What role do teachers play in education?

More than 85 per cent of the nation's children attend public schools, yet decades of privatising have damaged public education

After The Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform

Andrea Gabor 

The New Press

373 pages; $27.99

In 2009, Time magazine hailed School of One, an online math programme piloted at three New York City public schools, as one of the year’s 50 best innovations. Each day, School of One software generated individualised math “playlists” for students who then chose the “modality” in which they wished to learn — software, a virtual teacher or a flesh-and-blood one. A different algorithm sorted teachers’ specialties and schedules to match a student’s needs. “It generates the lessons, the tests and it grades the tests,” one