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No pre-service teacher should consider his or her professional education complete if it does not include regular viewings of The Merrow Report--the documentary series now airing on PBS and National Public Radio. Building on research completed for a recent episode of that series, Merrow here provides a thoughtful discussion of "excellence in education."

While highlighting issues of current concern, e.g., high-stakes testing, safe schools, and the place of technology in the curriculum, the author also provides an overview of the "best practices" in education. He shows the reader how to ask substantive questions about any school with which he or she might become involved (whether as a student, teacher, parent, or community member).

The expansion of the charter school movement and the Bush administration's endorsement of school vouchers have brought the issue of school choice into the spotlight. How does a parent choose a good school? And, for that matter, how do school leaders create good schools?

In Choosing Excellence, education reporter John Merrow provides a system for distinguishing among educational practices that are excellent, good enough, and bad. "Excellent schools," he writes, "are transparent in their operation and intellectual in their purpose, which makes them legitimate in the eyes of their constituencies."

Merrow has written this book for parents who are contemplating the choices in schooling for their children, but Choosing Excellence should also be of great interest to educators in distinguishing between educational practices that are "good enough" and those that are "excellent."

Good enough schools, Merrow says, are physically safe, but excellent schools are emotionally and intellectually safe as well. Good enough schools teach students what they need to do well on high stakes tests, and excellent schools let students know why they are learning what they are learning. Good enough schools use technology to provide information to students, and excellent schools use technology to produce scholars.

While not providing a formula for what constitutes an excellent school, Merrow presents a list of questions--about topics such as technology, testing, and safety--that reveal the quality of a school's programs. "My intention is not to shine a spotlight on excellent schools as such (I'll leave that to others), but on excellent practices," he says.

This outstanding assessment of the current state of the nation's schools is the culmination of Merrow's 25 years as an education reporter. Based on "School Sleuth: The Case of an Excellent School," a program for his PBS series The Merrow Report (which also airs on NPR), this book explores "good enough" schools, the ones that "most people settle for: schools everyone wants to believe are okay--even though, deep down, they know better."

Merrow aims here to help parents and others who are "determined to push and pull the system beyond 'good enough.'" To that end, he examines various aspects of schooling--from testing and homework to safety, values and technology--drawing on years of school visits and interviews. Merrow weighs in on the current infatuation with "machine-scored" tests; teacher burnout ("we train teachers poorly and then treat them badly--and so they leave in droves") and how it can be prevented; charter schools ("buyer beware"); the explosive growth of ADD ("a dubious diagnosis"); bloated administrative bureaucracy and much more.