Education reformers Deborah Meier, Theodore R. Sizer, and Nancy Faust Sizer have published books that have helped shape a movement. As school principals, all three have done another kind of writing as well: short essays in their own schools’ newsletters to families.

Keeping School collects the best of these wonderfully readable gems of education writing-from an urban public elementary school and an exurban charter high school-along with new essays. Together, the letters form a portrait of what schools can look like when they are based on the authors’ understandings of learning, community, authority, and standards.