MixedThe Chicago TribuneThe flaw...is that Duncan has written a book titled How Schools Work, and this is not how schools work at all. What Duncan describes is how the education machine in America works ... How schools work is a different storyline. Duncan spends hardly any pages embedded in schools or talking to teachers, principals or students ... We don\'t learn how the surgical decisions being made at high altitudes end up impacting classrooms in cities like Chicago, Baltimore or Detroit ... we don\'t learn much about the outcomes of pushing for options beyond traditional schools, such as charters, which Duncan championed when he ran Chicago\'s school system. And we don\'t learn how some schools in high-poverty neighborhoods beat such odds...stories that really illustrate how good public schools work in the era of limited resources and vast income inequality ... Duncan, however, does offer a valuable window into Washington education politics.
