Who's Teaching Your Children?

February 24, 2003
Many school reform efforts are merely Band-Aids that do more harm than good and don't solve the problems they are intended to correct. According to veteran teachers Troen and Boles, "Public education has become a closed-loop system of dysfunction." The public has been inundated with critiques of education and proposals for fixing schools: conduct more testing, ax the unions, stop social promotion, raise standards, etc. However, efforts to address these problems are likely doomed to failure, say the authors, because they seldom consider the most important variable: teacher quality. This well-researched, thoughtful proposal for an overhaul of America's public education system identifies three major problems with the teaching profession: not enough academically able students are being drawn to teaching; teacher preparation programs are inadequate; and teachers' professional lives are unacceptable, "isolating" and "unsupportive." Rather than suggest radical new ideas, Troen and Boles offer a model of reform they call the "Millennium School," which gathers the best of what is known about how to transform the teaching profession and wraps it up neatly in a commonsense package. This reasoned response to the teacher crisis does not offer a quick or painless fix. It will take time, money and hard work to straighten things out. But if parents and teachers want "no child left behind," as the president proposes, Troen and Boles insist we must remedy the deep, systemic problems in the teaching profession now, before all the good teachers leave the schools.

April 15, 2003
At first glance, this book seems like yet another addition to the overwhelming body of literature on U.S. public education reform, with little new substance. However, with a combined total of more than 60 years of classroom teaching experience, as well as experience in educational consulting and teaching in prestigious teacher education programs, Troen and Boles provide unique insights that can only come from those who are intimately familiar with the topic. They have distilled all of the major problems with public education today into what they call "The Trilemma Dysfunction," stating that not enough academically able students are being attracted to teaching and calling for substantial improvements in teacher preparation programs. Until these fundamental issues are properly resolved, contend the authors, all attempts at educational reform are "boondoggle and Band-Aids" that cannot work in the long term. Using real-life examples from teachers, administrators, and researchers to support their argument, the authors do a good job of demonstrating how popular ideas for education reform, such as legally mandated class sizes, high-stakes testing, charter schools, and school vouchers, will all fail to yield real increases in student learning. Unlike many other books on the topic, this one actually provides a solution with a proposal for the "Millennium School," which incorporates the authors' ideas for a definite career path for teachers, collaboration, shared decision making, and more rigorous teacher training. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries, as well as school libraries and media centers that maintain a professional development collection for teachers and staff.-Mark Bay, Cumberland Coll. Lib., Williamsburg, KY

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