Jennifer Hochschild Professor, Dept. of Government and Dept. of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University

and Nathan Scovronick, Princeton University

"Hochschild and Scovronick have written a wonderfully vigorous defense of our public schools, which is at the same time a detailed, incisive, and illuminating analysis of everything that is wrong with them. Americans who believe in the importance of a common education for citizenship and autonomy will find in this book their political agenda." -- Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study and co-editor of  Dissent.