I am at odds with how she curiously leaves Asians out of any mention of students of color or minority students. Is that because they outperform all groups? Do they not fit her agenda? She does include Asians in some of her graphs but does not mention them in the text when discussing the scores or inequities of blacks and latinos.
She swings back and forth between her collection and interpretation of data and little heart tugging anecdotes. She talks about education in countries in which the population in homogenous. She delved into all of California’s educational debacles but never tells about states that are getting it right. How can an enormous country like the United States (pop. 318 million) be compared to tiny countries such as Finland (pop. 5.4 million), Korea (pop. 50 million) and Singapore (pop. 5.3 million)?
As I stated earlier I do agree with Darling-Hammond on some things. But I think that reading a book by a counterpart of Darling-Hammond like Jay P. Greene, endowed professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, would be an important part of informed thought and discussion. I don’t agree with everything he has to say either but as my Uncle Oz says, “You have to read everything. To be fully informed you have to read all sides of an issue.”