Our public education system is under attack. University professors say it doesn’t have high enough standards, economists blame it for dragging down the American economy, politicians say it is not giving children the education that the American people demand, religious leaders say it refuses to allow God in schools, the news media portrays it as an overall failure, and one journalist even complains that public school teachers are fat! To all of this Dennis Fermoyle, says, “Balderdash!”

Fermoyle, the author of In The Trenches: A Teacher’s Defense of Public Education, is a thirty-one year veteran of public school classrooms. His views are based on real experience and they contain the much needed common sense that education critics and reformers often lack.

While he acknowledges the problems public schools face, he makes it clear that the suggested reforms of both liberals and conservatives miss the mark. Fermoyle’s battle plan for improving public schools includes assigning to students the responsibility for their own effort and behavior, giving teachers the power to remove students who are harming the education of their classmates, and giving principals the power to keep their best teachers.

In The Trenches profiles some of the many public schools and public school teachers who quietly and consistently produce students who do well and go on to success in college and their careers. Despite their performances, the conventional wisdom is that American public schools are “failing,” and the danger is that this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fermoyle’s passionate and practical defense of public education tells how we can keep that from happening while making our public schools the best they can be.