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

Carr, Dr Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1608195139 ISBN 13: 9781608195138

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press, 2014

Synopsis

Geraldlynn is a lively, astute 14-year-old. Her family, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, returns home to find a radically altered public education system. Geraldlynn's parents hope their daughter's new school will prepare her for college--but the teenager has ideals and ambitions of her own.

Aidan is a fresh-faced Harvard grad drawn to New Orleans by the possibility of bringing change to a flood-ravaged city. He teaches at an ambitious charter school with a group of newcomers determined to show the world they can use science, data, and hard work to build a model school.

Mary Laurie is a veteran educator who becomes principal of one of the first public high schools to reopen after Katrina. Laurie and her staff find they must fight each day not only to educate the city's teenagers, but to keep the Walker community safe and whole.

In this powerful narrative non-fiction debut, the lives of these three characters provide readers with a vivid and sobering portrait of education in twenty-first-century America. Hope Against Hope works in the same tradition as Random Family and There Are No Children Here to capture the challenges of growing up and learning in a troubled world.

About this title

Review

[A] nuanced, concrete picture focused on individuals seeking to make the reform regime work for the children in their schools. The book is a tremendous achievement, and should be required reading on all sides of these debates. (Bookforum)

It's work like this that makes journalism truly matter, that makes clear that reportage is not merely about fact and argument and theory, but about human lives in the balance. In Hope Against Hope, Sarah Carr has taken an open mind and a careful eye to the delicate, complicated issue of public education and the fading American commitment to equality of opportunity. She does so not by embracing ideological cant or political banter, but by following people through the schools of New Orleans, a city that is trying desperately to reconstitute and better itself after a near-death experience. Don't embarrass yourself by speaking further on American education without first reading this. (David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme)

With grace and profound intimacy, Sarah Carr immerses us in the lives of a group of students, teachers and administrators in New Orleans, ground zero for the debate over school reform, and lays bare all that we face as we try to strengthen our schools. Riveting. Empathic. Incisive. Hope Against Hope is storytelling at its absolute finest. (Alex Kotlowitz, author of The Other Side of the River and There Are No Children Here)

Book Description

A moving portrait of school reform in New Orleans through the eyes of the students and educators living it.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1608195139
• ISBN 13: 9781608195138
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336