Steve Brill's Destructive Morality Play
Steve Brill's Class Warfare is a morality play. In Act I, Brill asks us to ignore social science and believe that improved classroom instruction in neighborhood schools can close the achievement gap. Like so many elites who have only seen a tiny slice of urban life, Brill remains unaware of the reasons why "truly effective teaching," by itself, can save individuals, but why it can not systemically "overcome student indifference, parental disengagement and poverty."
Brill then seeks even more suspension of judgment as he introduces true believers in "No Excuses!" charter schools who deny that they exclude the most difficult-to-educate students. This fiction was exposed, again, in the New York Times' coverage of Success charter schools that push out challenging students.
Brill, however, cites a memo from Success charter schools founder Eva Moskowitz complaining that her entire school (of 250 students) has "ten kids with non-trivial psychiatric problems," and