Two blasts of fresh air -- The Manufactured Crisis: Myth, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools by David Berliner and Bruce Biddle / Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America by Mike Rose

NEA Today, Oct 1995 by Weiss, Stephanie

For the past dozen years, Americans have been fed a steady diet of bad news about their public schools. Most people swailow it without protest.

Most people--but not all. This fall, two new books belie the notion that America's public schools are failing. In fact, they paint a picture of success and hope.

The Manufctured Crisis and Possible Lives will revive many an educator weary of the mainstream media's heat and damnation.

The Manufactured Crisis: Myth, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools.

David Berliner and Bruce Biddle. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 350 pp., $25.

Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America.

Mike Rose. Houghton Mifflin Company, 454 pp., $24.95.

Education researchers David Berliner and Bruce Biddle mince no words in The Manufactured Crisis: "The idea that American schools are now failing the nation," they write, "is a Big Lie."

Then they go on to prove it. Page after page, statistic after statistic, they explain the truth behind such myths as "Student achievement has fallen." "Errant nonsense," they proclaim, standing firmly in front of the facts.

In the same vein, UCLA education professor Mike Rose calls his book "a hopeful vision in a time of bitterness and lost faith."

Rose spent four years visiting public schools from Baltimore to Los Angeles, Chicago to rural Kentucky, looking for "a fresh language of educational critique and invention." He found exceptional teachers doing exceptional things.

Possible Lives is beautifully written. Each location is given its geographic and historic due. Classroom happenings are written in rich detail, often delving into minutiae that only an educator could love.

If there is an audience for good news about America's public schools, these two books will surely be bestsellers.