Unlike Sheldon Richman's passionate libertarian polemic, Separating School & State, which is like the light cavalry slashing through the defenses of the public education status quo, Myron Lieberman's Public Education An Autopsy is a dry, dispassionate examination of why public education is so difficult to reform and contrasts how certain problems would be handled better in the marketplace.

Lieberman stresses that the public education organizations, such as the NEA, are more focused on protecting the interests of the producers of education rather than catering to the needs of the consumers. For example, even though most bilingual education programs fail to teach Hispanic students English, the NEA and ethnic activist groups will still stridently support the programs because it provides jobs and patronage for their supporters. Though the jury is still out on bilingual education, it appears that since Proposition 209 in California passed, Hispanic students are doing well in English immersion. But, in the absence of voter pressure, the public schools never would have implemented this approach on its own.

Lieberman takes great pains to show that he being fair and balanced in this book, which may frustrate some libertarians who agree with Lieberman that we need a free market in education. But this book is very important reading for anyone who cares about education in America and the direction it needs to take.

The one book I most strongly recommend that readers interested in education reform start with is Dr. Myron Lieberman's Public Education: An Autopsy (1993). Despite its radical-sounding title, Dr. Lieberman's book is thorough and moderate in its approach to these issues. Dr. Lieberman began his working career as a schoolteacher in the same urban public school he attended as a child. He is a life member of the National Education Association and has been writing books about education reform since 1956. Dr. Lieberman is also trained as a lawyer and spent many years as a negotiator for schoolteacher unions bargaining with school boards. Public Education: An Autopsy reflects the latest developments in Dr. Lieberman's thinking and is full of important information not found in other books about education. The book shows great compassion for learners, parents, and teachers and contains excellent endnotes guiding readers to additional research sources.

The reason that education reforms are so muddled and anemic is because most people have no idea how we arrived at our current condition. Consequently, many people consider the abolishment of the U.S. Federal Department of Education to be an extreme measure, when actually it would be mere tinkering at the fringes. This is strange since, historically speaking, the current structure of public education is a recent experiment in social-engineering wrought over roughly the past century to century and one-half. West's invaluable contribution is to unearth the origins of public education and its original claims. The first edition examined the British ontogeny, which is also important since the American ontogeny paralleled it in time and argument. Be sure to get the later editions which specifically include an eye-opening look at the American evolution. If you only read one book on education in your entire life, read this book.

If you wondered what was wrong in government schooling, the union contract is a good place to find answers. Teacher unions often control both sides of the bargaining table by influencing school board elections and policy making. Management (encouraged by bad court decisions) has given away its rights to fire poor teachers, to pay on basis of performance, and to hold teachers responsible for results. School boards sign contracts that prohibit them to contract out failing schools to private management, to create charter schools without union approval, or to issue vouchers so children in failing schools can select a private alternative to government-operated schooling.

This is a scholarly book that presents facts without a chip on its shoulder against unions. But the reader may question in the end why as a society we would place monopoly power in the hands of the National Education Association and its state and local affiliates. We certainly were not considering the welfare of our children in so doing.

Anyone who can claim to write a book on the teacher's unions and ignore the many decades of their fighting for students' and teachers' benefit is clearly only on a political hatchet mission and the truth be damned. So if your mind is already made up and you don't want reality to intrude on your pre-conceived ideas, buy this book- you'll love it.

I'd give the book less than one star if I could. As a former teacher union member, all I can say is thank God for my union. No one else seemed to care about school safety, or that the buildings were falling apart or that we had seven more kids in a class than other districts in the state or that we didn't have computer access at work for lesson planning and record keeping. None of this grassroots unionism is in his book, a major sin of omission. Instead he concentrates on salaries of officials, union lobbying activities,and dues. If the union sometimes took a stand on things I didn't agree with, well its a democratic organization, that's to be expected. If they didn't always do as well as I would have liked, they were the only ones with any clout on the right side of most issues. If there are union staff that made more than I did as a teacher, so what? As long as they were good at representing members'interests, which includes helping our kids, I'm not going to quibble. I want the best staff my dues money can buy. As for the bonanza from privatization that the unions are preventing, the Pentagon's bad experience with contracting out isn't mentioned once. It won't end up being a bonanza for kids, but for corporations. There's nothing there about superintendants leaving office to take cushy jobs with corporations, or other backroom deals on the corporate side. Why single out the unions? Judging by the other titles he's authored Lieberman makes his living by claiming that he has the scoop on unions and lazy teachers. I'll bet the worse he makes it sound, the more speaking engagments he gets. This is a sensationalist diatribe, but it does offer an interesting perspective on the way you can stack the deck so as to demonize anything.

This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the state of education in AMerica. Mr Lieberman speaks from years of experience as a teacher and an insider in the teachers unions. I highly recommend it!