School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School

School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High SchoolThe pressure to succeed in our nation's most competitive public high schools is often crushing. Striving to understand this insular world, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Edward Humes spent a year at California's Whitney High, a school so renowned that parents move across town and across the world hoping to enroll their children. That's because schools like Whitney deliver everything parents want: love of learning, a sense of mission, and SAT scores

The pressure to succeed in our nation's most competitive public high schools is often crushing. Striving to understand this insular world, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes spent a year at California's Whitney High, a school so renowned that parents move across town-and across the world-hoping to enroll their children. That's because schools like Whitney deliver everything parents want: love of learning, a sense of mission, and SAT scores that pave the way to elite universities. Attending such a school, of course, carries its own toll: High-achieving, pressured kids survive on espresso and four hours' sleep a night, falling into despair if they get a B.

Lively, personal, and very readable, School of Dreams uncovers what works-and what doesn't-at this model high school, offering parents, students, and teachers some powerful messages about public education today.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 09/01/2004
ISBN: 9780156030076
Pages: 370
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 1.20d