (I subscribe to Education Week). What Brill does really well is to provide the overall picture of what's actually been happening on a policy level and how it connects to the classrooms, an overview that is impossible to put together from just following current events. He provides the background to the people and the events of the recent education reform movement that provides context not only for Race to the Top, but for the foundations that are very much having an impact on changes in education. For those who have criticized the focus on the wealthy donors, let's not kid ourselves--money makes a difference in politics and without some external, well-funded push from the outside, nothing was going to change. The academics would have just argued back and forth and education fads would have swept through, fed on by the media, and the schools would still be in decline. This time, the changes are huge and I think they are here to stay. Dismissing them is to underestimate their impact at a time when it seems like most initiatives and research I read about seems to be funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

There are some players in the education realm that Brill does not address and which I would have like to know about. For example, what about the influence of the education publishing industry and of the education associations? And what about the NEA? Also, so much of the focus is on urban districts which are the flashpoints for reform, but what about all those other non-urban schools that will be impacted?

For me, this has been like reading a really long New York Times magazine piece, which is just fine with me. It's engaging, and I think the structure of having short chapters allows Brill to cover a lot of ground while still maintaining coherence. I come away with a much better understanding of what has been happening over the last few years, right up through mid-2011, which will, in turn, make it easier for me to contextualize new information.

I found Class Warfare to be an engaging yet frustrating book with many conflicting signals. As most reviews of the book (here and in the press at the time of its release) indicate the author takes a strong position against the teachers unions for the majority of the book and then, in the conclusion, adopts a more conciliatory tone. The engaging part of the book is the tour it takes the readers on of a few different school systems, charter school efforts, and individuals seeking to reform education through reduced teacher tenure and process protections and increased evaluations. Some of the figures discussed are familiar such as former New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and former DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee. Others, such as Charter school evangelicals Eva Moskowitz, Jeff Canada, and Jessica Reid are less familiar though given the volume of books and documentaries discussing education reform as of late they are not totally unfamiliar. The book also takes us inside the Democrats for Education Reform organization and discusses its impact on the Obama Administration and No Child Left Behind.

The book has quite a few factual errors which an editor should have caught. John Edwards was a Senator from North Carolina (not South Carolina), Ferraro was the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in 1984 (not 1988), a DC Council vote could not be 31-3 because the Council only has 13 members, and a "recent" term limits law in New York was from 1996. Those were the ones I knew about but who knows what else could be in there. Far more frustrating, and ironic given the book's conclusion, was the suspicion with which the author treated those outside the education reform movement. Every statement of motive of American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten or education historian Diane Ravitch was scrutinized and fact checked while it seemed like no anecdote by those on the other side was examined. A great example was near the beginning of the book where the author recounts Joel Klein's first day on the job as chancellor and one of the administrators not answering the phone because, to paraphrase, "it was just a parent calling to complain." It certainly could be a true story, but similar tales by those with which Klein (and the author) tend to disagree led to follow-up by the author and a conclusion that it could not be verified.

The book's conclusion is controversial but probably pragmatically correct. It takes a lot of teachers to serve our students and not all of them will be able to work the 20 hour days the gold standards Brill points to seem to work (or work until they burn out, as the book recounts). To "scale" education reform is going to require the involvement of those already teaching and to do so through an organized body, like a union, has a lot of benefit and has already been successful in some places, such as Colorado. An additional nitpick is the author's repeated dismissive attitude to Maryland's race to the top application with no explanation as to why the state was so undeserving (I'm from Maryland). The book spends a few pages on the Race to the Top evaluations which it concludes, based on quotes from reformers, did not reach correct conclusions because some pro-reform states such as Louisiana and Colorado were left out. I found the reformers distaste for the supposedly objective testing metric to be ironic, though I recognize they are not proposing an exact replica of a competitive grant program for teacher evaluations.

America's schools are a mixed bag and Brill gives an interesting, if largely one-sided (until the conclusion) of the past few years of reform efforts. It is a story that will continue.

This is tough medicine for both those in the education system and for those who think the problem is simply not enough money is being poured into it. Brill does an outstanding job of showing the problem is systemic: from outrageous teacher contracts that prohibit objective performance reviews to turf battles at all levels that seem to place student learning as an after-thought. There are many excellent teachers in our schools, but they cannot overcome a system that is highly dysfunctional.

No matter who you are in America, it is obvious that something is radically wrong with the American educational system. We are falling behind and rapidly losing our ability to compete against countries who used to lag far behind us in achievement levels.

