Rating: 
Summary: Very empowering, very informed, very scary
Review: As I was reading this book, some of the passages I read had me nearly setting the book down to go call my congresspeople. The book's too interesting, though, and I just had to finish it.
Now, I'm torn. I will homeschool my children. That, however, does not exempt me from caring about the education of my neighbor's kids or the kids who will eventually be driving and working and living near me.
So, what do I need to do?
This book offers so many suggestions and demands for improvements that it's easy enough to write them down and mail the list off to your congresspeople. It's not that hard to contact every member of your local school board and recommend these changes be put into effect. A letter to the local school superintendent is a good idea.
Read this book. If you've ever wondered what could be done about the constant news reports of kids not knowing where DC is or not knowing how to do addition without a calculator, read this book. You will be horrified to find what the cause is.
It's not too little money. It's not too little caring.
One note of caution: if your kids are in school now it will scare the stuffings out of you and not in a good way.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging the Educational Establishment
Review: Author Martin Gross does an excellent job challenging the educational establishment's claim that poor student performance over the last thirty years is due largely to factors outside of the classroom. In a hard hitting way, Gross articulates that the establishment -- teachers, administrators, and education buearucrats are responsible for low performance, due to their quest with new ideas and the mandate for a growing educational bureaucracy.I started reading this book while doing research on American class-size reduction policy, and had revealed to me little discussed arguments against current educational policy, as well-as how and why the facts are supressed. If you question the value of the education your children are recieving, or are interested in the "school choice" debate, you'll probably find it hard to put this book down. Given the straight-forward arguments of Gross, I look forward to reading his other books as well.
Rating:
Summary: No Mr. Chips Wanted Here, eh?
Review: Gross makes remarks that will threaten many readers, especially public school teachers and administrators (especially those who oppose performance pay); people who got "good" grades in public schools; ed school dependents; parents who think that observing the truancy laws of the State is sufficient involvement in their child's education. Alas, what he says is all too true -- and too clearly elucidated and competently supported for more than nitpicking complaint. The education lobbies are making millions off the wasted time and lives of American children whose days are dominated by dull content, worse instruction, and expectations so low as to be insulting. No wonder we have such an silly emphasis on self-esteem; if one can't do what one goes to do for a six or seven hour days -- read, write, and cipher - one's self-esteem is going to suffer; people with low self-esteem are grouchy and sometimes bring weapons to school or skip it entirely. Give kids happy talk instead of interesting content, and, voila: the cult of Teacher as Saint which has been so successfully touted by the education "Blob" of unions and lobbyists and B- graduates of Ed schools. If one is so heretical as to act out in unbearable circumstances, blame the family and ask for more public funding. The unions, as Gross so deftly demonstrates, are the place to which all complaints about public education lead. Pretending to be professional associations, the AFT and NEA are really Trusts, not educational trusts, but Trusts of the kind Democrats in Congress used to, quite rightly, work to bust as they did the steel trusts, coal trusts, railroad barons, and lumber bandits. These "education" unionists are anti-competitive; sign non-competition pacts with one another; refuse to allow teachers of quality and conscience to opt out of "fair share" bribery to work. And, nearly as bad, their grammar and higher reasoning skills as read and heard in the media are as slack as the attention spans of the children they exploit. In college English classes one sees the product of even affluent suburban schools lacking an understanding that spell check is no substitute for thinking (It is not a "mere misspelling;" it's very often a different word!). These short-changed children are the people who will run an America that, increasingly, will have to depend on wealth and might to keep us afloat, where discernment and excellence might have made us true leaders in the democratic experiment.
Rating: 
Summary: Good introductory review of today's education establishment
Review: Gross provides a decent overview of the reasons why today's public schools are failing us and our nation. Reading this book may very well make you worry about our future competitiveness as a nation. How can any country survive and prosper with such poor education? Worse yet, there appears to be no prospect for major reform as long as education is politicized and focused on "teaching kids to think" as opposed to infusing them with knowledge and facts - the basics needed for critical thinking. Gross's run-down of our educational ills is complete and has been written about in other books. These ills include poorly trained and poorly achieving teachers; an educational union (the NEA) interested solely in teacher pay and benefits but completely uninterested - actually biased strongly against - rewarding great teachers and developing great students; a strong bias for applying knowledge instead of learning knowledge (how can one apply something one does not have?); lackluster teacher colleges and education degrees that foist poorly trained teachers on our students and a built-in, institutional bias against well trained experts who have bachelors or masters in their fields like math and history. But Gross has major flaws in his book. First and foremost is poor documentation of his assertions and facts. He includes chapter end-notes, but none of these are numbered or referenced to his actual passages. This results in a major cross-referencing difficulty and actually detracts from his scholarship. If one wants to look further and learn more, or figure out how to be an agent of change, this lack of numbered footnotes makes one's life very difficult. His other major flaw is his laundry list of proposed changes. All of these changes make sense, but they are political poison and most would be impossible to implement. Gross makes no effort to outline a strategy on how to achieve his recommendations, which wedge issues would be most effective, and which hot buttons should be avoided for now. This is not a book that will foment a revolution. Better books on this subject are well researched and documented. As follow-ups with more substance I recommend "Inside American Education" by Thomas Sowell (Free Press) and "Dumbing Down our Kids" by Charles Sykes (St. Martin's Press).
