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This book takes readers on a tour of a day in the life of a public elementary school in an effort to give parents and other stakeholders a sense of the realities of the classroom. The tour reveals ten worrisome things about today´s schools and considers what to do about them. Dillon emphasizes the need for future schools to be places filled with adventure and high purpose, with classrooms small enough to waste only a minimum of time. They should be free from stifling levels of bureaucracy, supervised by rotating teacher administrators rather than career managers. The book asserts that schools should be staffed by scholarly and engaged teaching professionals dedicated to helping students live a healthy adult life in a democracy rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all, furiously assessed college prep curriculum on everyone. In all, Dillon argues, schools should be places with classrooms of narrow ability ranges dedicated to teaching a coherent curriculum, all in a context of full buy-in and support from students´ families. Let´s go inside today´s elementary schools.

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Part I: Shortsighted Vision & Lopsided Staffing Chapter 1: The House on Sleepy Hollow Road Bridges and Potholes How the Book Is Organized Chapter 2: So Many Girls...So Few Princes Some Negative Effects of the Gender Staffing Imbalance What You Can Do Chapter 3: When Am I Ever Going to Use Any of This? Adventure and High Purpose The Romantic Child Lessons from Harry Potter Industry vs. Inferiority The Zombie Apocalypse What You Can Do Chapter 4: And Then God Made School Boards The Administration Total Management Mentality Adversarial Posture Who Becomes an Administrator? Toxic Culture The Good Ones What You Can Do Chapter 5: the Bottom of the Barrel? Women´s Work: The Mother Drill and Kill: The Sergeant Just Tell Me What to Do: the Sheep The Easiest Major: The Underachiever Teacher Training, Where It All Begins Why Should We Teach Anyway? What You Can Do Chapter 6: What to Do about These Four Things Our Vision of Teachers and Schools Personnel Reform Part II: The Wall of Separation, Administrative Bloat, and Boundless Accommodation Chapter 7: Platonic Curriculum; Epicurean Society Who Formulates the Standards? What Are Standards Designed to Do? What Is the Nature of the Standards? Five Basic Problems with Current Elementary Standards Three Possible Solutions What You Can Do Chapter 8: Just Wastin´ Time The Different Kinds of Wasted Time Where Does the Time Go? Time-Off-Task Why Is So Much Time Lost? How Lost Time Negatively Impacts Teacher and Student What You Can Do Chapter 9: No Child Left Behind? A Brief History of Standardized Tests Common Critiques The Real Reason Why NCLB Caused So Much Trouble Life after NCLB What You Can Do Chapter 10: I´m Five Teachers at Once! What is Differentiated Instruction? A Sympathetic Critique of DI Less Noble reasons for Using DI What You Can Do Chapter 11: The Incredible Bending School Reasonable Special Education and Non-Academic Services Unreasonable Special Education and Non-Academic Services Pedagogical stress What You Can Do Chapter 12: Look Not to the Stars A Picture of Contemporary Parental Engagement Barriers to Parental Engagement Why Parental Engagement Matters What You Can Do Chapter 13: What to Do about These Six Things Wall of Separation Multiplying Diversions Part III: What to Do about All 10 Things Chapter 14: A New Day? Dealing with Fear Seeing Through Ideology Letting Go of the Need to Control Conclusion

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