Class Struggle: What’s Wrong (and Right) with America’s Best Public High Schools

Are America’s elite public high schools neglecting the potential of many students in favor of a select few?

Following the trail blazed by Jonathan Kozol’s landmark books on inner-city schools, Jay Mathews examines America’s elite suburban high schools and asks key questions about Do public high schools located in wealthy school districts succeed in providing all students with access to a quality education? What about students who have less ample means than their better-off classmates? In Class Struggle, Mathews brings into focus surprising and troubling revelations about America’s most well-funded high schools.

Mathews spent three years taking the pulse of America’s public high schools–including an extended stay at Mamaroneck High School in Westchester County, New York–to find out what they’re doing right, what they’re doing wrong, and how they could be doing much better. He emerges with a penetrating analysis of the competing forces that nurture the Ivy League goals of the academic elite while often quashing the less glamorous dreams and potential of the rest. His investigation shows that America’s best high schools often cultivate complacency when challenges and incentives should be available to all.