What's Wrong With Our Schools: And How We Can Fix Them

`"This fine and brave book more than delivers on its claim of common sense---an uncommon virtue in the world of school reform. It will empower parents and liberate teachers. I hope it will be widely read, for its message desperately needs to be heeded."---E.D. Hirsch Jr., founder, Core Knowledge Foundation;author of The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them

"The sanest, most commonsensical education reform book I have seen in many years, What's Wrong with Our Schools is a trove of clear-thinking, hard-won, frontline wisdom, rich experience, and policy sagac ity. Our schools and children will be a lot better off if the authors' advice is widely heeded."---Chester E. Finn Jr., president, Thomas B. Fordham Institute; author of Troublemaker

"If you read only one book on current affairs this year, make it this one. What goes on in our schools is at the core of all that happens in our country---what citizens know, what they believe, and how they behave.

"The authors have marshaled all of the issues at stake in the so-called school wars, explained them lucidly and sensibly, and made recommendations that affect every American parent, teacher, school administrator, and taxpayer.

"They illustrate all sides of the arguments in the vast and often confusing literature on the various aspects of the education debates, and they offer practical answers to some of the most vexing questions of the day, beyond spin and image, ideology, and the cant. An illuminating, eminently readable guide to the ways in which we could make our schools the instruments they should be for educating men and women to live in a democracy."---Rita Kramer, author of Ed School Follies

"For parents puzzled by school rules and practices that don't make sense to them, What's Wrong with Our Schools is a useful corrective.It illuminates the principle arguments now raging over education policy and explains how to get in-depth information that allows us bewildered parents and other onlookers to figure out who is right."---Jay Mathews, education columnist, Washington Post, author of New York Times bestseller Work Hard, Be Nice

Michael C. Zwaagstra is a high school social studies teacher at Green Valley School in Manitoba and a research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Rodney A. Clifton is a professor of education and a senior fellow at St.John's College, University of Manitoba.
John C. Long recently retired from the University of Manitoba where he was professor of educational administration.