Education
Reading Recommendations

In Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools, author Steven Brill provides readers with an outstanding history of the “Fight to Fix America’s Schools.” Beginning with President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education and its publication of “A Nation at Risk” and continuing through President Obama’s Race to the Top, Brill chronicles the various political and special interests that stand in the way of educational reform.  Elsewhere on this site, we have perhaps surprised our readers by arguing that neither Republicans nor Democrats are really serious about improving educational outcomes of our poorest communities. While both sides pay the issue lip service, neither has been able to reach a level of compromise that results in improved policy and outcomes. While we decline to place complete responsibility for this on either side, there is a good argument, and Brill makes it persuasively, that the National Education Association (NEA) has been a fairly consistent obstacle to progress. The NEA, which has just under three million members, provides approximately 97% of its considerable political support to the Democratic party. Throughout his work, Brill describes in considerable detail the history of opposition of the NEA, and therefore the Democratic party, to reform efforts beginning with the recommendations of “A Nation at Risk” through the modern charter school movement.