In this book, Richard Rothstein analyzes the statistical and anecdotal evidence and shows that public schools, by and large, are not falling down on the job of educating our children. To the contrary, by many measures they are doing better than in the past. Minority students have improved their test scores significantly, and overall dropout rates have fallen. Moreover, our schools educate more poor children, and more children whose native language is foreign, than ever before.

Further improvement in American education, Rothstein argues, should be based on an accurate appraisal of strengths and weaknesses rather than on exaggeration. Rothstein shows in convincing detail how standardized tests comparing American students' performance today with that of the past, and with student performance internationally, frequently confuse apples with oranges. The nation's student population today is very different from that of decades ago and from the student population in other nations.

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute, a visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a senior correspondent of The American Prospect. From 1999 to 2002 he wrote a bi-weekly column on education for The New York Times. He is the author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap, published by the Economic Policy Institute and Teachers College Press in May 2004. His most recent book, co-authored with Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, and Lawrence Mishel, is The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement. He is also the author of All Else Equal. Are Public and Private Schools Different? (with Luis Benveniste and Martin Carnoy) (RoutledgeFalmer, 2003).

View selected chapters:

• Foreword, by Richard C. Leone
• Chapter 1: Our Failing Public Schools
• Chapter 2: It Just Doesn’t Add Up