WHO'S TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN? Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think, and What Can Be Done About It

Many school reform efforts are merely Band-Aids that do more harm than good and don't solve the problems they are intended to correct. According to veteran teachers Troen and Boles, "Public education has become a closed-loop system of dysfunction." The public has been inundated with critiques of education and proposals for fixing schools: conduct more testing, ax the unions, stop social promotion, raise standards, etc. However, efforts to address these problems are likely doomed to failure, say the authors, because they seldom consider the most important variable: teacher quality. This well-researched, thoughtful proposal for an overhaul of America's public education system identifies three major problems with the teaching profession: not enough academically able students are being drawn to teaching; teacher preparation programs are inadequate; and teachers' professional lives are unacceptable, "isolating" and "unsupportive." Rather than suggest radical new ideas, Troen and Boles offer a model of reform they call the "Millennium School," which gathers the best of what is known about how to transform the teaching profession and wraps it up neatly in a commonsense package. This reasoned response to the teacher crisis does not offer a quick or painless fix. It will take time, money and hard work to straighten things out. But if parents and teachers want "no child left behind," as the president proposes, Troen and Boles insist we must remedy the deep, systemic problems in the teaching profession now, before all the good teachers leave the schools. (Mar. 15)