Education Books We Like
Below is a selection of books on education that have been written or reviewed by the staff of the Hechinger Institute or featured at a Hechinger Seminar. If you would like the staff to review your book, please mail a copy to the address at the bottom of this page.
by Susan Eaton, published 2007
Building Blocks: Making Children Successful in the Early Years of School
by Gene Maeroff, published 2006
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
Recommended Works of Education Journalism
Chenoweth, Karin. 2007. "It's Being Done": Academic Success in Unexpected Schools.
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Education Press.
Corwin, Miles. 2001. And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-
City Students. New York: HarperCollins.
Freedman, Samuel G. 1991. Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students,
and Their High School. New York: Harper Perennial.
French, Thomas. 1993. South of Heaven: Welcome to High School at the End of
Twentieth Century. New York: Doubleday.
Jacobs, Joanne. 2005. Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea,
and the School That Beat the Odds. New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
Kidder, Tracy. 1989. Among Schoolchildren. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Kohl, Herbert R. 1967. 36 Children. New York: New American Library.
_________. 1994. "I Won't Learn from You": And Other Thoughts on Creative
Maladjustment. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Kotlowitz, Alex. 1991. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up
in The Other America. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.
Kozol, Jonathan. 1967. Death at An Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds
of the Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company.
_________. 1991. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. New York: Crown
Publishers.
_________. 2005. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in
America. New York: Crown Publishers.
Lemann, Nicholas. 1999. The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Lukas, J. Anthony. 1985. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three
American Families. New York: Knopf.
Matthews, Jay. 1998. Class Struggle: What's Wrong (and Right) with America's Best
Public High Schools. New York: Random House.
Perlstein, Linda. 2003. Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers.
New York: Ballantine Books.
_________. 2007. Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade. New York:
Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Postman, Neil. 1995. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Rathbone, Christina. 1998. On the Outside Looking in: A Year in an Inner-City High School.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Rodriguez, Richard. 1982. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez.
Boston, Mass.: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.
Rose, Mike. 1989. Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's
Underprepared. New York: Free Press.
Rothstein, Richard. 2004. Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational
Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap. Washington, DC: Economic
Policy Institute.
Schorr, Jonathan. 2002. Hard Lessons: The Promise of an Inner-City Charter School.
New York: Ballantine Books.
Suskind, Ron. 1998. A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to
the Ivy League. New York: Broadway Books.
Tyre, Peg. 2008. The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents & Educators Must Do. New York: Crown Publishing Group.
Williams, Joe. 2005. Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Recommended Works on Education
Anderson, James D. 1988. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Bailey, Thomas and Vanessa Smith Morest, eds. 2006. Defending the Community
College Equity Agenda. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bensman, David. 2000. Central Park East and its Graduates: "Learning by Heart." New
York: Teachers College Press.
Buller, Jeffrey L. 2007. The Essential Academic Dean: A Practical Guide to College
Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Chace, William M. 2006. One Hundred Semesters: My Adventures as Student, Professor,
and University President, and What I Learned along the Way. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Cohen, Joel E., David E. Bloom and Martin B. Malin, eds. 2006. Educating All Children:
A Global Agenda. Cambridge, Mass: American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Cremin, Lawrence A. 1961. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in
American Education, 1876-1957. New York: Vintage Books.
Cubberley, Ellwood Patterson. 1919. Public Education in the United States: A Study and
Interpretation of American Educational History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Cuban, Larry and Dorothy Shipps, eds. 2000. Reconstructing the Common Good in
Education: Coping with Intractable American Dilemmas. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Darling-Hammond, Linda. 1997. The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools
that Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Dewey, John. 1938. Experience and Education. New York: The Macmillan Company.
DuBois, W.E.B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A.C.
McClurg.
Finn, Chester E, Jr, Bruno V. Manno and Gregg Vanourek. 2000. Charter Schools in
Action: Renewing Public Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Freire, Paolo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos). New
York: Herder and Herder.
_________. 1994. The Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Trans.
Robert R. Barr). New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Gardner, Howard. 1983. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New
York: Basic Books.
Gonzalez, Gilbert G. 1990. Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation. Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press.
Henig, Jeffrey R. 1994. Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Metaphor.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
_________. 2008. Spin Cycle: How Research Is Used in Policy Debates: The Case of
Charter Schools. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Hess, Frederick M. 1998. Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Hess, Frederick M., ed. 2007. Footing the Tuition Bill: The New Student Loan Sector.
Washington, DC: AEI Press.
Heubert, Jay P., ed. 1999. Law and School Reform: Six Strategies for Promoting
Educational Equity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Heubert, Jay P. and Robert M. Hauser, eds. 1999. High Stakes: Testing for Tracking,
Promotion, and Graduation. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Hirsch, E.D., Jr. 1987. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
_________. 1996. The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them. New York:
Doubleday.
_________. 2006. The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for
American Children. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Kaestle, Carl F. 1980. Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century
Massachusetts. New York: Cambridge University Press.
_________. 1983. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-
1860. New York: Hill and Wang.
Kaestle, Carl F. and Alyssa E. Lodewick, eds. 2007. To Educate a Nation: Federal and
National Strategies of School Reform. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Kahlenberg, Richard D. 2007. Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over
Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kirp, David L. 2003. Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of
Higher Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
_________. 2007. The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First
Politics. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Kliebard, Herbert M. 2002. Changing Course: American Curriculum Reform in the 20th
Century. New York and London: Teachers College Press.
Kluger, Richard. 1976. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and
Black America's Struggle for Equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Labaree, David F. 1997. How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The
Credentials Race in American Education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. 1983. The Good High School: Portraits of Character and
Culture. New York: Basic Books.
Meier, Deborah. 2002. The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small
School in Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press.
Mirel, Jeffrey E. and David L. Angus. 1999. The Failed Promise of the American High
School. New York: Teachers College Press.
Nasaw, David. 1979. Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the
United States. New York: Oxford University Press.
Oakes, Jeannie. 1985. Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Orfield, Gary and Susan E. Eaton. 1997. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal
of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press.
Perkinson, Henry J. 1977. The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-
1976. New York: Random House.
Ravitch, Diane. 1974. The Great School Wars: New York City Public Schools. New York:
Basic Books.
_________. 1983. The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. New York:
Basic Books.
_________. 2000. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Riley, Richard W. 1995. Turning the Corner: From a Nation at Risk to a Nation with a
Future: Second Annual Address. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
Sizer, Theodore R. 1984. Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High
School. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Spring, Joel. 2000. The Universal Right to Education: Justification, Definition, and
Guidelines. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
_________. 2001. Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the
Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Sunderman, Gail L., ed. 2008. Holding NCLB Accountable: Achieving Accountability,
Equity, and School Reform. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Tyack, David B. 1974. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Tyack, David and Larry Cuban. 1995. Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public
School Reform. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Tyack, David, Robert Lowe and Elisabeth Hansot. 1984. Public Schools in Hard Times:
The Great Depression and Recent Years. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press.
Tyack, David, Thomas James and Aaron Benavot, eds. 1987. Law and the Shaping of
Public Education, 1785-1954. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Tyack, David and Elisabeth Hansot. 1990. Learning Together: A History of Coeducation
in American Public Schools. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Washington, Booker T. 1901. Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. New York:
Association Press.
- The Children in Room E4 American Education on Trial
by Susan Eaton, published 2007 - Reviewed here by Hechinger Institute Director Richard Lee Colvin in The Washington Post
- Building Blocks: Making Children Successful in the Early Years of School
by Gene Maeroff, published 2006 - Published by Palgrave Macmillan
