Public Education: An Autopsy.

• Author: O'Leary, John

IT IS CUSTOMARY TO WAIT UNTIL THE PAtient is dead before starting an autopsy. But Myron Lieberman has decided that public education is "beyond life-sustaining measures," and he's impatient to explore what went wrong.

It's a big job. The decline of America's education system has been chronicled in a series of publications with increasingly dire titles. First we learned Why Johnny Can't Read. Then we found out that Johnny's reading problems made America A Nation at Risk. Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong revealed that, in addition to being illiterate, Johnny was amoral. (No need to be told Why Johnny Hasn't Graduated Yet.) Now, in the same way that Jason Goes to Hell promises to be the end of the venerable Friday the 13th saga, Public Education: An Autopsy claims to be the last word on our failed educational system.

While it may not be the last word, the book does present an excellent overview of what's wrong with public education, concluding that the only workable cure--school choice--is virtually inevitable. Lieberman writes: "The promarket forces have one ineradicable advantage in the years ahead. That advantage is the inherent futility of conventional school reform."

This conclusion is especially telling coming from Lieberman, a former public-school teacher who maintained an "optimistic attitude toward public education until the 1980s." A self-described "slow learner," the 74-year-old now contends that "the United States has been prosperous and democratic not because of public education but in spite of it."

This book is different from other accounts of educational failure because it looks not only at America's declining schools but also at the political structures underlying them. Lieberman provides a peek behind the curtain at the teachers' unions, school administrators, and elected officials who control public education. His experience as a teacher in the St. Paul public schools and as a district negotiator gives him an insider's perspective, and he is at his best when describing the inherent, systemic problems that plague our nation's schools. Lieberman bashes bureaucracy rather than bureaucrats.

IN PUBLIC EDUCATION, HE HAS AN AMPLE target. The nation's 2.4 million public-school teachers are assisted by an additional 2.1 million administrative and support personnel. That represents one public-school employee for every nine students.

Despite all this staff, Lieberman reports, fewer than one-third of 17-year-olds could place the...