“This book merits every American’s serious consideration” (Vice President Joe Biden): in the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé from the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the trouble of our kids’ education, and threatens our nation’s future.

“Education runs on lays. That’s most likely not what you’d anticipate from a previous Secretary of Education, but it’s the reality.” So opens Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work, although the title could just like conveniently be How American about How Schools Work: AN INTERNAL Account of Failure and Success in one of the country’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education Schools Function for Some, Not really for Others, and Only Occasionally for Kids.

Drawing on nearly three decades in education—from his mom’s after-school system on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC—How Classes Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he assumes challenges at every switch: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who contact him racist, teachers who have insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that won’t modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate annual tests, as well as the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun person in President Obama’s Cabinet.” Likely to a child’s funeral every little while, simply because he did when he worked in Chicago, will do that to a person.

How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers, from early youth completely to university graduation rates. But it addittionally identifies what really does make a assignment work.

“Mainly because insightful as it is inspiring” (Washington Reserve Review), How Universities Work will embolden parents, educators, voters, as well as students to demand more of our public institutions. If America is likely to be great, then we are able to accept nothing less.