This book considers how American public education came to be the way it is today. It helps students to have a better sense of how the past informs the present and how questions regarding who is served best by the schools tell us about the goals and aspirations of present-day schools in America.

In Thinking about Schools, Eleanor Hilty has put together a wonderful collection of classic and contemporary readings that speak loudly and clearly to the importance of equity and justice as goals for contemporary education. This is just the right collection of readings to inspire and inform prospective and practicing teachers alike. It is the perfect text for introducing students to the social forces affecting public schooling in America.-Barry M. Franklin, Utah State University

This book is an attempt to look at the professional lives and work of teachers in the 21st century. If teachers represent the front-line of hope for children in America, it is imperative that their efforts to achieve the status of a "real" profession must be understood and supported by those who have a vested interest in the success of the public schools. In this book, it will be argued that the low status of teachers and the general dissatisfaction of teachers with the profession have very little to do with salaries or education. Instead, the problems that afflict the teaching profession have more to do with the dismal working conditions that characterize the daily lives of teachers. Past school reform efforts have suffered from a lack of insight into the lives and work of teachers, and as such, have been doomed to failure from the beginning. This book is an attempt to examine and better understand teaching in the 21st century and use that as a basis for reconceptualizing and defining teacher s work.