How Schools Work

Education runs on lies. That's probably not what you'd expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it's the truth. So opens Arne Duncan's How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids.

Drawing on nearly three decades in education-from his mother's after-school program on Chicago's South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC-How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can't help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests.