the founder of Teach for America, which recruits Ivy League graduates to live and teach in disadvantaged communities, declared that "education can trump poverty" if teachers accept their performance as the "key variable" behind student achievement.

Goldstein is suspicious of this "ideal of the all-powerful individual teacher." She devotes special attention — and some skepticism — to TFA and its close cousin in today's reform movement, charter schools. She praises TFA for making low-income teaching a prestige position but resists its no-excuses philosophy.

To be sure, a reasonable dose of the no-excuses attitude has value in the classroom. It keeps demographic fatalism at bay and wards off diminished expectations among teachers and students alike.

And reformers aren't naïve: Many understand that achievement is a product of more than just great teaching.Geoffrey Canada's much-heralded Harlem Children's Zone provides wraparound social services to families and students enrolled in its Promise Academies, including free prenatal care and child-rearing lessons for new parents. Given the Obama administration's efforts to replicate Canada's organization across the country, reformers and policymakers both clearly realize that social welfare also has an important role to play in shaping student achievement.

Still, Goldstein levies some important critiques against the no-excuses movement. Without moderation, its strict brand of instruction can make for an unduly oppressive classroom environment. Goldstein watched a student get punished for "speaking out of turn" when he eagerly answered "Yes!" to a rhetorical question in a young TFA recruit's lesson. Classroom discipline is undoubtedly important, but overly stern instruction can stray into killjoy militancy.

There's also the possibility