Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education

by John Merrow

Overview

The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America's misguided approaches to K-12 school reform

During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America's obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary.

Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being "addicted to reform" but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including "Measure What Matters," and "Embrace Teachers"—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing.

Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a "big book" that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620972410
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	08/15/2017
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John Merrow recently retired as education correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. He founded and until 2015 was the president of Learning Matters, a nonprofit media company. In 2012 Merrow became the first journalist to win the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education. He lives with his wife in New York City and his books include Addicted to Reform (The New Press), Choosing Excellence, Declining by Degrees, and The Influence of Teachers.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: Before Entering Treatment xxv

Step 1 Own the Problem 1

Step 2 Calculate the Cost of Reform 21

Step 3 Don't Pay the Price 53

Step 4 Ask the Right Question 67

Step 5 Make Connections 83

Step 6 Start Early 105

Step 7 Expect More 119

Step 8 Embrace Technology (Carefully) 133

Step 9 Embrace "Outsiders" (Enthusiastically) 151

Step 10 Embrace Teachers (Respectfully) 161

Step 11 Measure What Matters 195

Step 12 Choose a New Path 223

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 235

Index of Names 273

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Addicted to Reform:
"The real-world examples and Merrow’s passion shine through allowing readers to envision a potential future for education."
—Library Journal

"From an award-winning career as an education correspondent, Merrow (The Influence of Teachers, 2011, etc.) sees a nation desperately in need of recovery from addiction to testing and pouring good money after bad."
—Kirkus Reviews

"As a lifelong advocate for progressive, child-centered education, I feel strongly that twenty-first-century schools must equip all students to participate in our great democracy and in today's changing world. John Merrow sets forth twelve sensible steps to accomplish that goal, and his clear blueprint also contains entertaining and inspiring stories from his distinguished career."
—Richard Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education

"Finally someone has the courage to bar the door, stare them down, and do an intervention on the stumbling school reformers still clinging to their cocktail of privatize, standardize, and de-professionalize. John Merrow reveals the destructive truth behind these toxic reforms, and his twelve steps lead to the sacred purpose of education: to humanize connections; to deepen understanding; to know how to form a fine question and question your own conclusions. This is a good book. You should read it. Twice."
—Lilly Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association

"Addicted to Reform is a wise set of lessons that will inform parents, educators, and policy makers about the challenges facing American education."
—Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error

"John Merrow cuts through the mythologies surrounding school reform and the madness of the testing craze, as well as the dangerous privatizing drive, with a sharp edge of seasoned insight and delectable irreverence. A valuable book from a guy who's seen it all."
—Jonathan Kozol, author of Fire in the Ashes and Savage Inequalities

"If you think you've read all you need about education reform, think again. Addicted to Reform is brilliantly written and contains an insightful analysis of the chronic failure of education reforms in the United States. With a book that is enjoyable, inspirational, and important, John Merrow reclaims his place as a leading proponent of change in American public education."
—Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons

"Pulling no punches, John Merrow lays out the deficiencies of American efforts at school reform and explains what needs to be done—provided we have the wits and the will to do so."
—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"John Merrow's twelve-step program provides a sober, thoughtful, practical way to revitalize public education and, in doing so, strengthen our democracy."
—Herbert Kohl, author and educator

Praise for John Merrow's The Influence of Teachers:
"A warm and thoughtful tribute to teachers, as well as a call to action from the Dean of American Education Reporters…both important and enjoyable."
—Richard Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education

Praise for John Merrow's Choosing Excellence:
"Common sense and an uncommon shrewdness intermix in the good counsel that [Merrow] offers here."
—Jonathan Kozol

"An outstanding assessment of the current state of the nation's schools."
—Publishers Weekly

"Sophisticated, thoughtful, and down-to-earth."
—Deborah Meier, author of The Power of Their Ideas

Praise for John Merrow:
"Nobody reports on the treasures and traumas of public education better than John Merrow. He is, quite simply, the leading education journalist in America."
—Jim Lehrer, former anchor for PBS NewsHour

From the Publisher

07/01/2017
Merrow (former education correspondent, PBS NewsHour; The Influence of Teachers) outlines 12 steps intended to break the destructive behaviors of educators and policymakers contributing to ineffective improvements in the current educational reform environment. Contending that policies have only served to treat the symptoms of educational failure, Merrow describes the kinds of attitudes that must shift to prevent further disappointments. From understanding where funding really goes to raising expectations in teacher training programs and allowing instructors more autonomy, the author offers firsthand accounts of his years as an educational reporter, revealing both the good and the bad from across the country. Merrow's journalistic perspective helps to present arguments that reflect a forthright assessment of reform gone wrong. More of a thought exercise to get reformers to consider new avenues for real change, this work offers few practical applications. However, the real-world examples and Merrow's passion shine through allowing readers to envision a potential future for education. VERDICT For education advocates who see how reform obsessions are crippling the system and now want to journey toward improvement.—Rachel Wadham, Brigham Young Univ. Libs., Provo, UT

Library Journal

2017-05-15
From an award-winning career as an education correspondent, Merrow (The Influence of Teachers, 2011, etc.) sees a nation desperately in need of recovery from addiction to testing and pouring good money after bad.There is no quick fix for our failed schools, writes the author, who has won the George Polk Award and two George Foster Peabody Awards. Instead, we need radical reform of a system that has become obsessed with data and metrics, with graduation and dropout rates that can be easily manipulated, and with schools that would rather their students be obedient and easily controlled, regurgitating the facts they have been fed, than to have their creativity and intellectual curiosity unleashed. Employing the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous as the organizing principle for his manifesto, he writes, "I am convinced that we as a nation are ‘hooked' on what we hope will be quick fixes for deep systemic problems. We are in denial." The comparison and the book's format only work to a point, as Merrow's analysis, not surprisingly, does a better job detailing the problem than the solution. The major problem, as so many have previously suggested, is that standardized testing encourages teachers to teach to the test rather than engage young minds, particularly when those test results will be used to evaluate those teachers. There is big money in those testing services and in school reform in general, some of it going to administrators who are stronger on rhetoric than on real education, some to the likes of Amazon and Apple for technology that is often misused or misunderstood, and some to big pharma within the overdiagnosed, pill-popping culture that would prefer to see students medicated than stimulated. The author mixes his diagnoses and prescriptions with four decades of anecdotes and reporting, insisting that the current system "is flawed beyond repair." One can agree with most of Merrow's points without seeing the path forward to the more studentcentric schools he envisions.

Kirkus Reviews