Grand Abstractions

THE dismal performance of America’s schools has been charted so often and so thoroughly that Shut Up and Let the Lady Teach, the sad story of a year in a Brooklyn school, leaves one depressed but not at all shocked.

By her own account, a bright and energetic Emily Sachar entered Walt Whitman Intermediate School hopeful and well prepared, but inevitably her enthusiasm collided with bureaucratic nonsense and appalling administrative and educational ineptitude.