NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

Founded in 1921 as a separate Wharton department, the Industrial Research Unit has a long record of publication and research in the labor market, productivity, union relations, and business report fields. Major Industrial Research Unit studies as published as research projects are completed. This volume is Study no. 42.

Within the broad scope of school reform lies the issue of teacher professionalism and teacher professionalization. The professionalism of teachers and the desire to either increase or decrease the professionalization of the vocation is implicated in essentially all of the reform literature. Since there is a significant split within the literature and the debate at large between those advocating greater professionalization and increased teacher autonomy and status, and those advocating more control through increased standardization and greater accountability, this study attempts to properly frame that debate to illustrate the variances in treatment and power that teachers individually and through their organizations are afforded. Ultimately then, conclusions can be reached based on the rhetoric of the reform debate and the reality of the working conditions of teachers. This book allows the reader to better understand the professionalism debate within the reform literature and thereby to better assess professionalism. Given the historical, legal, social, and political impediments to greater teacher professionalization, school reform measures that focus generally upon increasing the status and power of teachers or decreasing the status and power of teachers largely misses the point. The author argues that the present school reform debate is largely a debate over words, more than a practical plan for school improvement. The debate will be greatly advanced by widespread realization and acceptance of what we already know to be true: that different persons, places, and situations require different responses in order to maximize their potential.

This timely and comprehensive volume will spur and strengthen public debate over the role of teachers unions in education reform for years to come. Collective bargaining shapes the way public schools are organized, financed, staffed, and operated. Understanding collective bargaining in education and its impact on the day-to-day life of schools is critical to designing and implementing reforms that will successfully raise student achievement. But when it comes to public discussion of school reform, teachers unions are the proverbial elephant in the room. Despite the tremendous influence of teachers unions, there has not been a significant research-based book examining the role of collective bargaining in education in more than two decades. As a result, there is little basis for a constructive, empirically grounded dialogue about the role of teachers unions in education today.

Teachers, Unions, and Collective Bargaining in Public Education addresses the most important aspects of the collective bargaining system.

Reclaiming the Teaching Profession gives educators (especially teachers and future teachers) and their allies a clear overview of the massive effort to dismantle public education in the United States, which includes a direct attack on teachers. The book details, and provides a systematic critique of, the shaky assumptions at the foundation of the market-based reform initiatives that dominate the contemporary education scene. It names and exposes the motives and methods of the powerful philanthropists, politicians, business moguls, and education entrepreneurs who are behind the reform movement. It provides counter narratives that public school advocates can use to talk back to those who would destroy the teaching profession and public education. It includes examples of successful acts of resistance and identifies resources for challenging reformers’ taken for granted primacy in the education debate. It concludes with strategies educators can use to “speak truth to power,” reclaim their professional status, and reshape the education landscape in ways that serve all of America’s children and preserve our democracy.