Recommended: Hope Against Hope, Sarah Carr

I just read and reviewed Hope against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children by Sarah Carr, to be released February 26, 2013. I urge you to pre-order it.

Books on education tend to be deeply misguided and self-promoting or trapped in the “miracle” school/ “no excuses” memes that also dominate flawed education reform.

Diane Ravitch’s recent and upcoming books as well as Kathleen Nolan’s Police in the Hallways are rare exceptions.

I am surprised, then, and eager to recommend Carr’s wonderful narrative of post-Katrina education reform in New Orleans, a crucible of the keynotes of the newest reform movement invested in charter schools and Teach for America.

If you are skeptical of the new reforms and frustrated with the status quo of public education’s failure to address children and neighborhoods most in need, Carr’s book is a perfect story of three people living the reality of both.

See an excerpt at The Atlantic: “The Real Reason More Low-Income Students Don’t Go to College”

While reading, I also compiled a companion reading list, below:

Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School, Kathleen Nolan

http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/police-in-the-hallways

“More Challenges to Kirp’s ‘Miracle’ Narrative,” @ The Chalk Face, P. L. Thomas

http://atthechalkface.com/2013/02/15/more-challenges-to-kirps-miracle-narrative/

“Final Words of Advice,” “Where Do We Go from Here?” Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)

http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/King_Where.htm

Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom and “Multiplication Is for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit

http://thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_catalog&task=author&author_id=P14893

“Murky Waters: The Education Debate in New Orleans,” Truthout, Adam Bessie and Dan Archer

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10061-the-disaster-capitalism-curriculum-the-high-price-of-education-reform-episode-2

“The Teaching Profession as a Service Industry,” Daily Censored, P. L. Thomas

http://www.dailycensored.com/the-teaching-profession-as-a-service-industry/

“Is There a Christmas Miracle in School Reform Debate?” The Answer Sheet/The Washington Post, P. L. Thomas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/is-there-a-christmas-miracle-in-school-reform-debate/2011/12/21/gIQA4FocCP_blog.html

“Unpacking TFA Support: Twisted Logic and Assumptions,” Schools Matter, P. L. Thomas

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/12/unpacking-tfa-support-twisted-logic-and.html

“Current Education Reform Perpetuating, Not Curbing, Inequity,” the becoming radical, P. L. Thomas

http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/current-education-reform-perpetuating-not-curbing-inequity/

“Lessons from the Zombie Apocalypse,” the becoming radical, P. L. Thomas