Best Book Chapter of the Year

 
I read Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education (www.amazon.com) by Peter Sacks last month after reading Jay Mathews' review of it (below).  I share Mathews' mixed feelings about it -- there are some powerful, compelling stories and data in the book, which make it well worth reading, but parts of it are wrong (I respect thoughtful arguments against testing, but attacking the AP test?!) or contradictory: the most glaring inconsistency in the book is that, in many places Sacks endorses
data (for example, from economist James Heckman; see my rebuttal here: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2006/01/catch-em-young.html) that makes the pernicious demography-is-destiny argument ("Oh, woe is us, nothing can be done to educate kids that come from poverty, broken families and neighborhoods, etc.").  Yet, Sacks then tells many stories, such as that about the amazing teacher profiled in Chapter 10 (see below), of teachers and schools that (correctly) prove that demography is not destiny!

I was ready to like Peter Sacks' new book, "Tearing Down the  Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education." He is a terrific  reporter with a keen sense of weak spots in conventional wisdom about schools.  And since the word "class" in the title of this column has always had a double  meaning, I was eager to read the work of someone who shared my view that  socioeconomic differences are at the root of our failure to help many of our  brightest kids get the educations they deserve.
 
It turns out Sacks has written an exceptional book, with one  particular chapter that blew me away...
 
"Tearing Down the Gates" is the  story of Sacks' journey from school to school in search of a better understanding of how the class divide affects teaching and learning. I had a  hunch he was going to discover holes in that "cookie-cutter" canard about AP.  When, on page 67, he gets kicked out of Berkeley High School for trying to  interview teachers about a program that kept minority kids out of AP and other  challenging courses, I knew he was heading in the right direction. I also  liked his humor: "It was of course humbling and a bit embarrassing to get  kicked off a high school campus at the rebellious age of  fifty-one."

Here's what Mathews says about Chapter 10:

Here is a tip for those of you who decide to use that approach  with "Tearing Down the Gates." When you do that first speed read, slow down when you get to page 195 and read chapter 10, "A Dangerous Man," very  carefully. That chapter is about Dayle Mazzarella, a coach, AP government and  history teacher and staff developer in Oceanside, Calif., who saw the outrages of the class divide in his AP program and tore down all those  fences.
 
I would nominate "A Dangerous Man" for Chapter of the Year, if  there were such an award. Sacks not only describes in great detail how Mazzarella gave low-income and minority kids the personal encouragement and extra time they needed to succeed in AP, but provides eye-opening charts on  the effects of such anti-establishment activities and lets us into the lives of some of the students.

--------------------
Best Book Chapter of the Year

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 15, 2007; 11:46 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500883.html

I was ready to like Peter Sacks' new book, "Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education." He is a terrific reporter with a keen sense of weak spots in conventional wisdom about schools. And since the word "class" in the title of this column has always had a double meaning, I was eager to read the work of someone who shared my view that socioeconomic differences are at the root of our failure to help many of our brightest kids get the educations they deserve.