Bungle in the jungle.

• Author: Rotherham, Andrew J.

DESPITE ANY NUMBER OF INSIGHTFUL books on the problems of American schools, no writer has galvanized the public about education the way Upton Sinclair did about the meat industry in his 1905 classic The Jungle. That's too bad, because while many, if not most, American public schools do a pretty good job, large urban schools and districts--with their terrible working conditions and general dysfunction--are just as ripe for a catalyzing wake-up call as the meat-packing plants were in Sinclair's day.

In Who's Teaching Your Children?, veteran teachers Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles set out to tell the inside story of American teaching and co issue a call to action for a better alternative. Like Sinclair, they largely succeed in issuing a powerful indictment, but get lost in the solutions.

As the authors make dear, teachers endure a largely miserable professional life, beginning even before they enter the classroom. Prospective teachers must undergo a costly regimen of classes in order to be licensed, classes that contribute little to student learning. Once in the schools, newly-minted teachers face an appalling rink-or-swim atmosphere. They are isolated from their peers and discouraged from visiting the classrooms of other teachers, not rewarded for special skills, expertise, or accomplishments, and given frequently useless opportunities for professional development and growth. Teachers are under pressure to watered-down academic standards, and they face a lack of respect for the profession overall.

"How many people would willingly study for and enter a career if they knew beforehand that their first day on the job would be very much like their last 30 or 40 years later?" Troen and Boles ask. Given that talented young people are drawn to jobs where initiative, skills, and performance are rewarded at least as much as seniority and hierarchy, the prevailing system virtually guarantees that the best and brightest will not choose to become teachers.

As 30-year veterans of the system, Troen and Boles avoid a ham-handed critique of teachers unions. They applaud the historic gains unions secured and cheer recent initiatives by local unions to embrace some educational reforms. Yet they point out that "the cold hard fact remains that little has changed in the vast majority of American schools."

But if their analysis of the problems of the teaching profession is spot on, their solution is less than convincing. The authors offer their own grand...