Steve Brill's blackboard jungle

- (CNN Money) - 9 months ago...

Every few years a new public policy issue becomes au courant for authors. We got religion on religion when it infiltrated political debate; we focused on nutrition when so many studies seemed to connect diet to overall health; we serially turn to tech when the stock market heats up. The latest subject is education reform. Books (as well as magazines and movies and blogs) have come out on the charter-school movement, standardized testing, technology innovations, for-profit schools, and even education-as-national-security problem. Now, no less a media star and entrepreneur than Steve Brill has weighed in. His widely anticipated Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools, published this week, aims to do for education what David Halberstam once upon a time did for Vietnam or Bob Woodward these days does seriatim about the White House....