The Influence of Teachers: Reflections on Teaching and Leadership

Education & Teaching

Merrow, John

Schools & Teaching

LM Books

Two decades ago A Nation at Risk sounded a national alarm on K-12 education. Now, an equally urgent alarm is being sounded for higher education in America. In Declining by Degrees, leading authors and educators such as Tom Wolfe, Jim Fallows, and Jay Mathews provide us with a valuable understanding of the serious issues facing colleges today, such as budget cuts, grade inflation, questionable recruitment strategies, and a major focus on Big Time Sports. Tied to the PBS documentary of the same name, Declining by Degrees creates a national discussion about the future of higher education and what we can do about it.

Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk

Hersh, Richard H.

Higher & Continuing Education

St. Martin's: Griffin

All too often in American education, mediocrity pays. Efforts to reform and improve schools will continue to fail until that fundamental problem is addressed. Below C Level provides a road map for success from a veteran PBS and NPR reporter. According to John Merrow, these changes won't be easy, but our country has no choice if we wish to remain a competitive democracy. John Merrow has been reporting on education for 35 years. In this collection of provocative essays, covering teaching and learning from preschool to prisons, he describes the challenges facing our nation and offers thoughtful analysis and solutions.

Below C Level: How American Education Encourages Mediocrity - and What We Can Do About It

Createspace Independent Pub

How do you evaluate a school? Today parents and teachers lean on standardized test scores - along with image, rumor, and reputation - to make vital decisions. However, a single number is inevitably misleading. Author John Merrow, host of PBS's premier documentary series on youth and learning, The Merrow Report, delves into the problem of school evaluation. He shows that there are really only three kinds of schools: bad, good enough, and excellent. Good enough is the kind of school that most people settle for, schools people want to believe are okay. Each of the chapters in Choosing Excellence explores some aspect of schooling: safety, academics, values, technology, and so on. He spotlights excellent practices and strategies, concluding each chapter with a list of evidence for visitors to look for.

Choosing Excellence: Good Enough Schools Are Not Good Enough

Parenting & Relationships

Parenting

ScarecrowEducation

The prize-winning PBS correspondent's provocative antidote to America’s misguided approaches to K-12 school reform During an illustrious four-decade career at NPR and PBS, John Merrow—winner of the George Polk Award, the Peabody Award, and the McGraw Prize—reported from every state in the union, as well as from dozens of countries, on everything from the rise of district-wide cheating scandals and the corporate greed driving an ADD epidemic to teacher-training controversies and America’s obsession with standardized testing. Along the way, he taught in a high school, at a historically black college, and at a federal penitentiary. Now, the revered education correspondent of PBS NewsHour distills his best thinking on education into a twelve-step approach to fixing a K–12 system that Merrow describes as being “addicted to reform” but unwilling to address the real issue: American public schools are ill-equipped to prepare young people for the challenges of the twenty-first century. This insightful book looks at how to turn digital natives into digital citizens and why it should be harder to become a teacher but easier to be one. Merrow offers smart, essential chapters—including “Measure What Matters,” and “Embrace Teachers”—that reflect his countless hours spent covering classrooms as well as corridors of power. His signature candid style of reportage comes to life as he shares lively anecdotes, schoolyard tales, and memories that are at once instructive and endearing. Addicted to Reform is written with the kind of passionate concern that could come only from a lifetime devoted to the people and places that constitute the foundation of our nation. It is a “big book” that forms an astute and urgent blueprint for providing a quality education to every American child.

Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education

The New Press

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Books by Merrow, John