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.
