The Influence of Teachers: Reflections on Teaching and Leadership

How can schools and teachers change to keep up with the current educational landscape, a world in which young people must learn how to ask the right questions, not merely parrot back the 'right' answers? In this urgent and insightful book, John Merrow draws on his experience as a reporter for PBS and NPR to examine this question and others, and offer possibilities and solutions for a new education system. Told through warm storytelling and compelling case studies, Merrow paints a vibrant and inspiring picture of why and how we must transform - not reform - our schools.

Praise for The Influence of Teachers

"This is a book that will move you to tears and to action."
--Anthony Marx, President, Amherst College and incoming President, New York Public
Library

"Nobody reports on the treasures and traumas of public education better than John Merrow. He is, quite simply, the leading education journalist in America. Anybody who doubts that should read this book. John gets it."
--Jim Lehrer, Anchor, PBS NewsHour

 "In The Influence of Teachers, John Merrow explores the complex, ever-changing relationship between the teachers in our classrooms and the officials who lead them.  What he describes is fundamental to changing the face of public education in this country."
--Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, Co-founders of KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program)

"Invaluable for anyone concerned about children and the future of American education."
--Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund

"No one knows our schools and understands the fierce debates over them better than John Merrow, and no one parses those controversies with more humaneness and perceptiveness."
--E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Founder, Core Knowledge, and author of Cultural Literacy

"The Influence of Teachers is both important and enjoyable."
--Richard C. Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education (1992-2000)

"The Influence of Teachers rejects the finger pointing and noise-making of the policymakers and calls for a focus on the real challenge - the need for education to catch up with the changes in student needs that science and technology have wrought. Concise, clear, rare, and most important!"
--Dr. James Comer, MD, Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine