Class Struggle: What's Wrong (And Right) With America's Best Public High Schools - Tapa dura

Charges that the honor programs of America's elite public high schools are only serving the children of the wealthy

with Ivy League dreams.  Ambitious, energetic, active parents with lots of money.  A cushy budget fed by property taxes on million-dollar homes.  Creative, well-paid teachers.  A recipe for a successful public school?  Not always.

Washington Post education reporter Jay Matthews spent three years taking the pulse of American elite public high schools top find out what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, and who gets left in the dust.

He emerged with a penetrating view of the competing--and often damaging--forces that  nurture the Ivy League goals of the academic and economic elite while often squashing the less glamorous ambitions and potential of the rest.  Matthews's investigation of American high schools taught him that our schools have often adopted some of our worst national habits.

Following the groundbreaking work of Jonathan Kozol, Matthews examines what happens when the ambit