A New York Times Notable Book of 2014

“Ms. Goldstein’s book is meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced, serving up historical commentary instead of a searing philippic.... The book skips nimbly from history to on-the-ground reporting to policy prescription, never falling on its face. If I were still teaching, I’d leave my tattered copy by the sputtering Xerox machine. I’d also recommend it to the average citizen who wants to know why Robert can’t read, and Allison can’t add." (New York Times)

“[A] lively account of the history of teaching.... The Teacher Wars suggests that to improve our schools, we have to help teachers do their job the way higher-achieving nations do: by providing ­better preservice instruction, offering newcomers more support from well-trained mentors and opening up the ‘black box’ classroom so teachers can observe one another without fear and share ideas. Stressing accountability, with no ideas for improving teaching, Goldstein says, is ‘like the hope that buying a scale will result in losing weight.’ Such books may be sounding the closing bell on an era when the big ideas in school reform came from economists and solutions were sought in spreadsheets of test data.” (New York Times Book Review)

“Goldstein presents detailed case studies from different periods that should give pause to any contemporary reformer who claims to know exactly how to fix public schools in America. Her careful historical analysis reveals certain lessons useful to anyone shaping policy, from principals to legislators...thorough and nuanced.” (San Francisco Chronicle)