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

[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)

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