The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem

Teaching the lessons of New York's most famous public school, Deborah Meier provides a widely acclaimed vision for the future of public education. With a new preface reflecting on the school's continuing success.

"The founder and principal of excellent small schools in East Harlem . . . Meier wants to make all students capable of participating in and sustaining a democracy. . . . Doubters must read Deborah Meier to take a look at that success up close, to watch it begin and grow and flourish."
-Lorene Cary, The New York Times Book Review

"Meier pledges her faith 'in the extraordinary untapped capacities of all our children'; but, unlike so many radical reformers, she is also firmly rooted in the reality of the classroom. . . .What has propelled people like Meier from the periphery to the center of the ongoing school debate is the recognition that a new and different form of public school is no longer a luxury."
-James Traub, The New Yorker

"Written in prose that runs like a clear stream past the sludge of educational discourse. . . .The fate of public education today depends on whether we listen to . . . the Deborah Meiers of the land."
-Joseph Featherstone, The Nation

"A fiery manifesto of Meier's plan for the salvation of public education."
-Los Angeles Times

"A book not of blueprints and slogans, but of essays-reflective and analytical. The Power of Their Ideas is the product of a lively mind."
-The Washington Post

"Anyone who wants to get insight into the current waves of endless 'reform' debate should read it."
-Philadelphia Inquirer

"Meier documents her 30 years in schools. . . . She has captured the national imagination in a way that few public school teachers do."
-Muriel Cohen, The Boston Globe

"Destined to change the way we think about teaching and learning, schooling and education."
-William Ayers, Rethinking Schools

Deborah Meier is founder of the Central Park East Schools and the Mission Hill School in Boston. She has been a fellow at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and is vice chair emeritus of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Her many awards include a MacArthur Prize Fellowship. She is also the author of In Schools We Trust.