The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today--and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools.

"[A] lively account." --New York Times Book Review

In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools--instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting "elite" graduates to teach--are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

Author: Dana Goldstein
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 08/04/2015
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780345803627

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 09/06/2015 pg. 24

About the Author
DANA GOLDSTEIN comes from a family of public school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at The Marshall Project. She lives in New York City.