Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America's Children

A Timely and Welcome Addition to the National Conversation

The greatest weakness of the current literature addressing educational reform is its level of abstraction. "How Children Succeed," for instance, is an excellent primer on emerging theories of what allows children to be successful in school and in life, but its personal narratives are necessarily limited and largely devoted to the researchers who are developing these theories. Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" provides a strong macro-view of the arc of school reform, but cannot dig down into the actual thoughts and perceptions of the low-level actors (teachers, principals, parents, and students). Daniel Koretz's "Measuring Up" is a thorough and nuanced account of the limitations of standardized testing design, but also lacks compelling characters and narratives. Across the board, the school reform debate has been driven by over-arching theories of elite-actor motivations and strategies. The lives of those who are directly affected by educational reform are reduced down to superficially compelling yet context-free anecdotes that can support a main thesis. I am very happy to say that "Hope Against Hope" reverses the prevailing dynamic and focuses on the personal narratives and perceptions of those who must engage with school reform on a day-to-day basis. The trifurcated focus on three different actors within the New Orleans school system (a principal with deep roots in the local community, a Harvard TFA alum who now teaches in a new charter school, and a family with experience in both the older public new system and the new charter regime) can hardly be describes as "innovative" yet provides a desperately needed counterweight to the abstract and politically charged accounts of educational elites. Carr's emphasis on the thoughts and actions of her primary characters (bolstered by a host of supporting players) allows her to pull off a subtle but important trick; she is able to humanize her characters to the point where the reader...