Class Struggle: What's Wrong (and Right) with America's Best Public High Schools - Softcover

Mathews, Jay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812931408 ISBN 13: 9780812931402

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 1999

Synopsis

Are America's elite public high schools neglecting the potential of many students in favor of a select few?

Following the trail blazed by Jonathan Kozol's landmark books on inner-city schools, Jay Mathews examines America's elite suburban high schools and asks key questions about them: Do public high schools located in wealthy school districts succeed in providing all students with access to a quality education? What about students who have less ample means than their better-off classmates? In Class Struggle, Mathews brings into focus surprising and troubling revelations about America's most well-funded high schools.

Mathews spent three years taking the pulse of America's public high schools--including an extended stay at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, New York--to find out what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and how they could be doing much better. He emerges with a penetrating analysis of the competing forces that nurture the Ivy League goals of the academic elite while often quashing the less glamorous dreams and potential of the rest. His investigation shows that America's best high schools often cultivate complacency when challenges and incentives should be available to all.

About this title

Review

There is a wide disparity between the academic achievement of poor schools and their wealthy, middle-class neighbors. What makes a child achieve? Is it purely the school environment and resources (or lack of), or is it parents' socioeconomic backgrounds and parenting skills? Taking an unusual tangent, Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews spent three years studying the cream of American high schools, causing him to conclude that even the best-funded and most well-staffed schools suffer from problems, some identical to those experienced in poorer schools. A majority of Mathews's time was spent at Mamaroneck High School in New York, allowing him to provide a first-hand account of the workings of one of the nation's top high schools. A significant flaw with "elite" high schools, argues Mathews, is their failure to adequately push the less academically gifted. Mamaroneck's controversial approach to "pushing" these kids was to introduce a multidisciplinary, integrated curriculum for all, spurring heated debate between parents and teachers, all wanting what's best for the education of their children. Mamaroneck's integrated approach works for some, but Mathews notes that a disproportionately high number of failing students come from poor neighborhoods. There is no easy solution.

Class Struggle is a fascinating look at America's best high schools, providing a balanced journalistic view of what's right and what's wrong and offering thoughts on what all schools should be doing to provide a decent education for every student.

From the Back Cover

"[Class Struggle's] message of higher expectations for all students is the right one."--The Washington Post Book World

"Mathews argues forcefully that we can do a better job of making high levels of academic achievement accessible, . . . fulfilling . . . the dream of education as an engine of social mobility."--The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0812931408
• ISBN 13: 9780812931402
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320