Rating: 
Summary: Go Teach For A Year Mr. Gross
Review: I only made it partway through the third chapter, so I can't comment on the entire book, but what I read was unadulterated CRAP, in particular the chapter on "Teacher Education". Of course people get higher grades in "education" classes than in "physics", they get higher grades in English Literature and World History too! Math and Science are the hardest disciplines, requiring the most work, that's why wealthy, spoiled, complacent American students don't take them--only the foreign students who are earning the advanced degrees in these disciplines. And what about an Engineering Major scoring better than an Education Major on the Quantitative portion of the GRE--really Mr. Gross, I would hope that would be the case after 2 years of advanced coursework in Differential Equations and Physics. What a bunch of drivel. Sure, some education courses aren't so great, but they discuss things important to people who are going to teach. A course in particle physics is a lot tougher, but who gives a darn unless you are going to work at Lawerence Livermore Labs on a particle accelerator. His rationale just doesn't make any sense. I guess if you're a parent who is having trouble raising your child, a child who is too bored and distracted by all the "toys" advertised down their throat, then you can gain some solace from this indictment. Or if you are a parent who is too busy or too inarticulate to dialouge with your child's teacher, then read this book and feel better, but your kid won't be any more successful and you'll have no one to blame but yourself. Yes, I am a teacher, High School Chemistry, my GRE was a combined 1890 (including a 670 in quantitative), my SAT was 1280, and yes, my Education courses were easier than my courses in Quantitative Analysis, Mechanics and The Chemistry of Water Pollution.
So, do you get the feeling I take his book personally, HELL yes! And with good reason. In addition to Chemistry, I teach kids to Rockclimb for their senior projects, lead overnight hikes and coach a Science Olympiad team. Not to mention raising 3 young children. There is much to be improved with Public Education, but there is much that is right and successful. I have taught Home School over the internet, at Private American Schools overseas, and at Charter schools here in the states and none can hold a candle to the public schools I have worked at, including 3 years in the East Los Angeles Barrio. Face it, our education is the most inclusive and successful education system in the world; it is the envy of every student in the world and it is the main reason we are the dominant world power (in addition to the New World natural resources we are fast depleting, but don't get me started). Don't waste your time with this book, just do something positive with your time, for anyone, for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: do more homework
Review: I only want to encourage the reader to seek additional information on the assessment that the Ed.D. is an inferior degree to the Ph.D. The author should seek additional references and research on this subject. While some schools require less technical dissertations and possibly one or two fewer courses (6 semester hours), many schools treat the two degrees as valid research designations. Regardless, calling a doctoral degree inferior is a statement against a particular school, not the degree designation.
Rating:
Summary: do more homework
Review: I only want to encourage the reader to seek additional information on the assessment that the Ed.D. is an inferior degree to the Ph.D. The author should seek additional references and research on this subject. While some schools require less technical dissertations and possibly one or two fewer courses (6 semester hours), many schools treat the two degrees as valid research designations. Regardless, calling a doctoral degree inferior is a statement against a particular school, not the degree designation.
Rating:
Summary: Big elephant in the room that is being ignored...
Review: It's funny...all of this antipathy towards the public education system without the assessment of the fact the the RELIGIOUS RIGHT has taken over many of the country's school districts (and city councils) in their efforts to control what kids learn. Their takeover's benchmark is moving the system itself towards utter bankruptcy, thereby leaving a huge hole for the corporations to fill. This has led to the problem of, frankly, stupid children who are crass, mindless consumers who also have 30-second attention spans. Perfect for the church that wants humans who are easy to control (hence, the lack of ability of these young people to think for themselves), and for corporations who want unquestioning consumers. Shame on this author for exclusively blaming teachers and other "lobbyists" -- they are a part of the problem, but not the instigators/creators of the problems.
Rating: 
Summary: And the nitpicking goes on . . .
Review: Just a correction to a review by Andy Field: yes, the odds of three thrown coins coming up all heads is 12.5%. Ditto all tails. But the odds of their coming up all the same, heads OR tails, is 25%. Just as I said.
Rating:
Summary: Gross's best non-fiction book since The Government Racket
Review: Martin Gross again shows why he is one of America's foremost nonfiction authors. This is his best book since The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z. Gross's forte is the combination of extensive research with tight-knit prose. What makes this his most impressive recent hardcover effort is that he clearly has great passion for this subject. Educated in the best New York City public schools in the 1930's and 1940's, Gross draws from his personal experience to demonstrate that the American public education system has gone from first-rate to abysmal in just a few short decades; that it has in some ways deteriorated almost beyond repair. As fond as Gross remains of his own past education, he reluctantly concludes that today -- after decades of systematic corruption leading to ever-declining standards -- vouchers and school choice are desperately needed to break the iron grip of the teachers unions, the teacher-training colleges, and their political allies. Whereas many skillful authors such as Chester Finn, Charles Sykes, Myron Lieberman and Tom Sowell have tackled this subject, Gross matches their research and then excels in his synthesis of the inherently complex subject matter. He pays close attention to organizing the material so as to maintain a logical structure, which helps him to maintain reader interest throughout. In sum, highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand what ails our public education system and how its problems should be addressed.
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