Steven Brill has done a masterful job - with no hidden agenda - to lay it all out there in an objective, clear and eye-opening manner. Those who attack him personally for doing so apparently cannot say the same. If you worry about where we are going with the next generation, this is one book you need to read.

Steven Brill's "Class Warfare" is a good solid introduction to the education debate in America, but it's also a polemical attack against the teacher unions. In Steve Brill's mind, education is a battle between David and Goliath, with the stakes America's children and its future. The Goliath here are the big bad teacher unions, which by stubbornly refusing to accept meritocracy and accountability are destroying American education. And the Davids are: the Ivy League-educated Teach for America network (which include Wendy Kopp, Michelle Rhee, and Dan Levin), rich money managers, powerful politicians (which include President Obama and Mike Bloomberg), and some more Ivy League graduates.

It's pretty hard to defend teacher's unions, but reading this book it's also easy to develop a strong distaste for all these rich Ivy League graduates who hate American public education for not producing enough students who think like rich Ivy League graduates -- that money will solve problems, numbers reveal reality, and tests measure ability. There's a lot of strong evidence that test-taking and performance-based pay for teachers lead to a lot of bad things -- cheating in schools, ultra-utilitarianism in education, and a neglecting of soft skills. Also, America's charter school movement sounds like glorified test prep centers, with the attitude that getting the student into college is the end-all and be-all -- but some would argue that college is really just a scam, and doesn't really teach students anything. Steve Brill ignores all this and more, so focused is he on making the teacher's unions look like the bad guys and the Teach for America crowd to be saints.

Brief disclosure: I know the author and at one time worked as a writer and editor for one of the newspapers that he owns.

I found the book to include a call to action to help America's children, an apt description of the achievements of school reform and of the obstacles to reform, and a fascinating, nuanced portrayal of many of the most important players. It speaks well for Brill that although he is clearly on the side of the reformers and against the union-fostered status quo, his account of union leader Randi Weingarten is balanced and thoughtful. He disagrees with her on almost every issue, yet he does not see her as the devil incarnate. He understands the history of teacher unionization, the reasons that the unions took the stances that they did, and the fact that most teachers try very hard to educate the children in their charge.

Brill also makes it clear that the time has come for reform and that the unions are, more often than not, the forces that stand in the way. His descriptions of the classrooms that he has visited, particularly the Harlem charter schools, are powerful and well written.

All that said, I still found that this book goes on at too great a length to convey every twist and turn in the bureaucratic mazes. Especially in the last third of the book, which is given over to a blow-by-blow description of the applications for the "Race to the Top" funding, Brill provides far too much detail for the non-specialist reader. Unless someone is utterly fascinated by the details of labor law in California or the precise nature of the Tennessee application, the narrative flags at this point. The book would have been more effective had it been 100 pages shorter.

Remember, when you read some of the posted reviews, that some may be written by the very union members that the book portrays as the obstacles to reform. So, be wary of some of the negative reviews. The book paints a chilling portrait of what is at stake in the battle (and it is a political war) to reform our nation's public school system. A school system with a national drop out rate over 25%. I listened to the book as an audiobook, and I couldn't wait to keep listening to another chapter--so it was anything but dull if you want to understand the protracted history of attempts to introduce change to benefit students. It is both inspiring (because people are fighting right now on the front lines for reform and they need our help) and depressing (because many politicians are so entrenched with the unions whose job is to protect the adults instead of the children). If you want to be engaged in the reform movement, you must read this book to understand the reality of the battlefield. If you are a teacher who agrees with your union leaders, you will hate this book. The teachers' unions wield great political power and their #1 job is to protect the jobs of the adults, not create better education for the children. As a citizen, once you understand that fundamental conflict of interest, then you understand why the nation's public school system is failing in what should be its only goal--educating students for the challenges of the 21st century. Steven Brill's book walked me through the reform efforts in the New York City school system and opened my eyes to how difficult it is to achieve reform when your opponents own the politicians. He covered the reform movements across the nation, as well as the national Race To The Top program. I had already joined Michelle Rhee's organization Students First, so Brill's book helped me to become aware of the other reform efforts to join (such as Democrats for Education Reform). Brill makes the case for why voters must become active in backing reform minded politicians--the teacher's unions have so many millions of members (it's the second largest occupational group in the nation) and the unions have such well organized political action efforts that parents must mobilize their own votes on behalf of students.

Those who accuse Brill of siding with the reformers have a weak complaint and are supporters of the status quo. This book is written to wake up parents and educate those who want to help in the reform movement, not to placate the union leadership.