A TEACHER'S STORY OF FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY.
Calling on policy, research, humor and a generous serving of snark, in this cutting edge story, irreverent Laurel M. Sturt pulls no punches detailing her bizarre life in the trenches teaching in a high-needs elementary school in the Bronx. With the Alice In Wonderland backdrop of a school strangled by poverty, No Child Left Behind's "accountability" and Michael Bloomberg's micromanagement, Sturt trains an unflinching eye on the crisis confronting todayʼs educators, delivering a scathing indictment of pretentious educational reform driven by a mercenary agenda to privatize a system worth billions. The author charges educators and parents to unite and organize at the grassroots level to fight for this civil rights issue of our time--the right to a decent education--coalescing around proven non-negotiables such as universal pre-kindergarten, a rich curriculum free from high-stakes testing, and the socioeconomic integration of schools. By refusing an apartheid in which the one percent and the ninety-nine percent receive vastly different educations, community by community we can drive back the privatizers, restoring the “public” to a system committed to all.
