Top 10 Education Books of 2011

The editors of American School Board Journal (ASBJ) have compiled their annual list of the top 10 notable books of the previous year in topics related to K-12 education.

“Our 2011 list reflects books on education that have a major impact on public opinion and are important to school leaders,” said Kathleen Vail, ASBJ’s Managing Editor.

Topping the list is Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools, one of most talked-about education books of the year, which portrays unions as the primary obstacle to school reform.

“Teachers unions continued to take a beating in 2011 in the court of public opinion, and several books on our list certainly reflect their place on the firing line,” Vail said.

Providing some balance on the list is The American Public School Teacher, a look at how the teaching profession has changed over the years through the National Education Association’s teacher survey.

The list for 2011 includes:

1. Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools
2. The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation’s Worst School District
3. Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools
4. I Used to Think ... and Now I Think...: Twenty Leading Educators Reflect on the Work of School Reform
5. Feel-Bad Education: And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling
6. The American Public School Teacher: Past, Present, and Future
7. The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts
8. Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future
9. Sub Culture: Three Years in Education’s Dustiest Corners
10. The Perfect Test: An Education Experiment That Went Terribly Wrong