Release: ‘A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Issues in K–12 Education’

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Washington, DC, March 8, 2021 — As with so much else in our polarized age, discussions about schooling show deep divides and seething distrust. In most any educational gathering today, one need only mention school choice, testing, or discipline for feathers to fly. Yet, Americans overwhelmingly say they want schools to embody something more collegial and cooperative.

How can we champion the things we believe in a manner that respects our opponents, identifies common ground, and models the values we want our schools to teach? This is a universal challenge, but it’s especially pressing in education, where our charge includes forming citizens, imparting our shared values, and ensuring that equal opportunity is a sacred promise and not a hollow hope.

That’s what makes Frederick M. Hess and Pedro A. Noguera’s new book, A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Issues in K–12 Education, so timely. Hess, AEI’s director of education policy, and Noguera, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education, have often occupied opposing sides of the nation’s heated educational debates. In this new volume, though, they candidly talk through their differences in search of mutual understanding and even, occasionally, common ground.

In a series of back-and-forth letters, Hess and Noguera tackle issues ranging from the purpose of schooling to testing, school choice, for-profit providers, the achievement gap, teacher pay, the role of philanthropy in education, and much more. They bring a practicality to the discussions stemming from their decades of experience working with schools and school leaders. No matter the topic, they offer a sharp, honest dialogue that digs deep into their disagreements. The result is not only a powerful meditation on where 21^st-century school improvement can and should go in the years ahead, but a model of responsible, civil debate between those with substantial, principled differences.

Heartening and inspiring, this book promises to spark crucial conversations, provide an invaluable tutorial on the realities of schooling and possibilities of school improvement, and reassure weary readers that we can do better. One cannot set this book down without feeling a renewed hope and confidence that we’re capable of addressing the educational challenges before us, and of doing so in a manner that summons the better angels of our nature.

About the Authors:

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the popular Education Week blog, “Rick Hess Straight Up.” After starting his career as a high school teacher and then a college professor, he has gone on to become one of the nation’s most influential conservative education authorities, as well as the author of books like The Same Thing Over and Over, Cage-Busting Leadership, and Common Sense School Reform. Pedro A. Noguera is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. Like Hess, Noguera started his career as a high school social studies teacher. He has gone on to become one of the nation’s most respected progressive scholars, serving on the boards of numerous national and local organizations and authoring books like Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Nation’s Schools, and The Trouble with Black Boys… and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education.

For interview requests or for a copy of the book, please contact [email protected].

Praise:

“We are stronger, and smarter, when we work together. We reach better results when we listen to one another. This courageous conversation about how we leverage and work through our differences of opinion to produce meaningful improvements for students, families, and educators is a template for our nation and for school communities all across the United States. If we commit to the work of respecting one another enough to listen and learn, as Dr. Noguera and Dr. Hess have done here, we can indeed break through the polarization that too often hampers our progress and create a better system for learning in our country.” —Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham

“This book is a master class in breaking through the silos that polarize education reform and breaking down why they exist in the first place. It should be required reading for any education leader, graduate student, or parent who seeks to understand the complexity of school improvement. It weaves political philosophy, politics, and the perils of implementation together in an infinitely readable volume.” —Celine Coggins, executive director, Grantmakers for Education

“If you despair that our public schools are beyond repair, read this book. If you despair that people of widely divergent views can no longer debate them without rancor, read this book. (If neither of these thoughts are bothering you, do a little homework and then read it!)” —Governor Mitch Daniels, president, Purdue University

“We don’t agree on everything—and that is the point of this book. We can have vigorous debates, see each other’s perspectives, learn from the conversation, and, where possible, find common ground to advance excellence and equity for kids.” —Elisa Villanueva Beard, CEO, Teach for America