Asra Q. Nomani

Everyone wants: High schoolers to graduate well-prepared for jobs. Improved STEM literacy. Greater achievement for inner-city children. Happiness for all children. So why are liberals spending billions of dollars working against those goals? In Race to the Bottom, Luke Rosiak uncovers the shocking reason why American education is failing: Powerful special interest groups are using our kids as guinea pigs in vast ideological experiments. These groups’ initiatives aren’t focused on making children smarter—but on implementing a radical agenda, no matter the effect on academic standards. Nonprofits pump billions into initiatives meant to redress racial inequities. Rather than fixing the problem, districts with a big gap between white and black test scores hire consultants who claim the tests are meaningless because they are “racist.” These consultants’ judgments allow school districts to ignore their own failures—ultimately hurting minority students and perpetuating racism. That is just one example. Drawing on his years in investigative journalism, Rosiak did a deep dive into school files, financial records, and parents’ stories. What he found is that nonprofit influence has crept into the educational bureaucracy all over America. Corrupt school boards and quack diversity consultants abound. Teachers drawing government pay claim it’s unsafe to return to in-person school, but “double dip” teaching in-person private classes. And amid all this focus on money and equity, academic standards are crumbling, which hurts American kids in ways we’ll be suffering for decades. Race to the Bottom is the first comprehensive exposé of the way radical ideology and self-serving administrators are destroying academic quality in America’s K-12 schools. Rigorous and deeply-researched, this is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of our kids.

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was an unmitigated disaster for the women of Iran. That fact is well known. What is less well-known and what Manda Zand Ervin brings to light in her remarkable book, is the long history of struggle against clerical domination in which the women of Iran have been engaged for centuries.. Rooted in the proud history of ancient Persia where once Mother-Gods were worshipped, the Ladies' Secret Society, founded in the early decades of the 20th Century, was at once the inheritor of this proud history and the progenitor of the women of today who are enduring 25-year prison sentences for the defiant, yet innocent, act of removing their hijabs in public. Ervin tells the stories and records the accomplishments of generations of individual women activists who have risked everything to educate their daughters even when held in thrall to the harem system of the Qajar era. These women refused to be victims. They fought like lionesses for every scrap of freedom gained from the time of the Arab conquest to the era of the Shah, only to see all their hard-won rights destroyed with the coming of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. Yet, despite the extreme cruelty of the clergy and the imminent danger they face, the women of Iran are undeterred. Ervin pays loving tribute to them all as she relates the stories of their remarkable achievements in the face of overwhelming oppression. Thanks to Manda Zand Ervin and her extraordinary book, we know their names and we will not forget their courageous lives.