ANNOUNCING—An Important New Book by
David C. Berliner, Gene V Glass, and AssociatesSpecial Pre-publication Discount!
Use coupon code 50MYTHS2014
“50 Myths and Lies is a powerful defense of public education…. It is a timely and hard-hitting book of scholarly but passionate polemic.”
—Jonathan Kozol“What do you get when two world-class scholars and a team of talented analysts take a hard look at 50 widely held, yet unsound beliefs about U.S. public schools? Well, in this instance you get a flat-out masterpiece!”
—W. James Popham“Anyone involved in making decisions about today’s schools should read this book.”
—Linda Darling-Hammond“Whether you agree or disagree with this book, if you care about the future of public education, you mustn’t ignore it.”
—Andy Hargreaves
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Two of the most respected voices in education and a team of young education scholars identify 50 myths and lies that threaten America’s public schools. With hard-hitting information and a touch of comic relief, Berliner, Glass, and their associates separate fact from fiction in this comprehensive look at modern education reform. They explain how the mythical failure of public education has been created and perpetuated in large part by political and economic interests who stand to gain from its destruction.
They expose a rapidly expanding variety of organizations and media that intentionally misrepresent facts. Many of these organizations also name themselves to suggest that their goal is unbiased service in the public interest when, in fact, they represent narrow political and financial interests. Where appropriate, the authors name the promoters of these deceptions and point out how their interests are served by encouraging false beliefs.
This provocative book features short essays on important topics to provide every elected representative, school administrator, school board member, teacher, parent, and concerned citizen with much food for thought, as well as reliable knowledge from authoritative sources.
Book Sections:
I. Myths, Hoaxes, and Outright Lies
II. Myths and Lies About Who’s Best: Charters, Privates, Maybe Finland?
III. Myths and Lies About Teachers and the Teaching Profession: Teachers Are “Everything,” That’s Why We Blame Them and Their Unions
IV. Myths and Lies About How to Make Our Nation’s School Better
V. Myths and Lies About How Our Nation’s Schools Are Paid For: All Schools Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others
VI. Myths and Lies About Making All Students Career and College Ready
David C. Berliner is an educational psychologist and bestselling author. He was professor and Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gene V Glass is a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and a research professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their Associates are the hand-picked leading PhDs and PhDs in training from their respective institutions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m in. I’m going to buy Dr. Berliner’s book. Dr. Berliner’s other book about NCLB is what got me in trouble in the first place. I read it and mentioned to my new principal that I didn’t see how we were going to be able to get every student, including special ed, to 100% by 2014. The next year my class was stacked with every LD or behavior problem he could give me. Then he wouldn’t allow me to do a child study or get them tested. Who was he hurting more me or them? Actually, both of us. I tried to get help from our local NEA–AEA, but I was excessed to another school anyway. I lasted two years there, hired a lawyer, and was excessed again. I made it two more years. I’m okay. I retired early. But what about all the children who didn’t get tested. What has happened to them? So, Dr. Berliner, I am asking you to help me bring Dr. Ravitch to Arizona. We need to wake this state up. We can get students from ASU to attend, teachers, and parents. I will work hard to help make this happen. You could also speak and that would be even more fantastic. Please consider this.
Many thanks for letting people know that there are still people out there fighting the corporate take-over of our schools.
I suggest that anyone who buys this book buy it from Amazon and not directly from the Teachers College Press.
Before you pop a cork from angry blood pressure, hear me out. I know what I’m talking about. My wife is a traditionally published, award winning author (Random House, Harcourt Brace, Bloomsbury) who has sold more than a million books printed in English alone and her work has been translated into more than thirty languages.
Her books are censored in China but so popular that they Mandarin translations are available on the black market there, and I have been learning how to build an author’s platform and promote my own published work for several years.
I know that some of you abhor Amazon but Amazon is the biggest bookstore on the planet and reaches every English speaking country and those Amazon Best Seller Ranks will catapult a book into mass market promo e-mails to hundreds of thousand or millions of Amazon customers as a suggestion to anyone Amazon’s data bank says may be interested in that topic.
If you doubt me, think of how Amy Chua’s book, “The Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother” and how it became a runaway NY Times bestseller for weeks gaining global attention and even press time in China’s state owned media.
Amazon has developed an algorithm that is a powerful promotional tool unmatched on the planet.
I know several authors who have been published by Amazon’s own in-house publishing company and Amazon’s promotional tools on its site managed to sell hundreds of thousands of their books when they were unknown authors. The average unknown author published by a traditional press sells 250 books the first year and 3,000 in a title’s lifetime.
Right now, the Amazon Best Seller Rank for this book is #2,353 ranked against several million titles. In its genre, it’s ranked #6. If enough people buy it and move it into the top #100 overall, it will automatically gain more attention from Amazon’s automated promotional tools and Amazon will automatically generate e-mails to hundreds of thousand if not millions of readers who will never hear of it any other way.
Here’s the link:
What’s more important—reaching as many readers as possible or making sure that Amazon doesn’t earn its cut of the pie from this one book out of the millions it sells on its site along with shirts and lettuce?
We are in a PR war so think like a PR person. Don’t think like a teacher.
I ordered it. I can’t wait. I wish it was being published by someone with a larger popular readership.
If enough people buy the book on Amazon and move its rank into the top #100 (overall), then Amazon’s automated promotional tools will send out e-mails to every reader who ever read a book on a similar topic reaching a much wider potential reader base.
Too late. I used the discount on the publisher’s site.
May I recommend Tienken and Orlich (2013) The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies? Thoroughly researched and documented, this book begins with a call for liberty and justice for all, and it ends with a thoughtful series of recommendations on the way forward. In the meat of their book, Tienken and Orlich expose the unwarranted claims that are leading us in the wrong direction.
It would be a fine companion to the work of Berliner and Glass.
I put the book on my Facebook page trying to get others to order it and read it. I also put it on AZ BATS. If all of us do this, we will help Dr. Berliner’s book sell and, hopefully, be read by more. I also emailed Dr. Berliner, explained a few things about myself, and asked him to please bring Dr. Ravitch here to Arizona to speak. He emailed me back and is asking his Dean to work on this. I am so excited that maybe I and others will get to hear her speak. Our state needs to be educated about what is really happening in education. I would also like to hear Dr. Berliner speak.