STERN, Sol 1935-

PERSONAL:

Male. Born 1935, in Tel Aviv, Israel; immigrated to the United States, c. 1938; married; wife's name, Ruth (a teacher); children: Jonathan, one other son. Education: City College of New York, received degree; State University of Iowa, M.A. (political science); attended graduate school at University of California at Berkeley.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Encounter Books, 116 New Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA 94105.

CAREER:

Editor and writer for Ramparts (magazine), 1966-72; freelance writer and editor, 1972-84; Office of the City Council President, New York, NY, press secretary, senior policy advisor, and director of issues, 1985-94; New York State Commission on Juvenile Justice Reform, executive director, 1994-95; currently freelance journalist and author.

WRITINGS:

Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice, Encounter Books (San Francisco, CA), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including New Republic, Village Voice, New Statesman, Sports Illustrated, Daily News, Newsday, New York Post, Investor's Business Daily, and New York Times Magazine. Contributing editor, New York City Journal, 1997—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sol Stern originally started thinking about the state of American education when he began taking his young sons to New York City public schools. He noticed that, although P.S. 87, where his children attended, was still a decent school, the quality of education seemed to be have declined since his school days. Investigating the causes of this decline led to his first book, Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice. "Until my children entered school I paid little attention to … broader education debates," Stern admits in the introduction to his book. "And for a time P.S. 87 seemed to be living up to its exalted reputation." Soon, however, he began to notice that many of the union workers, including teachers and janitorial staff, did not seem to be working very hard. "I couldn't help noticing that [my son] Jonathan's school had three or four teachers who never had regular classroom assignments," Stern writes. "Apparently these teachers were too dysfunctional to be trusted with the children and thus had to be given something to do, like babysitting a class when a regular teacher had a prep period or patrolling the cafeteria and the schoolyard." Stern eventually learned how the power of teachers' unions has made it difficult—if not impossible—for school administrators to get rid of incompetent teachers and replace them with qualified ones; his book investigates the reasons for this and explores alternatives to the present system that could result in a better education for America's students.

In addition to the power of teacher's unions, Stern also blames "the Soviet-style bureaucracy that paralyzes the Board of Education … [and] the local and state politicians whose only response to low test scores is to try to wring even more money from the public coffers," reported Commentary writer Jonathan Kay. However, Stern focuses mainly on the union issue. To find alternatives on how schools should be run, he visits a Catholic school system and schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which now employ a voucher system that allows students to attend any school they wish, whether it is publicly or privately run. By providing more flexibility, says Stern, public school systems in Milwaukee began to realize that they needed to improve the quality of education they were offering in order to retain a student population; the result has been improvements across the board, the author insists.

The issue of school vouchers surfaced in the late twentieth century as a point of great contention in the United States; a number of critics noted that Stern's Breaking Free presents a persuasive argument for the voucher system. "Stern's case is airtight," said National Review contributor Michael Potemra, "but it's the anecdotes that make his book such a delight to read." A Publishers Weekly critic added that "Stern excels in presenting historical detail," although the reviewer felt that the author simplifies the case, grasping "educational theories and practices only at a superficial level." Nevertheless, Ray Olsen wrote in Booklist, Stern argues "more persuasively, because less ideologically, than do most other voucher-boosters." "Everybody who cares about public education," declared Potemra, "should read Breaking Free; others should read it simply because it's a great book."