Drawing on nearly three decades in education--from his mother's after-school program on Chicago's South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in DC--How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can't help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent...

" ... Bell, neither a Chinese citizen nor a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was appointed as dean because of his scholarly work on Confucianism--but soon found himself coping with a variety of issues having little to do with scholarship or Confucius. These include the importance of hair color and the prevalence of hair-dyeing among university administrators, both male and female; Shandong's drinking culture, with endless toasts at every shared...

"Conservatives have succeeded in establishing their vision of education in America, one in which government funds can be used to pay for both public and private schools. As a result, the very meaning of public education in the United States has shifted away from the idea of a universal good. To understand how we got here, The Death of Public School argues, we must look back at the turbulent history of school choice. The Death of Public School tells...