"Becoming Good American Schools presents an impassioned argument for respecting individual school communities. This book inspires those of us who care about the survival of public education as a major democratic institution." --Educational Leadership "One of the important things that this book does is acknowledge and illustrate, with case histories and concrete examples, how difficult humane and progressive change is in the schools. This book is healing and encouraging, worth reading to hear voices that inform the standards and structural debates about education with a deep sense of humanity." --Rethinking Schools, An Urban Educational Journal "There is rich detail on every page of this book--detail from an extraordinary amount of research--and the account the authors weave from it is terrifically engaging. It's the story of middle schools struggling to transform themselves, and the story, like the conceptual frame of the book, is instructive, just, caring, and invites our intellectual and moral participation." --Mike Rose, author of Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements of America's Underprepared and Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America "The authors paint a convincing portrait of teachers actively engaged in educational reform that honors and renews the great tradition of the common school--offering a hopeful yet realistic vision of revitalized democracy inspired by a passion for the public good. This book is an eloquent defense of civic virtue.

It is useful, vigorous, and persuasive." --Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities "With measured passion and lively detail, the authors have described the real crisis facing our schools and some very hopeful and helpful ways we might respond to it. This book is built around years of research, school experience, and the tangible, living stories of many ordinary and extraordinary people's efforts to grapple with school change. For all of us whose vision of school reform is rooted in a concern for the nation as a whole, this is immediate and must reading. It was just what I needed as I launched my own middle school work." --Deborah Meier, principal of Mission Hill School in Boston, and founder and former principal of the Central Park East Schools in New York "Becoming Good American Schools is rich, realistic, invigorating, and scary. Any middle school educator who has been part of an effort to reform the educational process will see himself or herself in this book--as the brave risk taker, the naive visionary, the frightened frontline trooper, and the touched individual who can make a difference." --Judy Cunningham, principal, South Lake Middle School, Irvine, California "Character does matter, and the authors make a compelling case that it is too important to personal happiness and the health of society to leave to chance.

Anyone serious about adding a character development component to their curriculum would benefit from reading this book." --The Orff Echo.