A Brighter Choice: Building a Just School in an Unequal City

This book is full of hope for a brighter future for all! It is a must-read for every NYC Mayor, Schools Chancellor, District Superintendent, Principal, Teacher, Parent Coordinator, PTA Leader and Parent of Public School-aged Children. Beautifully written with great clarity and compassion, Clara Hemphill chronicles the saga of NYC's extremely challenging, but not necessarily quixotic, quest to provide a high-quality public education to every child in every community citywide. As the founder of InsideSchools.org, she brings her encyclopedic knowledge of the history and workings of the NYC public school system to the fore in this fascinating story of how one community is doing everything it can to "build a just school in an unequal city." The human details of the conflicts between well-meaning parents, teachers and school administrators in one school building make this a gripping read, providing a true picture of the perils and possibilities faced every day inside every NYC public school.

Hemphill has a dazzling book here, in which she unpacks assumptions about what "good" and "bad" schools look like, and shows how we can achieve a vision for successful urban schools that use their communities, with all of their changing demographics, to reach every family. There's tons that surprising and entertaining here; it's much more than the portrait of one school.