First published 2014
American public school teaching has sparked fierce debates for nearly two centuries. Dana Goldstein examines this contentious profession by tracing its evolution from the genteel common schools movement of the 1800s to the violent teacher strikes of the 1960s and 70s. She follows the journey from Northeastern women dispatched to frontier schoolhouses to the creation of Teach for America at Princeton in 1989. Goldstein reveals that the same fundamental questions persist across generations: Who should teach our children? What curriculum should guide their learning? How do we measure accountability? Her investigation uncovers the historical origins of today's heated debates over teacher tenure and charter schools. She demonstrates that popular reform ideas like merit pay, test-based teacher evaluation, and recruiting elite graduates have all failed before. Yet Goldstein identifies a promising new direction that could actually transform education: building on the expertise of the three million public school teachers already working in America's classrooms.
Genres: history, 20th-century, politics, education, non-fiction, 21st-century, academia, american-history
Vibes: thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-narrative
Setting: America, Northeastern, Princeton, United States
Period: 1800s, 1960s, 1970s, 1989
368 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday