Sara Mosle’s vigorous review of Steven Brill‘s book, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools, appears in The New York Times‘ Book Review section (August 21, 2011). From my perspective, she offers an uncommonly balanced examination of Brill’s core assertions, most of which are based on his belief that the worst of the problems in American schools are primarily caused by teachers’ unions.

Here are three brief excerpts, followed by a few of my own opinions.

“Steven Brill is a graduate of Yale Law School and the founder of Court TV, and in his new book, Class Warfare, he brings a sharp legal mind to the world of education reform. Like a dogged prosecutor, he mounts a zealous case against America’s teachers’ unions. From more than 200 interviews, he collects the testimony of idealistic educators, charter school founders, policy gurus, crusading school superintendents and billionaire philanthropists. Through their vivid vignettes, which he pieces together in short chapters with titles like “ ‘Colorado Says Half of You Won’t Graduate’ ” and “A Shriek on Park Avenue,” Brill conveys the epiphanies, setbacks and triumphs of a national reform movement.”

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“Brill wants us to believe that unions are the primary — even sole — cause of failing public schools. But hard evidence for this is scarce. Many of the nation’s worst-performing schools (according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress) are concentrated in Southern and Western right-to-work states, where public sector unions are weakest and collective bargaining enjoys little or no protection. Also, if unions are the primary cause of bad schools, why isn’t labor’s pernicious effect similarly felt in many middle-­class suburbs, like Pelham, N.Y., or Montclair, N.J., which have good schools — and strong unions?”

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“Brill likens the battle over the nation’s schools to ‘warfare,’ but the better analogy may be to the war on cancer. For years, scientists hoped a magic pill would cure this ravaging disease. But increasingly, doctors have recognized that they will have to fight a multifronted war, as cancers (like failing schools) aren’t all alike. Each comes with its own complex etiology. Improving teacher quality and working to create better schools, like charters, are part of the arsenal. But such efforts, alone, are unlikely to boost long-term survival rates without a continual, dispassionate look at the incoming data, no matter how counterintuitive, and a willingness to revise tactics midtreatment as we pursue multiple paths in a race for the cure. Although Brill doesn’t say so until the book’s last few pages, he finally acknowledges just how much we still have to learn.”

My take:

1. The primary causes of the problems in public schools include teachers’ unions’ outdated policies, incompetent administrators and teachers, myopic school boards, indifferent parents, and various social issues within school neighborhoods (notably crime and poverty).

2. For better or worse, student attitudes and behaviors reflect/result from domestic and social influences over which schools have little (if any) control.

3. Too many schools are warehouses rather than learning centers. However, there are isolated exceptions from which valuable lessons can be learned, lessons that can guide reform efforts.

4. Mosle rejects Brill’s reference to “warfare,” preferring (inexplicably) “the war on cancer.” I dislike such metaphors, especially now when the United States is already involved in several…albeit not as yet declared by Congress. My own preference is for horticultural metaphors. For example, viewing each school as a “garden” in which to “grow” healthy and happy as well as well-educated children. It should be easy enough to identify those who have a “green thumb” for achieving that objective.

5. Given the fact that the speed of light is 242 times faster than the speed of sound, most children are still being taught to read phonetically. Why?

6. All planning for reform initiatives should take into full account the most recent research studies in neurology and their breakthrough revelations about the environment in which students will most effectively learn.

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To read the complete article, please click here.