What's wrong with school reform.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Book review

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools

By Steven Brill

Simon & Schuster. 478pages. $28.

Steven Brill has a thing for energetic young Ivy League grads, whom he refers to throughout his influential new book as "the best and the brightest."

Teach for America alumni, hedge fund millionaires and philanthropic billionaires who fund school-reform groups, and school administrators who take a break from lucrative careers to whip urban school systems into shape--these are the heroes of this highly readable narrative by the investigative journalist, lawyer, and Yale journalism prof.

Brill introduces us to Dave Levin, who grew up on Park Avenue and went to Yale before co-founding the Knowledge Is Power Program. He describes Levin bantering with low-income students on a sidewalk in the Bronx, as if "being here was no big deal, no more out of the ordinary than meeting someone for squash at the Yale Club."

We spend a lot of time with Joel Klein, former New York City schools chancellor, "one of those Ivy Leaguers with an off-the-charts resume that suggests that if the best and the brightest can do anything, he can probably do anything better."

Throughout the book, "the best and the brightest" do battle with the forces of mediocrity--those dullards who take up space and waste money, time, and students' lives while waiting to retire with cushy benefits, thanks to the teachers' union.

No doubt about it, the unions are public enemy number one for Brill's heroes, the school reform crowd.

And while many of his stories are genuinely inspiring (who wouldn't root for idealistic young teachers who knock themselves out to help poor kids succeed?), the union-bashing is jarring, especially if you happen to be reading his book, as I did, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Brill seems to have been caught flat-footed by Governor Scott Walker's attack on public employees' bargaining rights in Wisconsin--and by the tremendous outpouring of support for those employees, particularly teachers.

In his final chapter, he makes a hasty effort to distance the school reform he advocates from Walker's "frontal attacks" on teachers' unions. But that is only after 392 pages of assaults on teachers' unions.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Brill repeats the mantras of school reformers that class size doesn't matter, that funding is not the issue, poverty is not the issue. The only thing that matters is a motivated, inspiring teacher. Off the squash courts, to the barricades!

If you can get...